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44th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION
EDITED HANSARD • No. 381
CONTENTS
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
House of Commons Debates
Volume 151
No. 381
1st SESSION
44th PARLIAMENT
OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Speaker: The Honourable Greg Fergus
Routine Proceedings
[Routine Proceedings]
[English]
Committees of the House
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present, in both official languages, the 22nd report of the Standing Committee on International Trade, entitled “Selected United States and European Union Trade-Related Measures: Some Impacts on Canada’s Fishing Sector”.
This report is timely, given the very issues that we are contemplating and discussing today, and so I am pleased to be able to present the report.
Environment and Sustainable Development
Madam Speaker, I move that the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, presented on Monday, October 30, 2023, be concurred in.
It is always an honour to rise in this place, and today's matter is about transparency and common-sense ideas. This report contains a few common-sense recommendations that, unfortunately, the Liberal government and its radical Minister of Environment have simply chosen to ignore. Members should make no mistake: There has never been a more ideologically driven Minister of Environment than the one we have today.
Even if we set aside the previous arrests and the utter disdain for Canada's energy sector, I truly believe that, at some point in the not too distant future, we will all come to realize that we have never had such an incompetent and ineffective Minister of Environment for Canada. Not only have Canada's climate outcomes failed to improve, but Canada's performance is also the worst in the G7, despite claims that the government may make all the time. The minister has imposed a crippling carbon tax that punishes seniors trying to heat their homes during our cold winters. I can tell members that the rumours are true: It does get cold in Manitoba. Seniors deserve to have heat and quality of life. The minister targets moms and dads who are struggling to fill their tanks to take their kids to school, to hockey practice, to soccer practice, to music lessons or anything else, if they can still afford to put their kids in such important programs.
The minister has done more damage to Canada's economy than almost any other minister of the Crown in our nation's history. He has forced us to pay for his carbon tax, and for what? The Liberals may not want to admit it, at least publicly, but they are nowhere near meeting their emissions targets. Simply put, they are failing because their climate plan was never about the climate; it was always about taxes. Their carbon tax is a major contributor to the inflation that is driving up the cost of everything. This is causing millions of Canadians to visit food banks every year just to put something in their stomachs; they do not know where their next meal is going to come from. In Canada, we now have a resurgence of scurvy because people cannot afford enough fruits and vegetables. This is insane and embarrassing. The fact that the Prime Minister's legacy will be a country where people cannot buy enough nutritious food to keep them healthy is something that I imagine he will be very ashamed of when his tenure comes to an end.
While Canadians are being forced to pay for the Liberal carbon tax, most people I talk to recognize that, sadly, we are in a cost of living crisis. We are threatened by tariffs from our largest trading partner; our GDP per capita is declining steadily. Millions of Canadians are just $200 away from insolvency, and household debt has reached new record highs. The vast majority of young people that I talk to cannot afford to buy a home; frankly, they have lost all hope and given up the idea of even trying to ever have that happen in their lives. Meanwhile, the minister is on a mission, for some strange reason, to continue down this path of quadrupling the carbon tax and, if given the chance, probably more. He gave a very unclear answer at our environment committee just last week, and he still thinks everything is fine. It is not fine for millions of people in this country.
I have never met anyone more out of touch, more disconnected from the realities faced by Canadian families, students, seniors and everybody else. The minister has no understanding of the pain and suffering that he is causing right now, and it certainly does not appear that he even cares about it. He thinks we should all just shut up and pay his carbon tax because he knows what is best for people. He has lost the plot. He has climbed so far up his ivory tower that he has lost all sense of reality.
I will also mention that I will be splitting my time with the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa.
This brings me to the second recommendation within the report, one that the minister and the Prime Minister surely did not read. This recommendation is that the government must direct its incentives to technologies that actually reduce emissions, and what a reasonable idea that is. Thank goodness for the commissioner of the environment, who has put a glaring spotlight on the Liberals' net-zero accelerator initiative. It is as though the Liberal ministers are playing poker: “I see the green slush fund, and I raise a net-zero accelerator fund.” It is an $8-billion Liberal boondoggle in the making. Eight billion dollars is handed over to large multinational corporations while the Minister of Environment taxes seniors, students, families and anybody else whose pockets he can get his hands into.
The findings of the environment commissioner's report regarding the $8-billion initiative are terrifying, to say the least. This program, touted as one of the cornerstones of the Liberal government's climate efforts, has been nothing but a complete failure. The Liberals have mismanaged this fund to the point of negligence, as they have done with many other things they have gotten their hands on. The department failed to track whether the initiative was delivering real value for money and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Using value-for-money audits is a reasonable idea. The Liberal government has failed to do that. Simply put, taxpayers have no idea whether their hard-earned tax dollars are going to reduce emissions, as the government claims they are.
Let us talk numbers. The report shows that five corporations made a commitment to reduce emissions in their contracts, and the cost to taxpayers to reduce just one tonne of greenhouse gases was $143. That might sound like a lot, but it gets much worse. For the other 12 projects, funded with that same $8 billion, there are no signed commitments to reduce emissions whatsoever; the commissioner's audit found that, because these projects did not have any signed commitments, the overall cost is $523 per tonne of emissions reduced under this program.
The Liberals, as they always do, promised results; once again, they failed to deliver on yet another promise. They have just simply delivered another wasteful program. It is not one that can measure results. That is not how to develop a program for anything. They have squandered billions of dollars with no real targets, no clear outcomes and no clear plans on how to achieve anything. This is not a climate action plan; it is a taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
The environment committee did the responsible thing and passed a motion demanding full access to the contracts the Liberals signed with these massive corporations. The common-sense Conservative team led the charge because we believe taxpayers should know where their money is being spent and whether it is being spent in a useful manner. However, here is the kicker: The Liberals completely disregarded the committee's motion, stonewalling us for months. Once they did hand over the documents, kind of, they pulled out hundreds that we simply could not see and redacted so much that it made them largely irrelevant.
They simply do not want members of Parliament or Canadians to know where the $8 billion is going. They do not want us to know how many jobs may or may not be maintained or ever created. They do not want us to know by how much emissions will be reduced through spending on any of these programs. It is ridiculous, to say the least. It is insane how far the Prime Minister and his radical Minister of Environment will go to hide the truth. Exhibit A is the ongoing green slush fund debate in the House of Commons.
They do not care about outcomes. They care about announcements, press releases and press conferences. They care about being seen to be doing something but not about actually doing anything. It is virtue signalling on the taxpayer's dime. It is lazy environmental policy, and it is simply no way to run a government. They are failing miserably.
Members of Parliament simply need to see how these tax dollars are being spent. We deserve to know whether the net-zero accelerator is accomplishing its stated goals. While the Liberal MPs on the committee gave every lame excuse they could not to learn the truth, it was the Conservatives that got them to vote in favour of the motion we passed at committee. The motion partly reads:
Given that the government has failed to provide the committee with the following documents and information relating to their 8-billion-dollar Net Zero Accelerator fund:
all complete contributions agreements signed, to date, for the Net Zero Accelerator;
the government's complete tracker tool used to measure the Net Zero Accelerator's progress and results; and
all internal Net Zero Accelerator targets set by the government, including the government's Net Zero Accelerator emission reduction target.
...
It was a reasonable motion passed at committee, but can we guess what? The Liberals are doing what they always do and trying to defy Parliament once again. They refuse to abide by this motion, and today is just the beginning of the Conservatives' mission to discover how rotten this net-zero accelerator fund truly is. We deserve to know results because Canadians deserve to know results. We represent the people who pay their taxes to fund these sorts of programs, and it is ridiculous that the Liberals are continuing to try to hide the truth. The environment committee has much more work to do in order to get to the bottom of this boondoggle and find solutions that can actually deliver results for taxpayers; Canadians deserve nothing less.
Madam Speaker, I found the speech to be a fascinating exposition in avoiding actual facts. Right now, emissions in Canada are at the lowest they have been in almost three decades, and that is actually verified by independent reports. When the member opposite keeps talking about everything he believes we should do to stop fighting climate change, I am fascinated, because what we are doing is actually working.
Economists across Canada have said that the most efficient way to fight climate change is the price on carbon pollution. If the Conservatives want to remove it, what is their plan?
Madam Speaker, I wish my hon. colleague had listened to my speech, because what I was talking about was how the Liberals need to stop wasting money without achieving any results. In fact, thanks to the work of the environment commissioner highlighting that the Liberal government is not on track in any way to meet its stated emissions reduction goals, we know that the government is failing in its objectives.
There is also a report showing that Canada is in 62nd place of 67 in the world. We are last in the G7. If this is achieving something, I do not know what Liberals think they are trying to accomplish. They are failing. In terms of the carbon tax, I would invite the member to come to my riding, talk to my constituents and see whether they think they are better off under the carbon tax.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, recommendation 2 of the report we are currently studying requires the government to demonstrate the effectiveness of technologies before implementing them. The first example that comes to mind is carbon storage. The Conservatives talk about it all the time. However, we know it has been tested elsewhere, and it does not work.
I would like to hear my colleague's comments on this. Does he not think we should first get proof that it works elsewhere before investing colossal sums in it, so that it does not blow up in our faces in 15 years?
[English]
Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the member understands the need to actually focus on results for taxpayer dollars. In terms of carbon capture and storage, yes, it seems like a promising lead and a way to actually reduce emissions. The good news is that the private sector is leading the way in this; it is the one trying to make investments and reduce its emissions.
While the technology is promising, I think there is so much more, because we are innovative. If we had a government that stopped stifling, through regulation and legislation, the innovators and entrepreneurs in this country, we would more rapidly, through technology, not taxes, achieve the emissions reduction goals this country has aimed for. Under a Conservative government, we will.
Madam Speaker, the member did not completely answer my colleague's question, which was about whether the Conservatives are going to hand over public money to private companies for an unproven technology that is being used in other areas to produce more oil and to raise emissions. Carbon capture and storage, as the IPCC has said, is one of the most expensive and least proven at scale technologies to meet our net-zero goals.
The government has given over $5.8 billion to profitable oil and gas companies, when the private sector could be doing the investing. Will the member commit to pushing for private investment into carbon capture and storage, if private investors so choose, but to no longer putting public money into unproven technology?
Madam Speaker, CCUS is one example. What I am focused on, which will be the first principle when the new common-sense Conservative government steps in, is to review programs like it to see where money has been wasted and where it has been successful. Thanks to the work of the environment commissioner, we now know that it is a failed project.
Once again, I am more than proud to say that we are going to unleash Canada's energy potential, stop the strangulation of our energy sector and let it do the investing both in terms of emissions reduction and, yes, creating wealth for Canadians once again in this country.
Madam Speaker, as a member of the standing committee on environment, I am honoured to speak about the work of our committee. I was fortunate to work on the committee's 10th report on clean technologies. The report proved that technology, not taxes, should be the foundation of an environment policy. Unfortunately the Liberal government is hell-bent on plowing ahead with its failed carbon tax without getting any environmental results.
There is an old saying that “only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.” With multiple reports published recently, it is clear that the Liberals have been swimming naked in the waters of environmentalism for years. Last month, Canada's independent, non-partisan environment commissioner released a damning audit that revealed that the Liberals will not meet their own emissions reduction targets, despite plowing ahead with their plan to quadruple the carbon tax.
The commissioner revealed that under the Prime Minister, Canada has the worst record for emissions reductions in the entire G7. In fact according to the 2025 climate change performance index, which was just released, Canada now ranks 62nd out of 67 countries in environmental performance under the environment minister.
The ranking is four places lower than it was two years ago, despite multiple carbon tax hikes on Canadians. With such an embarrassing ranking, it is no wonder the environment minister is trying to discredit the report by saying it is some random international assessment that does not reflect Canada's policies and reality. No, it is a report that does not reflect his imaginary fantasy that he wants it to.
Unsurprisingly, dozens of countries around the world that do not punish their people with a carbon tax are significantly outperforming Canada on the environmental index. This is why I asked the independent environment commissioner whether Canada could achieve its targets without a carbon tax. He said yes. For nine years, the Liberals falsely claimed that the carbon tax was the only way to meet their environmental targets. They were once again proven wrong.
It is for these reasons that Canadians are rejecting the failed so-called environmental policies of the government. Canadians understand that the Prime Minister and his radical environment minister are inflicting a lot of economic pain with no environmental gain.
It is not just the carbon tax that the environment committee has exposed; it seems as though at every committee meeting a new Liberal scandal or cover-up is exposed. The Liberal government's $8-billion net zero accelerator fund may win the top prize for the government's most expensive environmental scam yet.
Most Canadians tuning in have probably never heard of the government's $8-billion net zero accelerator fund. I find this surprising for three reasons. First, Canadian taxpayers are literally being charged $8 billion for the program. Second, the government usually brags about how much money it is spending. Third, the Liberals claim the $8-billion net zero accelerator would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead the Liberals have gone incognito on their $8-billion net zero accelerator fund. I wonder why that is.
When I asked the commissioner how many emissions have been reduced by the $8-billion program, he stated, “I can't say”. It gets better. At the public accounts committee, I asked the environment minister's top official, the deputy minister, how many emissions were reduced; he stated that he did not know. It was such an outrageous misuse of taxpayer's funds that all parties except for the Liberals called an emergency meeting of the environment committee. When the Bloc Québécois MP for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert found out about the $8-billion fund, he stated:
This whole thing is kind of uncomfortable....
I would remind everyone that the net zero accelerator has $8 billion in funding. Everyone here represents constituents who expect us to do our job, which is to hold the government to account for the money it spends.
I agree with the Bloc member. It is more than embarrassing, though; it is corrupt. I can guarantee that Canadians want to know why they are paying $8 billion for the failed and fraudulent slush fund. Conservatives on the environment committee called on Liberals to release the funding details of their $8-billion net zero accelerator fund to the public, but the government refused. This is why the environment committee ordered the government to hand over all contracts to the committee so we could find out the truth.
Instead of handing over the contract to parliamentarians, the Liberals locked the contracts in a room and put a gag order on every MP who viewed them. Any MP who read the eight billion dollars' worth of contracts was forced to lock up their phone and not take any notes, and was prevented from discussing what they saw. I was one of those MPs, and I understand why the Liberals have gagged me. I was absolutely shocked by what I saw.
As I said, the government has placed me and all the members of the environment committee under a gag order to prevent us from disclosing the truth. Over 65 pages of net zero accelerator contracts were redacted and over 360 pages were completely ripped out of the contracts. Someone in the Liberal government ordered over 360 pages of the net zero accelerator contracts to be ripped out to prevent parliamentarians from seeing what $8 billion was spent on. This sounds borderline criminal.
Did the Minister of Environment order it to be done? Did the Prime Minister order it to be done? Who ripped out the pages of the net zero accelerator contracts to hide the truth? Who poured black ink on the contracts to cover up the lines? Who will be accountable for the $8-billion scam?
The Liberal government defied the will of Parliament by failing to hand over the contracts of its $8-billion net zero accelerator funds. It is very clear it is hiding something. The environment commissioner caught the Liberals giving away billions of tax dollars to large multinational companies without any commitment to reduce emissions. This could very well be the government's most expensive scandal yet.
If the NDP were truly opposed to corporate handouts, its members would be outraged. If the Bloc truly cared about the environment, its members would be outraged. If any member of Parliament cared about accountability, they would be outraged. I can promise that Canadians are outraged. Canadians deserve answers on the Liberal government's fake, failed and fraudulent $8-billion net zero accelerator fund. They deserve to know what companies received eight billion dollars' worth of taxpayers' money and what the money was spent on.
I therefore move the following amendment, seconded by my colleague from Langley—Aldergrove, on behalf of Canadians paying for the $8-billion scam: That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the tenth report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, presented on Monday, October 30, 2023, be not now concurred in but that it be recommitted to the committee for further consideration, with a view to studying the implementation of the net zero accelerator initiative, and, to support the committee with this study, an order of the House do issue for: (a) copies of all signed contribution agreements and term sheets, including schedules of work for each contract, for the net zero Accelerator initiative; (b) a copy of the government’s tracker tool used to measure the net zero accelerator initiative’s progress and results; and (c) copies of documents which describe all internal net zero accelerator initiative targets set by the government, including the government’s net zero accelerator initiative emissions reduction target, provided that these documents shall be laid upon the table, in both official languages and in a complete and unredacted form, within two weeks of the adoption of this order, following which they shall stand referred to the committee.”
I thank the hon. member for introducing the amendment. We will take it under advisement and return to the House.
Questions and comments, the hon. member for Kings—Hants.
Madam Speaker, I find it interesting that the Conservative Party is moving a concurrence report on the environment. I listened to the member for Portage—Lisgar and, to some extent, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa as well. I did not hear a whole lot about what the Conservative Party actually stands for in relation to environmental plans.
This government is the first in Canadian history to actually reduce GHG emissions and grow the economy at the same time. It is very interesting to have the Conservatives throw darts. They have very little actual, tangible plans. However, I do have a very precise question for the hon. member.
When he was working for the Grain Growers of Canada, the member for Portage—Lisgar used to lobby me about the importance of the clean fuel standards. The hon. member has a lot of grain farmers in his neck of the woods. The clean fuel standard is helping to drive demand in their sector and helping drive down emissions.
Would that member stand and support the clean fuel standards if he were in government and support that for the Conservative Party, or would they scrap that and hurt grain farmers too?
Madam Speaker, I just gave a speech on an $8-billion fraud that was run by the government. Over 70% of the contracts gave no commitment to reduce emissions. The whole idea behind the $8 billion was to reduce emissions. That member cannot be taken seriously and neither can the government.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for bringing this matter to the House today. There is something interesting about the fact that the Conservatives are focusing on sustainable development issues. That being said, I am nonetheless concerned about happens in the future. I want to highlight recommendation 10:
That the Government of Canada integrate its support for clean technology within all existing federal strategies, such as the Critical Minerals Strategy, the National Housing Strategy and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, prioritizing the objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fostering the development of sustainable jobs.
I want to talk about strategic critical minerals, because I think they are the key to successful transportation electrification, and I am very concerned about the Canadian strategy. We see what is happening with the U.S. There is one active lithium mine in Canada, and it is in my riding. How are we supposed to develop our products and potentially sell them to the U.S. unless we speed up the creation of lithium mines or mines to extract other clean technology minerals?
Most importantly, we must encourage local processing, close to the mines, in order to help our resource regions. To me, that is part of a real strategy. Do the Conservatives support that?
[English]
Madam Speaker, I will bring this back to reducing emissions and what this accelerator fund was all about. The commissioner testified at committee on this scandal, and he stated:
We also found that the department did not always know to what extent GHG emissions had been reduced by those companies that took part in the [net zero accelerator] initiative, or whether the funding provided would lead to reduced emissions.
There were $8 billion, and our environment commissioner could not find a shred of evidence on over 70% of those contracts of whether they were reducing emissions. It is absolutely absurd.
Madam Speaker, I would hope that all members can agree that the environment commissioner's report on the net zero accelerator fund is deeply concerning. As members of Parliament, as we look at the documents that we have been provided, it is hard to get a sense of what is going on because of the redactions and the missing pages. However, we do have the environment commissioner's report, which really outlines, clearly, that something is amiss when a government hands out billions of dollars and does not link that to emissions reductions.
The member is correct in presenting this, but what he needs to answer is that Canadians right now are looking at this and wondering how the Conservatives cannot even agree if climate change is real. In the past, when Harper was in power, they handed out billions of dollars to profitable oil and gas companies in the form of fossil fuel subsidies.
Would the member commit to stopping the handouts to profitable oil and gas companies and pushing the government to do the same?
Madam Speaker, I understand what my NDP colleagues are up against. They have been basically duped by the Liberal government. All of this time, for the last nine years, it has been telling us that it is going to reduce emissions, with $8 billion of taxpayer dollars going to the heaviest emitters and, I might add, to oil and gas companies as well. The NDP should be outraged about this finding, and it should be supporting us on getting this back to committee.
Madam Speaker, what a pleasure it is to rise to speak to yet another concurrence report. Interestingly enough, the Conservatives are, in fact, continuing with the game they began a number of weeks ago, and that is the reason we have a concurrence report.
Before I get into a number of my concerns, let me amplify why all members, all parliamentarians in the House of Commons, should be concerned with what we consistently seeing from the Conservative Party. When the Conservatives bring in a concurrence report, they also bring in amendments to it. The amendments are instructions. What they are doing is sending the reports back to standing committees. In some cases, they are asking us to call other individuals to come before committee to answer questions.
I would argue that the leader of the Conservative Party, in his drive to control every aspect of members of Parliament, is trying to say that the Conservative caucus wants to dictate what standing committees should be studying and who we should be calling before them, which is far more than any other government has seen in recent history. We all should be concerned about that, because yet again, we have another concurrence report where we are telling a standing committee what to do. We are telling it that the report it sent us is not good enough, that we are sending it back and we want X, Y and Z.
That is consistent with the leader of the Conservative Party. It is borderline contempt, whether it is on the floor of the House of Commons through a multi-million dollar, self-serving filibuster, or what we are witnessing now, which is his desire to fill the space of standing committees. We should not be surprised, because the Conservative leader took his training from Stephen Harper. When Stephen Harper was held in contempt of Parliament for not producing documents along with other things, his parliamentary secretary, his point person on the issue, was the current leader of the Conservative Party.
We have yet another concurrence report today. This time the Conservatives have chosen to deal with the environment.
An hon. member: Wow, how dare us.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Many would say, “How dare you.”
Madam Speaker, the Conservatives do not really recognize climate change, yet they want to talk about the environment. The reason they want to talk about the environment is to downplay the role the government can play in protecting the environment.
I will get into that shortly, but not before I amplify how abusive the leader of the Conservative Party is toward democracy and the functionality of the House of Commons. This is a very serious issue of which all Canadians need to be aware. This is only a hint of the type of grab for power and his thrive. It shows the degree to which he is prepared to sacrifice the interests of Canadians because of his own personal self-interest.
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I rise specifically in relation to the fact that you have taken the amendment to the motion moved by my colleague, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, under advisement. I would like to add a little context as to it being within the scope of the discussion. The report does, in fact, talk about the net zero accelerator and therefore makes this amendment relevant.
Concurrence motions and amendments to them have been used time and again to structure a committee's follow-up study, including, and I would list a number of examples, deadlines for reports, topics to study, new recommendations to be made and witnesses to hear from, and that includes witnesses being ordered to appear. Therefore, it follows that the House can support a committee by ordering documents to be reviewed as part of that study.
Therefore, I would suggest, Madam Speaker, that the amendment my colleague moved is not only relevant but pertinent and follows the precedent that has been set in this place. I would further note, and I know the parliamentary secretary is not very happy about having to debate these sorts of things, it appears that Conservatives have a better grasp and control of the House than the governing party does.
Madam Speaker, that is somewhat humorous. If I were given a dozen grade 12 students from Sisler high, Maples, St. John's, R. B. Russell and Children of the Earth, I could cause the same sort of commotion that the Conservatives have day in, day out for the last number of weeks. In fact, I suspect I could even get half of them to go without written speech material.
At the end of the day, I was highlighting how we have a leader of the Conservative Party who is abusive in terms of the procedures and what takes place on the floor of the House or in our standing committees. His history does not reflect well on how he would handle the House of Commons or the institution of Parliament, if he were ever given the power of being in government. We should be concerned about that.
As an example, for many weeks now we have been in a filibuster on a Conservative motion that says that an issue should be transferred to a standing committee. The Conservatives have now put up well over 200 speakers on that, at a great and substantial cost to the House not being able to deal with a wide variety of issue. A majority of the members in the chamber would like the Conservatives to stop the filibustering and allow the Conservative motion to be voted on and sent to committee.
On the environment—
I must interrupt the hon. member again.
Earlier today, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa presented an amendment to the motion to concur in the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. The Chair took it under advisement. After consideration, the Chair finds that the amendment introduces a new concept that should be presented as a separate substantive motion.
As mentioned in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 541:
...it is irrelevant to the main motion (i.e., it deals with a matter foreign to the main motion, exceeds its scope, or introduces a new proposition which should properly be the subject of a separate substantive motion with notice);
As a result, I rule the amendment out of order.
The hon. parliamentary secretary.
Madam Speaker, what is really difficult, when the Conservatives want to talk about the environment, is that we have now had two speakers stand up to try to play down the importance of the price on pollution.
It is really quite unfortunate because it is not only on the floor of the House of Commons that they spread misinformation, but also, sadly, through social media, in particular, and emails. In all likelihood, they send out literally millions of emails. I am one of the recipients of their emails, and they are so misleading.
Let us talk about the price on pollution. There are two components: the rebate portion and the tax portion. It has been well established that over 80% of Canadians receive more money back than they pay for a price on pollution.
Canada is not the only jurisdiction in the world that uses a price on pollution. There are even some American states that use a price on pollution. The arguments that the Conservatives use, depending on the day, do not hold water. They are like a strainer. At the end of the day, what we are seeing is a Conservative Party that is more concerned with trying to give a false impression than truly caring about our environment, and ultimately, taxation and supporting Canadians by increasing their disposable income. I will expand on that.
First and foremost, every member of the Conservative caucus, with the exception of those who were elected in a by-election, campaigned on a price on pollution, including the leader of the Conservative Party. Then they changed their position, and it is not the first or the second time that they have changed their position. They changed their position with the current leader, who made the initial flip-flop, so they now oppose it.
When the Conservatives say that they oppose it, they are trying to give the impression that the rebate is less than the tax, which is not true for over 80% of the people who receive the backstop. If we take a look at it, we will find that it is having a positive impact in our communities. That is why we even have some provincial jurisdictions that have their own programs. They realize that putting a price on pollution is an effective way of dealing with emissions, amongst other things.
I would suggest that it is not unique to see the Conservatives flip-flopping and completely disregarding their election platform. Members can remember that last week, we had a vote on an actual tax break, a GST holiday for Canadians. Every one of the Conservatives voted against it, yet every one of them campaigned in favour of a GST holiday break in the last federal election.
What does that say about the Conservative platform, those major policy announcements that come out during an election, such as the Conservatives saying that they were in support of a price on pollution and giving a tax break with a GST holiday, when it comes down to voting, that they actually vote against them? They voted against a price on pollution, and they voted against a GST tax break for the holiday season.
The irony of it all is that we have Conservatives going across the country saying they are going to axe the tax. Let us look at what they are telling Canadians and what they are doing. In Winnipeg North, the Conservatives would get rid of the carbon rebate. That would mean a whole lot of money would be coming out of the pockets of at least 80% of the constituents I represent. Plus, when we factor in the rebate compared to the tax the Conservatives say they would be axing, it means the disposable income based on the election commitment under that leader would see less disposable income because of their so-called axe the tax. That is not a net gain for 80% of the constituents I represent.
The Conservatives do not have a problem with misleading Canadians. They are telling people that they are going to be better off because of their proposal, when they know for a fact that is not the case. They know that, and then, when it comes time to do something to provide tax relief for Canadians, again, the Conservatives are doubling down. They are voting against one other issue that they said that they would give to Canadians, a GST holiday during the season.
It makes no sense unless, of course, we listen to the leader of the Conservative Party and think of his ambitions. That is why there was a very interesting article that made the national news last week. It talked about a lot of the Conservatives on the inside. Members of Parliament were concerned about the leadership of the Conservative Party, and I can appreciate why. They went to the doors and said, “We are going to give a tax holiday during the holiday season”, and now they are being forced to vote against the tax holiday for the Christmas season. The Conservatives went to the doors in the last election and said, “I support a price on pollution”, and now they are voting against the price on pollution.
It is not like Conservative members were given a choice. They were told to bring this forward. It is interesting that it was two Manitoba members of Parliament who brought forward this motion. In the last budget, or I think it was the previous one, we saw a major commitment to the province of Manitoba. Canada's national Water Agency will be located in Manitoba's capital city of Winnipeg. The premier, the mayor and many different stakeholders are very happy to see a national government that recognizes the importance of having a water strategy, and that the national office will be located in the city of Winnipeg.
When I talk about the environment, and the many things that are taking place, I could provide a list of things I have noted, whether they are the banning of single-use plastics, making zero-emission vehicles more affordable, the serious cut on emissions or the expansion of 44 national wildlife areas and three national parks. Canada's emissions are tracking downward, which is so encouraging to see. There are so many things, such as the greener homes program.
I figure the national story that we heard last week about how the leader of the Conservative Party has absolute and total control of his caucus members is something Canadians should be very much aware of. I would like to quote from the story, which reads:
After two years of [the leader of the Conservative Party] as their leader, many Conservative MPs say they are much less free now than they were before his arrival.
The man who promised during his leadership run to make Canada the “freest country in the world” maintains tight control over the actions of his caucus members....
Conservative MPs' words and actions are closely scrutinized by the leader's office. Partisanship is encouraged. Fraternizing with elected officials from other parties is a no-no.
This means they cannot come over to talk to me. The article continues, “Those who follow these rules are rewarded. Those who don't often have to suffer consequences.” We can talk to the member for Abbotsford to get a sense of the consequences.
An hon. member: That's awkward.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: It is a bit awkward, but it is true.
Madam Speaker, the story continues, “If the leader invents a new slogan, 'we know we'll have to use it'”. Remember, these are Conservatives who are saying this. Allow me to express some freedom on their behalf. “If you repeat the slogans, you get rewarded”, according to the story. That is where we get the gold star thing. We all know how many times they stand up to repeat the same slogans, the bumper sticker slogans. They get a gold star for that. If they talk to the member for Kingston and the Islands, for example, they get a star taken away from them. That is the way it is.
The real tragedy is, and we are talking about the leader of the Conservative Party and what Conservatives are saying about their own leader, which is, “He's the one who decides everything. His main adviser is himself.... The people around him are only there to realize the leader's vision.”
Madam Speaker, I am certainly being entertained by the member's theatrics, and he is very good, but he is completely off topic. I wonder if the Speaker could steer him back around.
Madam Speaker, on the same point of order, I just want to make sure the member for Provencher received approval from his leader before raising that point of order.
The member knows that is definitely not a point of order.
The hon. member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa is rising on a point of order.
Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member for Kingston and the Islands is one of the 24 who signed the letter.
The hon. member knows that is not a point of order. I am not going to entertain more points of order.
The hon. parliamentary secretary has the floor.
Madam Speaker, we can see how sensitive Conservatives are on the issue, but it is true. If they would like, they could come on over, and I could share the story with them, but they would lose a gold star. Otherwise, they could just do a Google search. It was in the national media just last week. Having said that, I do not want to get too carried away with the degree to which the leader of the official opposition likes to dominate, in a very real and tangible sense, within his Conservative caucus.
At this point in time, I move:
That the question be now put.
Madam Speaker, I find interesting that the parliamentary secretary seems to be fantasizing about the fact that Conservatives actually like their leader, while that is certainly not the case for many within the Liberal Party and its leader, the current Prime Minister.
Quite recently, it was reported that the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek had some issue with the recent proposed tax trick. Since the parliamentary secretary spent so much time in his speech talking about control, I would ask if, first of all, the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek is okay, because we certainly have not seen him since he shared some criticism about the Liberal government over the proposed $250 giveaway. He tweeted, “It's incomprehensible to me that our government can create an affordability package that leaves out some of our most vulnerable in society. On Sat evening I advised the govt that I cannot support an affordability package that does not include support for seniors & people with disabilities.”
It certainly seems that, when it comes to control, it is the Prime Minister who does not have it. He certainly does not the support of his own caucus, and maybe it is time for an election so Canadians can pick who actually runs the country.
Madam Speaker, I am not sure we are ready for a little dictator yet.
Let me read a quote from the same story: “Seventeen Conservative MPs who pleaded with the government to ensure that cities in their ridings received their share of a federal housing fund were publicly rebuffed by the leader's office.” It goes on to say, “If you stray too far from the message, you get told pretty quickly”. I am sure members opposite know there are individuals within the leader's office watching what they are doing, and saying, “If you are not holding the line, you are in trouble.” That is what the leader of the Conservative Party—
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I would like to bring the debate back to the report we are considering. I think it is funny that the committee's main witness was Mr. Noseworthy, the assistant deputy minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada. Coincidentally, he appeared before our committee just last week. He was the one sitting in on all the Sustainable Development Technology Canada board meetings. He was their representative. He was the government's eyes and ears. This gentleman was right there at the table with the board. He did not witness just one, or five, or 20 conflicts of interest. No, 90 conflicts of interest came up on his watch, and yet he said nothing and did nothing. When will the government start cleaning up its departments?
[English]
Madam Speaker, what we should be concerned about are the tactics being used by the Conservative Party in trying to take control of standing committees by passing motions in the House that dictate the type of agenda they should have. It is a very serious issue. It is a good example of the way the leader of the Conservative Party likes to have absolute and total control of everything that takes place in Parliament, whether on the floor of the House of Commons or in standing committees. More and more concurrence reports are being sent back to committee, with the Conservatives saying what they want the standing committee to vote on. Then they look for other opposition parties to come onside and say they cannot necessarily disagree, so they send it back to the standing committee.
Whatever happened to the ability of standing committees to determine what they would like to study and not have report after report sent back to them because the leader of the Conservative Party has a self-interested political agenda?
Madam Speaker, the member's speech was kind of all over the place, but at the heart of it, we are supposed to be debating technological solutions to the climate crisis. One of the favourite solutions the Conservatives and Liberals like to put forward is carbon capture, utilization and storage, CCUS, despite the fact that long-term data from the United States and statements from the IPCC say this does not work and is the most inefficient, expensive way to tackle the climate crisis. The government still considers it a climate-friendly solution and proposes billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies that make billions of dollars in profits and should be paying for these solutions themselves.
I am wondering how the member can defend that policy.
Madam Speaker, there are interim and long-term solutions that need to be brought to play, and this is one of them. At the end of the day, my concern, as I responded to the Bloc's question, is that we do not fall prey to what the leader of the Conservative Party wants us to do, which is, I would suggest, to disrespect the potential that our standing committees have by, not once or twice but on numerous occasions, trying to dictate what they should be saying by trying to amplify an issue in the House and then sending it back to committee.
All of us, minus a number of Conservatives, I would suggest, are concerned about the environment. A lot of us would love to be able to talk about it, but I would also like to deal with the government's legislative agenda, private members' bills and so forth. Those are critically important. Many important issues are not being debated because of the filibuster by the Conservatives.
Madam Speaker, I took in with great interest the article the member read from the CBC, in particular when he quoted what Conservatives had to say about how they are subject to always echoing the leader's comments and slogans. It makes a lot of sense because when we are in the chamber, we hear those slogans over and over again. Now we learn that when Conservatives go to caucus meetings on Wednesday, they are celebrated. Those who have done it the most are recognized and probably paraded around the room for everyone to acknowledge.
I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could give his thoughts on how disturbing it is to see so many people blindly follow one individual.
Madam Speaker, the member is fairly accurate, except maybe a little exaggerated in terms of parading around the room. However, he is right on; they are actually rewarded. They come into the chamber, they have about a dozen slogans and bumper stickers, they have their favourite four, and we see them. No matter what is being debated, they will say the slogans because they have someone in the back room, that person in the background, with one, two, three stars, oh, four stars. If they talk to us, then minus a star. They are actually evaluated in terms of their performance inside the chamber and, sadly, outside the chamber. They have to be good for the leader.
Madam Speaker, the member was talking about being held back and people having influence. However, the government and the Prime Minister actually put a gag order on every Liberal MP in the House, and that is what he should be absolutely shocked about. On the net-zero accelerator, for $8 billion of taxpayers' money that was supposed to be spent on reducing emissions, they put a gag order on every MP in the House. The Prime Minister did that. Why?
Madam Speaker, I would question that. I have had the opportunity to speak inside the House on several occasions. I can tell members that, with the possible exception of a point of order where I have to read a detailed thing, I have never been provided speeches. I am not told, “Here, go read this in the chamber.” These are my thoughts and they are generated through my experience and observations of opposition members and listening to what others have to say.
We very much have an open concept in our caucus, unlike the Conservatives, apparently, which is very much a closed thing. Everyone is obligated to follow the leader, literally follow the leader, and if they do not do that, they are in a lot of trouble. I say that maybe with a little bit of sarcasm, but it is not just me saying it; Conservative MPs are also saying it and that is really what really takes the cake.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. I should note that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Jonquière.
I will take a completely different angle from this morning's discussion, but I will stick to the report. I will be examining it from the labour point of view, which is not surprising since I was once a union president. I will be talking about Quebec, naturally. Again, I do not think that will come as a surprise to anyone.
Let us talk about employment. When the committee report discusses switching from one technology to another, it talks about a just transition. This phrase is recognized the world over, except here in Canada. The legislation that was passed in the spring is called the “Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act”. However, the internationally recognized phrase is “just transition”, so that is what we should really be focusing on. What is a just transition? It is a concept rooted in social justice, the idea being that the transition needs to be just to ensure that workers affected by the necessary shift away from oil and gas will not have to bear the full brunt of this transition. They must receive all the help they need to train for new jobs in other sectors.
The report has this to say:
Information provided by NRCan indicated that there were approximately 210,000 direct jobs in the clean tech sector in Canada in 2020, and that these jobs paid an average of $80,834, which was higher than the Canadian economy-wide average annual salary of $68,678...
This shows that the sustainable employment sector is not insignificant.
...however, women in the clean tech sector in 2020 earned 82% of what men earned.
There is still work to be done.
By comparison, there were 178,500 jobs in the oil and gas sector in that year.... In order for Canadian workers to take full advantage of clean technology opportunities, and to ensure there are enough skilled workers available to implement clean technologies, witnesses from a variety of sectors emphasized the need for technical training and applied research through colleges and polytechnics.
For example, Daniel Breton, one of the witnesses we heard from in committee, reminded us that:
We need to make that transition for workers who work in industries in decline to come and work in the electric mobility sector....
With respect to that topic in particular, the conclusion of the report states:
[Particular emphasis should be placed on the] need for support in the later phases of technology development: demonstration, early adoption, and commercialization. Better support during these later phases should help promising innovations bridge the gap between research and development and market success. It was made clear that Canadian clean tech growth stands to benefit the economy and workers through the creation of well-paying skilled jobs, including some to which workers in declining industries could transition.
They need support. Let us talk about our neighbour to the south. When asked about the Trump administration's intentions with regard to developing the clean technology sector, executives from Quebec's renewable energy sector stated that the economic spinoffs that the clean energy sector generates for the U.S. economy are far too significant for Trump to risk jeopardizing them. According to the head of Boralex, the Trump administration would be at risk of losing factories, jobs, and tax and export revenues if it scraps the Inflation Reduction Act. As a result, Trump's election is unlikely to impede the growth of the clean energy sector, so we should not let ourselves get too carried away.
However, I must emphasize that the people who are affected must also have a say in decisions that will have a bearing on their future. In Quebec, social licence is key, and the Alliance de l'énergie de l'Est is an example of this. Two of the alliance's new projects, totalling nearly 500 megawatts, were approved by Hydro-Québec in late January. The alliance represents 209 communities from the Montmagny RCM to the Magdalen Islands. It emphasizes social licence and maximizing economic spinoffs. As for Quebec jobs, the Commission des partenaires du marché du travail, a board of labour market partners that was created over 20 years ago, prioritizes balance and worker participation. There are committees in every region that help identify needs. There are committees where employers, worker representatives and organizations in this field collaborate with the Quebec departments of labour and education. Is this not a fine example?
We need skilled workers, yes, but training them is Quebec's role. This brings me to recommendation 16: “That the Government of Canada collaborate with provinces and territories to invest more in skills training, including skills upgrading and requalification programs”. We have certain reservations about this recommendation, namely whether it can be implemented while respecting jurisdictional boundaries and the cutting-edge initiatives Quebec has already rolled out.
Let us consider a non-Quebec example. One tangible risk for investment in the clean energy sector is Alberta's moratorium on renewable energy. From Canada's standpoint, Alberta's seven-month moratorium on renewable energy projects and the dozens of projects that have been cancelled as a result have discouraged investors in this sector. While Alberta is hitting the brakes on clean energy development, other provinces are forging ahead and developing their renewable energy production capabilities. In Quebec, clean technology development is already well under way. To help Quebec decarbonize, Hydro‑Québec is counting on renewable energy sources to deliver more energy capacity. It plans to add 10,000 megawatts of new wind capacity to its grid by 2035.
As for coordination among different levels of government and recommendation 8, which reads, “That the Government of Canada coordinate energy retrofit programs with provincial programs to facilitate access to Canadians”, Quebec introduced a number of energy efficiency programs years ago, including EcoPerformance, Roulez vert, Technoclimat and Éconologis. In terms of collaboration, there is no problem. Quebec has proven that it is open to coordinating its provincial programs with federal ones, such as the Quebec government's Rénoclimat program and Ottawa's Canada Greener Homes Loan program, both of which deal with energy efficiency retrofits.
In conclusion, in the fight against climate change, we must not put all of our eggs in one basket. Technology is not a magic pill that will solve all our problems. It is just one of several tools that we must use to protect our health and the health of the environment.
Madam Speaker, I really liked everything I heard. There were a lot of good ideas. I agree that technology alone will not solve all our climate change problems. The Conservative Party here in the House has no plan for fighting climate change. Could my colleague suggest a few ideas about how to convince the Conservatives that this is important for our economy, our country and our children?
Madam Speaker, in my speech, I did try to convince the Conservative Party and the official opposition by providing figures on employment and pay. They are not even my figures, they are the ones that were given to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development during a study proposed by the Conservative Party itself. I hope that, instead of seeing green technologies as something that is good only for a few people, the Conservatives will see that they are good for everyone. It is a good employment sector that is growing, and we need to prioritize it for the sake of our health and the health of the environment, as I said in my conclusion.
Madam Speaker, I will have the opportunity to delve into the points my colleague raised concerning my party and, of course, green energy. I think that she will be very happy to hear that.
I would like to mention that the member was elected nine years ago, at the same time as me. She has announced that she will not be running for re-election. I would like to thank her for her work and for representing her constituents so effectively for the past nine years. Maybe she will go back to her union roots. Maybe we will have a chance to see each other again. I would like to commend this colleague for her co-operative spirit and hard work. She was voted the most collegial MP five or six years ago, if I remember correctly.
Anyway, we are here to do a job as MPs. She mentioned recommendation 16 regarding federal-provincial collaboration. Having sat in the House for nine years and seen what the government is doing, does she still trust the federal Liberal government to coordinate and collaborate with the provinces, or would she say that this government has in fact constantly interfered in the provinces' jurisdictions over the past nine years?
Madam Speaker, I have to say that the Liberal government has struggled with respect for jurisdiction, even though, not that long ago, at the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, the Minister of Environment again saw fit to lecture me about respecting jurisdiction. That is not okay. I was talking about greenhouse gases. The federal government is responsible for pipes and pipelines. It is also responsible for offshore development. When the federal government allows offshore drilling, that is within its jurisdiction. I am happy to provide that little primer on how the Constitution works. The idea is to ensure due regard for our jurisdiction.
That is why people eventually come to the realization that, if we had our own country, maybe we could handle our own affairs.
[English]
Madam Speaker, I, too, enjoy sitting on the environment committee with the hon. member. She is going to be dearly missed in the House.
She raised the point of the environment minister lecturing her about jurisdiction. It was in the context of Bay du Nord. The government has approved not only the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is going to cost taxpayers $35 billion, threaten our west coast and increase emissions around the globe, but also Bay du Nord.
Can the member speak about the hypocrisy, the contradictions, in an environment minister, and a government, that claims to be a climate leader but then approves these kinds of projects and buys a pipeline?
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, let us take another look at what happened at the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last week.
The federal government is responsible for pipes. It is responsible for pipelines and offshore drilling, while the provinces are responsible for natural resources. In other words, the government has decided to drill in restricted areas where there should be no drilling because they are the responsibility of Quebec and the provinces.
That, to me, is an ungovernable country.
Madam Speaker, I too want to take a few seconds as well to salute my colleague from Repentigny who, unfortunately, will not be with us for the next election. In our caucus, we affectionately call her our eco-warrior, or Momo, which is shorter and simpler. I salute her because she is an inspiration to many colleagues.
Today, we are talking about support for clean technologies. An article published in this morning's newspapers states that partisan politics is basically the biggest obstacle to our decarbonization efforts. As it happens, that answer came from someone I admire a lot, Normand Mousseau, the scientific director of the Institut de l'énergie Trottier. He gave that answer to my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, who asked him why Canada's decarbonization performance has been so disappointing. I will read Mr. Mousseau's statement, because it is worth noting.
There's a consistency problem at the federal level, because it's very hard to move projects forward with parties that are so far apart on the very objective of [decarbonization]....
That is part of why there is such a big problem. Why is Canada, in particular, having so much trouble holding its own when it comes to clean technologies? It is because different parties are taking completely different positions. Business people are reluctant to invest in major projects if there is no predictability.
The signal that the Leader of the Opposition regularly sends is that he does not believe in global warming. Most of the Conservatives' opposition days have been devoted to eliminating the carbon tax, which is probably one of the key tools for transitioning to clean energy, so the only possible conclusion we can draw is that he does not believe in global warming.
Just last week, when we had the emergency debate on U.S. tariffs, the Leader of the Opposition repeated that he believes Canada needs more oil and gas pipelines and needs to export more energy. If I were a clean energy investor, knowing full well that the next government will probably be Conservative, I do not think I would be willing to invest much of my money in clean energy projects. That is what Professor Mousseau was saying this morning. I do not think that Professor Mousseau is particularly partisan. He is the scientific director of the Institut de l'énergie Trottier, a top expert on energy matters. This is the typical dynamic when the federal government is dealing with the energy file. Why are opinions so polarized? It is because Canada is under the thumb of the oil and gas industry.
As proof, consider the Trans Mountain fiasco. Let me make an evocative comparison. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told the Standing Committee on Natural Resources that we put $4.6 billion into Trans Mountain that we will never get back. The government will never get that money back. It threw $4.6 billion out the window, and the project itself cost $34 billion.
Let me remind members that the federal government announced in 2023 that its ambitious plan to electrify and decarbonize the Canadian economy would cost $40 billion, yet a single fossil fuel project cost $34 billion. The most ambitious plan in the history of government, according to our Liberal colleagues, was going to cost $40 billion. That is just awful. This comparison shows how awful it is.
Why should anyone consider investing in clean technologies when the federal government is basically saying that, if we want the pipeline to be profitable, we will have to be slaves to oil for the next 40 years? Not only that, but if we want the pipeline to be profitable, we need to pick up the pace and produce even more barrels of oil. According to the figures provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, that is totally inconsistent. According to the IPCC, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to reduce our oil consumption by 62%. Moreover, if we do not have a carbon capture and sequestration strategy, which is a mere pipe dream, as I will demonstrate later, we will have to reduce our fossil fuel consumption by 70%. That is if we want to stick to a 1.5-degree-Celsius increase in global temperatures.
What we are doing, however, is investing $34 billion in infrastructure so as to maximize oil consumption. If that is not inconsistent, then I honestly do not know what is.
I will get back to this insanity now. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, if we want to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we have to reduce our oil consumption by 62%, and that is with with carbon capture and sequestration strategies. Speaking of this carbon capture and sequestration nonsense, not too long ago Suncor CEO Rich Kruger came out and said, “We have a bit of a disproportionate emphasis on the longer-term energy transition”.
Suncor's Rich Kruger wondered why so much energy had to be dedicated to these new technologies. He said that the focus should instead be on the commercial interest, the oil sands. We do not have to agree with him, but at least he was being frank. This is indicative of what we see in the oil and gas sector.
Oil companies know full well that carbon capture and sequestration strategies cost a fortune and that the pipe dream of producing net-zero oil makes about as much sense as making diet poutine. It will never happen.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Mario Simard: Madam Speaker, I got a Liberal member to react by talking about poutine. That is good.
Business people are no dummies. What these big oil companies are saying is that Ottawa should be assuming the risks. If we want low-carbon oil, it will not be the greedy oil and gas sector that will take on the risks, it will be the federal government. Taxpayers are the ones who will have to assume the risks on behalf of the oil companies, which have been raking in record profits since the end of the pandemic. It that is not indecent, I do not know what is.
What we know about carbon capture and sequestration strategies is that their effectiveness remains unproven. However, there is a consortium of corporations known as the Pathways Alliance. Many have probably heard of it already. It is a consortium comprising all the big oil companies. In fact, in a moment of rare lucidity the Leader of the Opposition said that these people were harmful and served no purpose. For once, I had to agree with the leader of the official opposition. I hope he keeps repeating that message.
The Pathways Alliance is an oil consortium that was investigated by the Competition Bureau for false advertising. It even had to remove from its website statements claiming that it was able to make the oil sands carbon neutral. The Pathways Alliance, whose greenwashing practices were revealed in 2024 and which was forced to remove false statements from its website, wants almost $16 billion in funding from the federal government for carbon capture and sequestration projects.
The government would bear the costs. The Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and the Minister of Finance announced their intention to reach an agreement with the consortium by 2024 through the Canada growth fund, or CGF. The CGF falls outside Ottawa's accounting purview. We have no control over it. The Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General can do nothing. In addition to the CGF, the government would use tax credits available only to oil-producing provinces to achieve its goals.
In my opinion, this amounts to throwing public funds out the window. There are, however, interesting critical minerals initiatives. I am thinking in particular about phosphate. The government agreed to put phosphate on the list of critical minerals, but without the associated tax credits. What is the point? I will not even mention hydrogen. The federal government was forced to lower its projections on hydrogen by 80%.
I am ready to answer my colleagues' questions. I will end my speech by saying, “turlututu, chapeau pointu”, what absolute nonsense.
Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to listen to my colleague, who often shows up at the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development and makes a great contribution to the committee.
I would like to address the Conservatives' discourse on climate change. Everything appears to revolve around a single solution, namely, spending government money to develop green technologies. That is a one-dimensional strategy that would break the federal budget.
Does the member agree that we need a portfolio of measures, including carbon pricing and investments in natural spaces that would absorb greenhouse gases? Does he really think it is wise to put all our eggs in one basket?
Madam Speaker, I do not think that the Conservatives will put all their eggs in one basket. I think that they are simply going to do away with any and all measures intended to support the implementation of clean energies.
As I see it, Conservatives are Liberals with very few scruples. They know full well that oil pollutes, but are they prepared to put measures such as emissions caps in place?
They will simply do away with emissions caps. Companies with clean energy projects will find themselves defunded. That is the concern of many stakeholders in the energy sector and, in my opinion, they are right to be concerned.
Madam Speaker, I am not without scruples, but above all I am certainly no Liberal. I know my colleague was joking when he said it, but I will remember Momo and “turlututu”.
I agree with one thing the member brought up. Yesterday, in fact, in parliamentary committee, I did not necessarily make a big deal of it, but I did jump on the fact that this Liberal government, which loves to lecture everyone, spent nearly $40 billion of taxpayers money on a pipeline project that was private, and not even for sale. The government bought it, built it and it cost six times more than expected. Only the Liberals could get something that wrong.
I would remind the member, however, that he is in a region where a lot of people get around by truck, pick-up or snowmobile. The season is about to start, if I am not mistaken. I think that the Monts-Valin mountains are in his riding. A lot of people will be driving around there on snowmobiles and chances are they will need to use fuel.
What does he have to say to these millions of Quebeckers who, according to the latest figures, have used nearly 19 billion litres of oil? There has been a 7% increase in oil consumption in Quebec. What do we tell these people? Do we tell them they have to buy their oil abroad or can we be self-sufficient here in Canada?
Madam Speaker, I come right out and tell these people to be patient, because transportation electrification is making rapid progress. I am seeing more and more electric F-150 trucks in my region. The best part is that when we plug in our EVs at home, our money does not go to Alberta but to Hydro‑Québec. That will, in turn, enable us to develop these upcoming technologies.
What I tell these people is that they should ask for more and more electric transportation options. When they buy these vehicles, they will come out the winners. The people in my region seem to be listening, because I am seeing more and more electric vehicles. This is beneficial for Quebec. What surprises me is to see a member from Quebec defending Alberta's interests instead of those of his own province.
[English]
Madam Speaker, the member mentioned that he believes, and I think most Canadians believe, the Conservatives would scrap investments in climate solutions. We also know they would cut essential bodies that keep us on track and would muzzle scientists. In 2012, the Harper government cut funding to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. It meant we had no way to track the impacts of forest fires and climate devastation.
Can the member speak to how scary it is to think about another government that would crack down on scientists, that would muzzle the essential voices we need when we are facing a climate emergency, especially given nine years of Liberal inaction?
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I tend to agree with my colleague. The Leader of the Opposition already does not allow his members to speak freely, so I am sure that he will try to apply the same logic to scientists in Canada who do not agree with his political aspirations.
These are dark days for the planet, but it will be smooth sailing for the oil sector in the years ahead.
[English]
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for New Westminster—Burnaby.
When I speak to young people in my riding, they ask me a heartbreaking question: “Why are elected leaders not doing more?” These are kids who are growing up seeing the devastating impacts of the climate emergency: each summer, more intense wildfires; people choking on smoke; the rising costs from climate devastation; and hundreds of lives lost in heat domes. They are looking to the House and to every member here and asking us, “Please, do not steal our futures.”
We are facing a climate emergency. Every scientific report underscores this truth and we have a rapidly closing window to act. Unfortunately, what we have seen from the Liberal government, and the Conservative government before it, are missed targets, empty promises and actions that prioritize the profits of rich CEOs of wealthy oil and gas companies over the survival of our planet.
I want to talk a bit about the Conservatives because they cannot even agree if climate change is real. They claim to care about affordability while denying the climate crisis itself. While they oppose measures to reduce emissions, they also oppose affordability measures. They continue to vote against ensuring low- and middle-income families could access heat pumps to bring down their energy bills, against GST breaks. They also offer no credible plan to address the rising costs of climate disasters. Hurricanes, floods and droughts are not abstract threats or things that are going to happen sometime in the future. They are happening here and now and are impacting communities from coast to coast to coast. Conservative denial and inaction leaves Canadians to pay the price, both in dollars and in lives.
The Liberals seem to want to be Conservative lite. They acknowledge the climate crisis is real, but their actions fall woefully short of what is needed to address the climate crisis. They say they are climate leaders, but Canada is ranked 62 out of 67 on the climate change performance index. I will let that sink in: 62 out of 67. We are in the bottom tier. The environment minister keeps saying it is okay because we are on track to meet our 2030 targets, but his own watchdog, the environment commissioner, has come to committee and said time and time again and has made it very clear that we are not on track.
The government is not on track. It continues to prop up oil and gas companies with billions of dollars in subsidies. These are the same companies that are raking in record profits even as the UN Secretary-General calls fossil fuel expansion “moral and economic madness.” How can the Liberals justify the billions of dollars they continue to hand to big oil and gas companies in public financing for fossil fuels while they claim to fight for a net-zero future?
The commissioner of the environment's reports also have laid bare the consequences of Liberal mismanagement. The net-zero accelerator initiative the Liberals have touted as a key pillar of Canada's climate strategy is a cautionary tale of inefficiency. Only two of the 55 largest industrial emitters in Canada have committed to the goals. The average cost to taxpayers for each ton of emissions reduced by the net-zero accelerator is as high as $523. This is not the pathway to a climate-safe future. Critical accountability mechanisms need to be involved in every climate solution we put forward. Unfortunately, the government continues to show it is not a climate leader. This is failure by design.
Young people and workers across the country deserve better. They are demanding action. They are demanding justice. That starts with listening to the communities that are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. Indigenous nations, low-income families and rural Canadians feel abandoned by Ottawa. These communities are not just victims of the climate crisis. They are also leaders in the solutions that we need. Renewable energy projects, conservation initiatives, sustainable agriculture, and indigenous and local knowledge must be at the heart of our climate response.
What should we be doing? The solutions are clear. They are within our grasp. Let us stop handing out billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil and gas companies that are fuelling the climate crisis. Let us redirect those funds into workers and into the clean economy. Let us implement an excess profits tax and invest that money in retrofitting homes, bringing down home heating costs, expanding public transit and creating good, family-sustaining jobs in the low-carbon economy. This will make life more affordable and curb the pollution that is driving up emissions.
I want to take a moment to speak directly to the young people who are worried about the climate and to the workers who are fighting to build a better future. We see them, we hear them and we will not stop fighting for bold, urgent action that matches the scale of this crisis. This moment calls for courage. It calls for leaders who will stop pretending they are on track, stop listening to oil and gas CEOs, and start listening to Canadians, to science and to their own environment commissioner. It calls for policies that put people over profits, that confront the greed of fossil fuel executives, and that deliver the justice and hope Canadians deserve.
Madam Speaker, I listened with a lot of interest to the speech. I agree that climate change is one of the biggest fights for our country and our world. It is a matter of our next generations and the future of our planet. It is also about our economic future. Economists from across our country are saying that carbon pricing is the single most efficient way for us to fight climate change in our country, and it is helping to reduce our emissions as we speak, because they are now the lowest they have been in three decades.
Can the member opposite explain why the NDP has chosen not to support carbon pricing?
Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Liberals continue to want to spread misinformation. We expect that from the Conservatives, but it is always disappointing that every time I raise ending fossil fuel subsidies, implementing an excess profits tax or investing in climate solutions, the answer from the Liberal government is, what about the carbon tax? We support carbon pricing and we want industrial emitters to pay more.
For some reason, the Liberals think their carbon pricing scheme is the be-all and end-all of climate policy. Guess what? Consumer carbon pricing is 8% to 14%, and industrial carbon pricing makes up about 40% of our emissions reduction plan. That is huge. We need to bolster the industrial carbon price. It is unfortunate that the Liberals seem to think consumer carbon pricing is a silver bullet.
Madam Speaker, when it comes to the net-zero accelerator fund, the environment commissioner, in their report, was actually quite clear on the shady nature of what the Liberals are up to. The target for the fund is not public. The formula they are using to measure the success of the fund is not public. They are not letting the public know what they are up to when it comes to this fund, yet they spent $8 billion on the net-zero accelerator fund without the public knowing the intended goal of it.
Does the member believe that the Liberals should be accountable? If they are going to set targets, they should let the public know what the goal is and how they are going to achieve those emissions reductions.
Madam Speaker, it is so disappointing to me that policies that could benefit Canadians and drive down our emissions are designed so poorly by the Liberal government that now we have Conservatives up in arms. Really, the Liberals are giving Conservatives ammunition to attack climate policy. We need strong, robust climate policy in Canada that drives down our emissions and creates good, sustainable jobs in every community across our country. Unfortunately, the Liberal government continues to fail by design.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to comment on recommendation 14. Of course, I will read it. I do not want her to have to guess as to what I am talking about.
That the Government of Canada conduct a gap analysis of the incentives in place for clean technology in Canada and the United States, to study differences and understand policy gaps within the specific regional and national context to inform future policy decisions.
The recent election of Donald Trump puts us in a particularly interesting situation. Canada needs to take a strong position. Instead of reacting to Donald Trump's threats, Canada should promote its clean energy. Exporting electricity comes to mind. Producing strategic critical minerals that the Americans will need is another example that comes to mind. We also have the softwood lumber crisis and need to consider all the biomass that can be produced as a result. In short, Canadian energy policies need to be promoted in the U.S., since they could really make a difference in the North American context.
Could my colleague comment on that? How can we promote our Canadian economy given that someone like Donald Trump was elected president?
[English]
Madam Speaker, this is an important question right now. We saw that, under Biden, we had the Inflation Reduction Act, something bold, something that really highlighted how ineffective Canada's climate policies have been and how we really need to step up. However, now, we are facing a whole new context where a Trump presidency means probably the undermining of climate policy in the United States and potentially around the world. It is even more important right now for Canada to put forward bold climate solutions and to steer away from those climate solutions we know are unproven, risky and expensive, things like carbon capture and storage, which this government continues to funnel billions of taxpayer money into. Profitable oil and gas companies could be funding that themselves.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague from Victoria. She has a very powerful voice when it comes to climate change and Canada's role in addressing that reality.
I could not agree with her more about how the Conservatives are denying the very existence of climate change. I will come back to that in a few moments.
When the Conservatives were in office, they simply denied the existence of climate change, which was irresponsible. As we will see later on, the result is that people have died and communities have disappeared because of the Conservatives' irresponsibility. Then, the Liberals took office. They are well aware that climate change exists, but they have done little or nothing to combat it. The whole climate change file has been a disaster for the past 20 years.
However, there has been no shortage of resources. The Harper government and the current government provided a combined $1 trillion to boost the cash flow of Canada's big banks in order to sweeten their profits, executive bonuses and dividends. Together, both governments doled out $1 trillion. They also let a total $500 billion go to tax havens. The Conservatives set that up and the Liberals kept it going.
As my colleague just said, the two governments combined have paid out a total of $100 billion in subsidies to oil company executives. The Liberals, in a panic, set up a form of funding to finance Trans Mountain when the private sector refused to have anything to do with it. That cost us $35 billion. It took 24 hours for the Liberals to decide to invest $35 billion in a pipeline construction project that would never turn a profit, as we know all too well. The Parliamentary Budget Officer clearly said that it would never make a profit. Moreover, the environmental impacts are well known.
For the past 20 years, neither party has taken the environment and climate change seriously, and there is no doubt we are now seeing the result of that. Their policies have had real consequences. In a moment, I will talk about the repercussions in my province, British Columbia, but we have seen repercussions across Canada. Forestry communities are in crisis. There have been record-breaking numbers of forest fires. There have been floods across the country. There have been intense heat waves. There have been all kinds of weather-related crises, many of which catch people off guard. The Conservatives deny that it is real. The Liberals say it is real, but they do not want to do anything about it.
[English]
What is the reality when we see 20 years of complete inaction on the environment and climate change, yet there are massive subsidies for other things? Between the Liberals and the Conservatives together, $1 trillion was given in liquidity supports to Canada's big banks, half a trillion dollars was given to overseas tax savings, and $100 billion was given to oil and gas CEOs to subsidize what are massive profits to begin with. Of course, the Liberals are aware of this. There was $35 billion given, with a 24-hour turnaround, when they realized the private sector was bowing out of Trans Mountain.
That is the reality of what we have seen over the last 20 years. That is why so many people are saying it is time to push aside the Liberals and the Conservatives and elect a government that actually understands the importance of taking action on climate change and the opportunity that comes from this.
The reality is that the Joe Biden administration in the United States has put in place infrastructure that we have seen for clean energy across the U.S. Those investments have made a huge difference. A number of American cities and states are asking for clean energy, and if Canada actually stepped up, the market and the job creation coming from that would be enormous.
We have not seen that imagination and foresight from either Conservatives, who are climate change deniers, or the Liberal government, which pays lip service to climate change. It does nothing to actually put in place the infrastructure that would lead to those substantial investments and the kinds of clean energy jobs of tomorrow that we want to see. We know what the opposite impacts are. Canada could lead the world in clean energy investments. We have virtually unlimited ability and capacity, when we talk about climate change and combatting it with clean energy investments in wind, solar and tidal, as well as unlimited potential for clean energy production. However, the Liberals have not stepped forward to put in place the infrastructure or to make those investments.
We have seen the opposite impacts, and my colleague from Victoria spoke very eloquently about this. When the heat dome hit in my region of British Columbia, when it descended on the Lower Mainland, what happened was an incredible overloading of our emergency services. Firefighters and ambulance paramedics will tell us about how they simply were not able to keep up with the emergency demands over those days. Therefore, people slowly succumbed in low-level apartments that did not have air conditioning and that were not equipped for the size and scope of the heat dome.
Emergency services were so overwhelmed that the system was at the point of breaking. Fortunately, this time, the heat dome finally broke. The result was that over 600 residents of the Lower Mainland died in that tragedy. In my riding of New Westminster—Burnaby, seniors, people with disabilities and shut-ins died quietly because of the intense heat. This happened particularly on the west side of New Westminster, where there are a lot of older low-rise apartments with no access to air conditioning. Dozens died in my riding. Hundreds died across the Lower Mainland.
Members will recall as well that we have seen a number of communities. I spoke about forest fires and the impacts. We have seen entire communities simply disappear in North America because of the climate crisis. We are seeing record levels of flooding, and in British Columbia, just in the last few years, we have had two atmospheric rivers and such torrential rains that we have been cut off from the rest of Canada. These tragedies are all preventable if we take action to combat climate change.
Younger Canadians see the impacts and see successive governments, Conservative and Liberal, that do little to nothing to actually combat the climate crisis, to prepare us for what is to come, to mitigate the impacts of climate change or to ensure that Canada and communities are protected. Seniors, shut-ins and people with disabilities are in apartments that are not built for the profound impacts of climate change. We must put in place measures so that, when a heat dome comes again, they can actually survive such a tremendous, terrible impact. It is a question of when, not if.
We have had successive governments, both Conservative and Liberal, that have done nothing as we have become more and more aware of climate change. What members are hearing from the New Democrats today is that New Democrats believe in making those investments, combatting climate change and fighting that fight as if we intend to win it.
Madam Speaker, Mark Jaccard, Canada's leading resource economist, evaluated the 2021 election platforms. According to a CBC article, he found, “The Liberals have the most effective, least costly climate change policy of the...federal parties”. The NDP was not even second. The Conservatives were second because they promised a price on carbon. In 2019, Professor Jaccard said, “In climate policy, experts agree that Canada is finally a global leader. I wonder if enough climate-concerned Canadians will recognize this, before it is too late.”
Why do the hon. member and his party not recognize this reality?
Madam Speaker, it is true that, on paper, Liberals have great plans. For 30 years, they planned to put pharmacare in place. For decades, in every election, they promised to put dental care in place. They always have great plans at election time; once the election is over, they simply tear up their platform. Their platform was very good, but they never implemented it. That is the problem; that is the difference. That is the hypocrisy of the Liberal government: They simply do not put it in place.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Madam Speaker, at least the Liberals arguably recognize climate change. Conservatives are heckling over there, but Conservatives have no lessons to give to anybody, because they do not even believe in the reality of climate change. I would suggest that Conservative MPs actually talk to their constituents, particularly younger constituents, because they certainly understand the impacts of climate change. They want to see action. They do not want to see the “ostrich stuck in the sand” attitude of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Madam Speaker, as far as my colleague's intervention, I just wonder what NDP members really believe in. With the way they are acting and supporting the Liberal government, I do not know if they believe in climate change. However, they have a chance right now to prove the Liberal government wrong, to distance themselves and to prove that the Liberals are actually fake environmentalists.
Will they support our motion to bring all the unredacted net-zero accelerator program documents to the forefront so that we can see them?
Madam Speaker, the Liberals are fake environmentalists, but the Conservatives hate environmentalists. I would at least go with the people who attempt to understand the environment compared with those members from the Conservative Party who actually want to destroy the environment with impunity and have proven that every time they have been in power.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I would like to return to recommendation 3, “That the Government of Canada promote innovation and support the electrification of marine and aviation transport as a means of reducing emissions.”
It was the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers that made me realize the importance of investing in a national aerospace policy, which would allow companies like Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney, Airbus and all the others thanks to whom we have an ecosystem in Montreal to build aircraft from nose to tail. While that is absolutely fantastic, building planes obviously costs billions of dollars. The necessary money will be there in 15 years. A national aerospace policy would make transportation electrification possible.
I would like to hear my NDP colleague's opinion. Is this one of the solutions that must be put in place for the government to invest where it should in the Quebec economy?
Madam Speaker, the answer is yes, absolutely.
I am grateful to my colleague for having asked this question.
[English]
Madam Speaker, when I speak to people in my riding of Elmwood—Transcona, they tell me they need help. The Conservatives claim to care about affordability, but they just voted against giving Canadians breaks on essentials. Last year, they voted against taking the GST off home heating. We know that they do not believe in climate change, and it seems that they also do not believe in their own slogans.
Can the member for New Westminster—Burnaby talk about how it would have affected Canadians today if these subsidies had not been given?
Madam Speaker, I would point out that the member for Elmwood—Transcona is an incredibly dynamic, well-spoken member of the House who began asking questions immediately after being elected. She represents her constituents very well, and she is absolutely right to point out that we need to be making investments that have a benefit in such places as Elmwood—Transcona.
The Conservatives and the Liberals ignored the riding, but the NDP is fighting for the people of Elmwood—Transcona, and the member has done a magnificent job in just a few weeks.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the member for Kings—Hants.
[English]
Nine years ago, under the Conservative Party, Canada used to be one of the worst performers. Organizations such as Climate Action Tracker now recognize that Canada's plan is credible and transparent. The latest UNEP gap report says that Canada has the first comprehensive road map for how to achieve the 2030 target. This was unthinkable nine years ago. Our government has put forward very ambitious measures.
International groups have noted that, at the end of 2022, Canada followed through on our commitment to end international public finance for fossil fuels; in addition, we have put forward some of the most ambitious regulations, with the goal of reducing oil and gas methane emissions by at least 75% from 2012 levels by 2030. Building on the actions of millions of Canadians, our government continues to take action to reduce emissions and to fight climate change while strengthening our economy with good jobs and clean industrial growth, making a healthy environment for all Canadians.
First, let us talk about progress. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, since 2005, Canada's emissions have dropped by 8%. Canada's emissions are at their lowest point in 25 years, and we are on track to meet our 2026 interim goal and our 2030 goal. At the same time, our economy is growing, inflation and interest rates are all coming down, and we continue to put forward some of the most ambitious climate regulations in the world.
We are capping pollution, not production, for the oil and gas sector, which is a critical step toward fighting climate change while requiring investments in decarbonization. Estimates show that, if we still had the previous Conservative government, Canada's emissions would have been 41% higher by 2030. That is the equivalent, in terms of pollution, of adding another 69 million cars to our roads in Canada. The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada wants to slash legislation protecting our environment. He wants to allow Canada's largest polluters to pollute without limits and drive up the costs of climate change. We cannot let that happen. No sector is deserving of unlimited pollution.
First, let us talk about Canada's 2030 emissions reduction plan. It is a sector-by-sector path for Canada to reach our emissions target of 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. The plan was introduced in 2022, and it reflects input from over 30,000 Canadians, provinces and territories, indigenous peoples, industry and Canada's independent net-zero advisory body.
[Translation]
Since 2016 our government has been continuing to make historic investments in clean growth and climate action.
[English]
Pricing pollution is an integral part of Canada's climate plan; it is a carbon pollution policy that makes life more affordable while growing a clean economy by providing money up front to families. The Conservative Party of Canada does not want to talk about the fact that the carbon price is attracting new investments and creating jobs right across Canada. As a direct result of our climate action, Dow Chemicals is creating over 8,000 jobs and investing $11 billion in Canada to build a manufacturing plant. The president of Dow Chemicals said, “Canada has market-based carbon pricing.... That was an essential piece for us to decide to invest [there]”.
Pollution pricing is estimated to contribute about a third of the emissions reductions achieved so far under Canada's 2030 emissions reduction plan. There is a reason that countries around the globe are implementing pollution pricing systems. That is because it works. I will give us a few examples. The entire EU has created a cap-and-trade system, which is working really well. Their credit prices are now at €70 a tonne, which is about $103 Canadian, and that is considerably higher than the $80 a tonne that we have it set at right now.
Many EU countries, including Finland, Switzerland and France, also have a separate price on pollution. South Africa has carbon pricing. New Zealand has cap and trade, with prices at $50 a tonne. Despite what the Conservatives say, some of the largest economies in the United States, such as California, New York and Washington state, have carbon pricing as well.
Our ERP includes over 140 programs, policies and regulations to help Canada bend the emissions curve. They include phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, adjusting the Canada carbon rebate amounts in line with the price on pollution, and ensuring that the rebate continues to reflect the projected proceeds in each province where the fuel charge applies. A 20% rural top-up is available for households in rural areas and smaller communities across Canada. They also include cleaner fuels to power our vehicles and industries, increasing the supply of zero-emission vehicles and energy so that more Canadians can make the switch to cleaner and cheaper vehicles to operate. We are also adding more clean and reliable electricity to help our economy remain competitive. In addition, we are releasing Canada's methane strategy to cut emissions right across the economy.
While reducing our emissions is important for our environment, it is also very important for our health. I would like to highlight the very good work of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. I met with them for the first time a couple of years ago, when I was parliamentary secretary for health, and they highlighted a really incredible program called PaRx, as in park prescriptions.
Physicians, in association with the BC Parks Foundation, gave out prescriptions for time outside as a method of improving people's health. They were also doing some advocacy about fossil fuel regulations. However, when we started talking about this incredible intervention to get more people outside, it sparked my interest. I love going outside, and as parliamentary secretary for health, it was really incredible.
Just yesterday, after about a year of work and meetings, I introduced all of these groups. BC Parks Foundation, my local conservation authority, Conservation Halton and Halton Healthcare were there and we announced that Halton Healthcare would be the first hospital consortium in Canada that had PaRx prescriptions available. The healing power of nature is available to constituents across Halton Region now because of the great work of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the BC Parks Foundation.
I want to thank all parties involved.
Next, I would like to talk about the investments for the clean renewable pathways program. That includes $50 million for the Bekevar Wind Farm in Saskatchewan, which will generate enough clean electricity to power over 100,000 homes. There are $50 million for the Oneida energy storage project in Ontario, which will help reduce Ontario's emissions by 1.2 million tonnes. There are over $12 million for the Enterprise solar project in Alberta, which is in construction and will create over 900 jobs. There are also $2.5 million for the Lac-Mégantic in Quebec to help support its net-zero microgrid.
Canada has now beaten China, and we are now the first in the world with respect to the most promising EV battery manufacturing economy. Our investments in the clean economy and our environmental plan will add an additional 400,000 jobs to the clean economy, according to the Canadian Climate Institute. Also, $48 billion are added to our economy with 250,000 jobs in the EV supply chain alone, according to the Royal Bank of Canada. In Ontario, Volkswagen is building its largest EV battery facility ever, creating over 30,000 new jobs, an incredible number for that community.
In Alberta, Air Products is investing $1 billion to build a hydrogen facility, creating 200 new jobs. In Newfoundland, Braya Renewable Fuels is converting Come By Chance's oil refinery into a renewable diesel facility, creating 200 full-time jobs and 800 during its construction phase. In addition to that, the Awasis solar project is a 10-megawatt solar power project receiving $18.5 million in funding. It is creating clean power and good jobs near Regina, Saskatchewan.
All parts of the economy have important roles to play in meeting Canada's 2030 climate targets, from transportation to the oil and gas sector to heavy industry, construction and buildings. Everyone must do their part. As I said earlier, no sector across Canada's economy should be entitled to unlimited pollution.
Measures like the proposed pollution cap are crucial in addressing emissions from Canada's highest-polluting sectors. It also encourages sectors to reinvest in clean energy products that will cut pollution and create new jobs in Canada. Canada has shown that we can reduce our emissions while growing our economy and supporting Canadians by creating new and sustainable jobs in emerging sectors, driving innovation and environmental protection, providing economic opportunities for Canadian businesses right across the economic spectrum and increasing investments in clean energy projects.
All of these investments are skating to where the puck is going, not to where the puck has been. That is why we are strong progressives. That is why we believe in taking action and meeting the moment in Canada and across the world. We cannot stop now. We need to continue to push forward for our environment, our future, our kids and grandchildren and future generations of Canadians. Earthlings are counting on us.
Madam Speaker, I am wondering about the $8-billion net-zero accelerator fund, in which over 70% of contracts gave no commitment to reduce emissions. Upon review of the documents, which we have been put under a gag order, 360 pages were ripped out of them. Does the member know who ripped those pages out?
Madam Speaker, I am thrilled to talk about the net-zero accelerator fund, because one of the largest emitters in southwestern Ontario is our critical steel sector. We know that steel is an important product for various things right across the country, from automotive to construction and many other practical applications, but, until now, it has always required thermal coal for its production. Thanks to the net-zero accelerator fund, we are bringing in electric arc technology for the steel refineries in the Hamilton area. When I went to McMaster University, I used to work in the steel industry.
It is great news not just for our collective health and economy but also driving the steel industry forward. That is thanks, as my colleague opposite just mentioned, to the net-zero accelerator fund.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, as we know, my colleague from Milton is often tasked by the Liberal government to defend the indefensible.
He mentioned that there was a lot of investment in Ontario, in particular in Stellantis, Volkswagen and Honda. These factories will be operational in three or four years.
The problem is that Canada does not produce lithium. Right now, there is a mine in my riding that produces lithium, but it is not processed. The Canadian critical minerals strategy should ensure that ore is processed near the mine, but that is not what is happening.
In three or four years, we will have to put lithium in those batteries. Where will we get it from? China? How will we make sure that it complies with a policy that is as close to net zero as possible?
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague and friend for his question.
We are committed to building the future by shifting our economy toward electricity and greener energies. There have been a lot of investments in Quebec as well. I spoke about the investments in Ontario because that is where I live, but there is a lot of green and sustainable investment in Quebec, particularly in the critical minerals sector.
I know that my colleague believes in the fight against climate change and in the importance of a green future for our country and the generations to come.
[English]
Madam Speaker, the House needs to hear this again, that some 600 people died during the heat dome in British Columbia, some of them in Vancouver East. Some of my constituents lived in a SRO, where the air is absolutely stifling, and they were forced to become unhoused. There are now encampments as a result of that.
Now we have the Liberal government and the Prime Minister who, during a climate crisis, bought a pipeline. Over and over again, the NDP has been calling for the Liberals to end the subsidy for big oil, yet they will not do it. They say they support Canadians with a half measure on the GST. The NDP is saying that they should in fact ensure that the elimination of the GST applies for home heating and for essentials, and make that a permanent program.
Will the Liberals do it and end the subsidies for big oil to pay for it?
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her climate advocacy. It is absolutely horrid to imagine all the devastation that has occurred in Canada. We know that Canada is warming at three or four times the average rate of the rest of the world due to climate change, and it is indeed a crisis.
However, I am very proud of the fact that Canada is not only the oil and gas-producing nation to bring forward a cap on emissions, but we have also ended all those fossil fuel subsidies ahead of schedule. It is also important not to paint them all with the same brush, because we still have some northern indigenous communities that require those subsidies for their power systems.
It is disappointing to see the NDP continually point to carbon pricing as something that should not be part of a responsible climate plan. It is part of our climate plan, and it is disappointing that the New Democrats have turned their backs on that.
Madam Speaker, today, we are here to talk about the 10th report of the environment committee, because the Conservatives have once again moved a concurrence motion in the House.
It is important for us to explain to Canadians, who may be watching the proceedings of the House of Commons and asking themselves why we are still sitting in this situation two months later. It bears repeating a little of why we are here.
First, the question is around privilege and documents that the Conservatives constantly say the government is not providing. What they fail to recognize is that the government has provided the documents to Parliament. The question is whether unredacted documents that are derived from a parliamentary order, from a majority of the House of Commons, should be passed off to the RCMP.
The good news is that we have information from the RCMP. It has come out and said, “No thanks, Parliament.” It is fine with using the existing ways to gather evidence for any type of criminal prosecution. By the way, the government recognizes that the Auditor General's report on SDTC is a serious matter. A third-party investigation has been launched. The government has provided the documents.
The Conservatives have moved a motion to let this entire question around whether Parliament should allow documents to be sent to the RCMP, unredacted, which could infringe on charter rights of any defendants, be moved to PROC. However, for two straight months now, the Conservatives have continually stood in this place to move amendments to their own motion, when every party in the House agrees that this matter should go to PROC.
The record has to be set and understood, because we are wasting parliamentary time in this place. I do think it is important for my colleagues in the other opposition parties to ask themselves at what point would they support a closure motion on this question, so it can go to PROC. They bear some responsibility in the question about what they want to get for their constituents in this place, and what we can do to work together.
The Bloc Québécois and the NDP should ask themselves, at what point, when the government has provided the documents to Parliament—
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
We have been enduring the debates on the Conservatives' motion for a month and a half now. Right now, we have an opportunity to talk about something else for five minutes, but my colleague is still talking about the Conservatives' motion. Can we talk about the topic at hand?
There is a bit of latitude during debate, but the members' interventions must relate to the topic at hand. I am certain that the hon. member will make a connection with the motion currently before the House.
The hon. member for Kings—Hants.
[English]
Madam Speaker, it has only been three minutes, but what I would say is that it is incumbent on all members of Parliament to ask themselves that question. Getting back to this motion, the Conservatives continue to use this as a delay tactic, not allowing other important questions to come before Parliament. When they go home tonight, I would encourage opposition members in the Bloc Québécois and the NDP to ask themselves what they want to get accomplished with the time we have remaining in this Parliament.
On the motion for concurrence on the 10th report, I have read the 10th report. I do not sit on the environment committee, but this did give me a good opportunity to go through the report and look at the recommendations. When the member for Portage—Lisgar stood up this morning to move the motion, it was ironic that he did not talk about the Conservatives' environmental plan or what they would do at all. In fact, an amendment in relation to the net zero accelerator fund was moved and that was turned down by the Speaker. It was ruled out of order. Again, the Conservatives want to use this place to get up on talking points instead of getting work done, instead of actually being able to focus.
If we want to talk about the environment and investments in critical minerals and Canada's clean tech advantage, I will use my remaining six minutes to talk about that. However, I want to highlight the fact that it is remarkable to me that the Conservatives want to get up and talk about an environmental report tabled by the environment committee. I have sat in this place for five years and I have not seen a genuine effort by the Conservative Party whatsoever to tackle the question of environment, to tackle the question of how Canada leverages its strategic assets to make those investments.
We have heard a slogan “technology, not taxes”. That is a great slogan with no substance behind how we get there. How are we going to leverage those opportunities we have in Canada? How are we going to fund them? That is the part about which the Conservatives do not finish their sentences. When they talk about these things, they are not straight and clear with Canadians about what the cost would be to reduce emissions and drive up Canadian competitiveness. They do not have a substantive plan.
I will give Erin O'Toole credit. In 2021, he started to go down this route. Of course, the backbench of his caucus wanted to pull him down for even mentioning the word carbon pricing. The Conservatives have not really given a genuine answer to this. I know right now that the question is around the pocketbook and affordability. It is around defence and international security. However, the environmental question plays into all of those things, and the Conservatives really do not have a serious answer on this.
Let us take an examination of the record of the Conservative Party when we do have legislation that directly relates to economic growth or affordability. I represent Kings—Hants in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia. A lot of my constituents still use home heating oil in their homes. It is the most expensive way in the country to heat homes. It averages between double to four times the amount of those who have been able to transition off of home heating oil.
This government worked with the Province of Nova Scotia, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Province of Prince Edward Island, where the majority of households use home heating oil, to establish a program to help people make the transition off home heating oil, or certainly reduce their reliance on it. It saves thousands of dollars a month in home heating costs.
The member for Carleton said that the program did not exist. He said that it would not do any good. I have evidence in my riding, where energy bills have been reduced because of the efforts taken by this government. The Conservative Party has voted against it at every single turn. The Conservatives have not been there to help support these initiatives.
Let us talk about Bill C-49, which amended the Atlantic accords. This was simply legislation. It was not even necessarily an investment that the government had to make, or an expenditure, but just regulations to allow the possibility for offshore wind to help drive a decarbonization in Nova Scotia, in Atlantic Canada, and create meaningful jobs in my home province. The Conservatives stood against it at every single turn.
What does the Conservative Party actually stand for? The Conservatives want to suggest that this government has done nothing on the environment. I would remind them that this is the only government in Canadian history, which is far from perfect, by the way, and I sit on the backbenches and do not suggest it is perfect, that has reduced emissions and grown the economy. No government in the history of our country has ever done that. I sit and listen in the House to the extremes from members like the member for Portage—Lisgar, who suggests the government has done nothing. What is he talking about? Although I would agree in some facets about the way the New Democrats present themselves in the House as being more credible, sometimes I hear little to nothing from them.
Have the New Democrats not seen the measures the government has taken? Should we do more? Absolutely. Is it our job as members of Parliament, as parliamentarians, to push the government and the executive, the Privy Council? Yes we should, but let us bring some air of reality to what we are actually dealing with here in this place, and to the complexities and the challenges.
I know that some of my colleagues, including on my side of the House, in my party, when we talk about Trans Mountain, and the NDP, suggest it is in the national interest. Would we rather move oil, gas and bitumen by railroad? The market still is calling for these things around the world. My message to the NDP members when they say we should not have invested in a national interest and a pipeline to move the bitumen that would otherwise be moving on rail cars, do they think that is not a safer way to do it? The government intends to sell the pipeline to indigenous stakeholders to be able to support this. These are some of the complexities and the nuances we do not hear in this place and that we do not actually get in to legitimate debate.
The government does have to continue to focus on the question of Canada's strategic advantage in critical minerals. This matters not only from an emission reduction perspective; I would say that, even more importantly in this context, it also matters for our economy and for defence and strategic interests with the United States. We spent a lot of time in the House talking about the importance of the Canada-U.S. relationship. The government needs to continue to highlight it.
All parliamentarians in this place should be focused on the question of how we can push the ability to reduce regulatory burdens that are not necessarily needed to advance the mining of critical minerals, but do so in a sustainable way. There is an ability to align processes, and I support some of the work the government has done in that place. We need to do more.
I think about things like nuclear energy, the agriculture sector and forestry. There is so much we can do in efforts that drive innovation in those traditional sectors, but also reduce emissions at the same time. We have to continue to focus on the question as one of innovation and of economic growth. Of course, at the end of the day, if it reduces emissions and drives environmental benefit, that is the triple bottom-line win we should be looking for.
I look forward to taking questions from my hon. colleagues in this place.
Madam Speaker, some of what the member said was deeply concerning. When I questioned the environment minister about the Trans Mountain expansion project and asked him whether he, as someone who has spoken against pipeline expansions in the past, stood by his government's decision or thought it was a mistake, he could not answer.
However, the member seems to be championing the Trans Mountain expansion, something that cost $35 billion, taxpayer money poured into the pipeline that is actually tripling the capacity to export diluted bitumen to our coast. It is not just about the bitumen that would otherwise be shipped there; it is also about increasing capacity. It is about expanding the tar sands, the oil sands.
Does the member stand by his government's decision to waste taxpayer money on a pipeline that is an economic and environmental disaster?
Madam Speaker, I was concerned when the member for Victoria, who certainly purports herself in this place to be a strong environmental champion, had very little to say when the NDP backed away from the importance of carbon pricing as a credible plan to be able to move—
Madam Speaker, as stated in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, chapter 3, when members repeat inaccurate information again and again, the Speaker can rule that out of order. I have responded many a time to the issue, and the member knows full well that we support industrial carbon pricing, that carbon pricing is an important part of our—
That is more of a point of debate. The hon. member can rise on it afterwards.
The hon. member for Kings—Hants has the floor.
Madam Speaker, I guess what I would say is similar to the member's question. Sometimes members of Parliament, even within the same party, have different views. I am glad to know she supports a consumer carbon price and will continue to push the leader of the NDP to change and reverse his policies as the environmental critic.
With respect to the point around Trans Mountain, the member will remember a podcast we did with Althia Raj five years ago in my office, where I said that at the end of the day, the government has a responsibility to look at the national interest. We are providing a safer way to move the bitumen that is already going to move, by the way.
The question the government had is whether we should move bitumen by railroad or whether we should build a pipeline, which is a safer way to do it; should be able to sell the pipeline back to indigenous partners; and should be able to drive economic interests that matter in this country. I believe that the government and the Liberal party have a level of nuance on this. I would encourage the member opposite to certainly ask questions in her own house about where the NDP stands on its own plans around the environment.
Madam Speaker, the member talked about a few particular energy projects for which I want to take a moment here.
The finance minister came to committee and said she thought the government could get back more money than it has spent on TMX, meaning that she thinks it can receive close to $37 billion on its pipeline. The PBO said that it would probably be lucky to get $27 billion; he does not think the government is going to be able to make up all of the money it has wasted on the pipeline. Why did the Liberals have to spend $34 billion on a pipeline? It was because of the regulatory uncertainty that chased away the private sector proponent that would have built it itself.
The Impact Assessment Act was unconstitutional then and still is now. That is important for the Atlantic accord, which impacts the member's region of the country.
When we look at what the government is doing, we see that it continues to mess things up all the time. How on earth is it ever going to get its money back on TMX?
Madam Speaker, I will respond very quickly, because my hon. colleague covered a lot.
First of all, the Atlantic accord is a joint jurisdiction, so while the Conservatives like to bring up the Impact Assessment Act, it does not apply in the context of the Atlantic accord. Therefore I will correct the record or certainly help educate the member on that particular point.
As it relates to the Conservatives, the irony of course, and the level of nuance, is that the government has to be mindful of the global transition that is happening on energy. We chose to make an investment. I will remind the hon. member that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party did nothing to actually expand access to our natural resource market with things like pipelines. That never happened.
Therefore we can have an honest and reasonable conversation about whether or not the government should have gotten involved or not. I believe that it made the right choice, that the costs associated with it will be recovered and that the investment it made is in the national interest. The member represents western Canada. One would think he would get up and support those types of decisions that have been made by the government.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned a reasonable conversation. I would like to have a reasonable conversation with him. I heard him defend Trans Mountain and the $34 billion spent on a pipeline. I find that a little strange.
Now his government is about to invest billions of dollars in carbon capture, even though everyone knows, since it has been proven, that this technology is not working anywhere else.
Does my colleague not think this technology should be scientifically validated before we sink any public money into it? Is he not sick of seeing money being wasted on nothing?
Madam Speaker, regarding the importance of Canada's natural resources sector, the oil sector, which is primarily in western Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador, is extremely important to Canada's economy, particularly considering the money that flows to the provinces.
This sector, with its investments and the revenue it generates, is extremely important for the economy in Quebec and Nova Scotia, particularly when it comes to the resources needed for social programs.
[English]
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleagues today for debating concurrence in a committee report from the environment department on the path forward. In relation to this, one of the main things we come at in our dissenting report is that despite claiming that the cost of carbon tax would address climate change, the current Liberal government has failed to meet any carbon climate target. This is something that has to be brought forth here very specifically.
The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development Canada provided five reports to Parliament just a few weeks ago, in which he illustrated exactly what the government was not accomplishing with all of its efforts in this respect. When I say efforts, I mean up to 140 programs across government that are spending money and not reducing emissions at all.
I will go into a lot of the guts of the reports, particularly the report in which the commissioner talks about the net-zero transition and where we are with respect to getting towards net zero in our economy, because he makes some significant statements in this regard. He goes on about this, saying, “Missing and inconsistent information, delays in launching important measures, and a lack of reliability in projections hindered the credibility of the plan.”
Before I go any further, Madam Speaker, I have to tell you that I will be splitting my time today with my hon. colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent.
Recognize that we are getting zero emissions at the end of the day out of all the programs. Tens of billions are being spent on climate changes, effectively, the latest one of course being the emissions cap, which is a pie-in-the-sky thing, and we are going to eliminate emissions without putting down production. The only way we are actually going to eliminate emissions in Canada at this stage is by undoing our economy.
Especially in our resource production, undoing our economy means that resources are being produced elsewhere, which would mean higher emissions, lower labour standards and less benefit for the world. Therefore we continue on the path of making sure the government is exposed for the folly of its approach to how they are trying to get at emissions, because the emissions are not appearing at the end of the day.
I will go on with another of the commissioner's reports. He said, “The recent decreases to projected 2030 emissions were not due to climate actions taken by governments but were instead because of revisions to the data or methods used in modelling.” For 20 years, the department of environment has had a model that is not transparent about how it is measuring emissions in the Canadian economy. As the environment commissioner has stated, the whole model is flawed. Nobody can see it; therefore, it is effectively flawed.
The only way to reduce emissions is to change the inputs in its own modelling. This does not reduce CO2 in the atmosphere; all it does is make the model look like we are accomplishing something when we are accomplishing next to nothing. What we are accomplishing is the shutdown of the most productive part of the Canadian economy, our resource industry. That is part of what the government's virtue signalling is all about: saying we are doing something, but changing the metrics of how we measure what we are doing. The Liberals are trying to fool the Canadian public. It is deceitful and has to be exposed at its highest level.
It is not the member of Parliament for Calgary Centre but the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development who actually said very clearly that the Liberals are monkeying around with the numbers. The next monkeying around they will do of course is to include in the numbers the actual absorption of CO2 embedded in Canada's forests, to make it look like they have actually accomplished something although that was not part of the inputs from the get-go.
There are a whole bunch of quotes from the commissioner that are very important, and I am going to go through a few more of them. Here is one: “This issue of the lack of transparency in the modelling continues to be an ongoing concern, which can undermine the trust and credibility in the reported progress.” Did members hear that? The government has lost all kinds of trust with Canadians and has also lost credibility with anybody who is paying attention to emissions and to our energy production systems in Canada, which need to be sustained in order for us to continue with our prosperous economy and to continue as a world leader in emissions reduction.
Fully three-quarters of the amount of money spent by private enterprise in this country on climate emissions reductions is spent by the oil and gas industry in making sure it gets cleaner production. That production, specifically in the oil sands, on the emissions profile per barrel of oil produced has gone down by 26% in the last 20 years. That outperforms any other industry in Canada as far as reductions associated with technological advances. When my colleague across the way talks about technology not taxes, we have clear illustrations of how that works.
Businesses spending money on technology as opposed to spending money on taxes actually advance the science and advance the utilization of carbon-reducing emissions. This is what we are after at the end of the day. We want less carbon emissions per unit of production. We want to make sure we have a sustainable economy going forward. We want to replace carbon being produced around the world with more carbon-efficient and less-emitting options available here in Canada.
I will conclude with a quote from the commissioner of the environment: “This lack of transparency meant that accountabilities for reducing emissions remained unclear.” I beseech my colleagues on the other side of the House. It is not the opposition saying this; it is the government's own commissioner of the environment and sustainable development who is saying the Liberals are not getting anything done. The only thing they are accomplishing in numbers, and the numbers are down slightly from their peak pre-COVID, is not necessarily a result of anything the programs have designed; it is a result, significantly, of changes to the model.
Now, the Liberals can change their input models all they want, but in the end, the world is getting more carbon in the atmosphere. We have to actually get less carbon in the atmosphere, so we need to find some programs and find some technology that actually accomplishes that. However, the government seems strained on that because it is bent toward that whole regulation and control as opposed to innovation and market decisions, which are going to be part of the future and the solution.
I said to my constituents, “When you have dug a hole this deep, it is time to stop digging.” That is the main thing. The Liberals have gone down the rat hole, and making sure they are producing less emissions is no longer their goal. The goal is to push more money out the door, and I am particularly worried about this—
When the hon. member is turning his pages, it is hitting the microphones and causing a lot of distraction and difficulties for the interpreters. I would caution him on that. I know that he is as worried as I am about the interpreters.
The hon. member for Calgary Centre.
Madam Speaker, it the first time I have heard that complaint. I apologize. I do have pages here, and I do have to flip them; we do go from significant preparation here. However, I will put this away and just go from what I know of the subject matter as opposed to the notes I have.
We have done a lot in this country. We have overspent tens of billions of dollars in this effort and gotten nowhere. Where has that money gone? I think Canadians need to know where that money has gone. It has gone into a bunch of self-serving organizations this government uses. I used these words before and I mean them very clearly: They are paid propagandists.
The International Institute for Sustainable Development is getting $30 million from the government to pursue efforts that are all over the map as far as what they are measuring, and it has no expertise in actually delivering. The Canadian Climate Institute was at one of our committee meetings not long ago. We can take a look at what it is actually delivering, and it was getting, at that point, $11 million going up to $30 million. It is actually giving advice to the Department of the Environment because the Department of the Environment has no advice of its own. It is now, effectively, a department captured by special interest groups that get paid a lot of money to be special interest groups and therefore spin that wheel. Canadian taxpayer dollars are going out the door, with all kinds of organizations and individuals getting rich, and I could name those organizations and individuals if we had more time.
To wrap up, we are not accomplishing anything in the environment. The government needs to acknowledge that. The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development has acknowledged it. I beseech my colleagues on the other side of the House and in the other two opposition parties to read the report that says we are accomplishing nothing. We are spending tens of billions of dollars and we are getting nowhere. What more clarity do the Liberals need to make it understandable that we need to focus on technologies that are reducing carbon emissions in Canada as a benefit for the whole world?
Madam Speaker, I do not expect the member to answer my question, because he never really does, but I will say this to counter some of the false narrative in there: He said our emissions are just slightly reduced since before COVID. The reality is that our emissions right now are at the same level they were at in 1998. What is the huge difference between now and then? Our economy was worth about $650 billion in 1998, and now it is worth $2 trillion. Our economy is three times the size it was in 1998, and we had the exact same emissions that we do now.
I would love for the member to reflect, perhaps, on the days when Stephen Harper was prime minister, when the economy was stagnant or even going down, yet emissions were continuing to rise. Although I appreciate the member's rhetoric, it is nothing more than that.
Madam Speaker, I do not know how to respond to the member, because I think I have answered every question he has ever asked in the House of Commons. I will say to him again, in direct response to what he said, that I do not know where he is getting his numbers, because the numbers I have seen very clearly, from his government's department, on emissions in Canada is that we are now around where we were in 2019, not 1998, and that is just pre-COVID. We are going down to where we were before the economy collapsed at this point, and then we rose back up. I do not know where he is getting 1998, but this is my answer to his question. I hope he appreciates the directness of the response.
There is no rhetoric in my speech at all. We are talking about spending tens of billions of dollars and accomplishing nothing. What Canadians need to see is where that tens of billions of dollars went, how we make sure we are getting results for the money we are spending and what we are doing for Canadians.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We are drifting through some sort of surreal world. This is far from reality.
Earlier I heard my two Liberal Party colleagues boast about the Liberal record on the environment. To set the record straight, I have before me an article from La Presse, from November 7. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions reduction, Canada has the worst record in the G7.
Our Liberal friends boast about their record while the Conservatives propose to do even less when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases. None of this makes sense. We are truly in Christmas holiday mode. We are in some sort of fairy tale.
The International Monetary Fund led a study that found that, in 2022, Canada directly and indirectly gave $50 billion to the oil industry. It gave $50 billion of taxpayer money to an industry that earned $220 billion in profits in 2022.
Does my colleague not think that this money could have been better spent building social housing?
Madam Speaker, it is interesting to see my colleague attacking the Liberals, who are not accomplishing anything on the environment. He is right about that. However, he continued by saying that the Canadian government gave $50 billion to the oil industry. That is a joke. The government gave almost nothing to the most productive sector in Canada. My colleague needs to take another look at the facts.
[English]
Madam Speaker, my colleague says Conservatives want to be prudent with money. The Harper regime was the most outrageous shoveller of money toward billionaires and banks in our country's history. I will just go through the numbers. There was $116 billion in liquidity supports to Canada's big banks with the Harper regime. We had the overseas tax havens that cost us $30 billion a year, according to the PBO, again, with the Harper regime. Shamefully, the Liberals have not ended that practice of $30 billion a year going to overseas tax havens and tens of billions of dollars going to oil and gas CEOs.
Conservatives shovel money off the back of a truck. If someone is a billionaire or a banker, they get that money, but what Conservatives did cut were all the programs on clean energy, including ecoENERGY, which Canadians stepped up to and the Harper government cruelly ended and shut down so many of those small businesses across the country.
How can the Conservatives possibly say they are credible when they did that?
Madam Speaker, I do not know where the member is getting his facts either because the government does not give any money to executives of petroleum companies across the country. It is a productive sector and when it is doing well, all the employees do well. When it is doing poorly, we can take a look at the employment losses over the last eight years while we were in Parliament. It has only bounced back in the very near past, the last two years. There is some significant misinformation that comes from the member.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Greg McLean: Madam Speaker, I do not know what the member is referring to when he mentions a government a decade ago that had to deal with fiscal prudence, but I agree with him that the Conservatives are looking at where we need to spend money effectively in the economy because, frankly, the current government is going broke.
I would remind members if they want to have conversations while someone else has the floor, and this is on both sides, they should step out to do that or wait until their turn comes up to speak.
[Translation]
Madam Speaker, I feel as though your words were directed at me. That said, you are right, and I hope to make amends in the years to come.
I am very pleased to participate in this debate. I would like to remind members that, for more than two years now, I have had the privilege of sitting in the shadow cabinet as minister responsible for environment and climate change.
At our convention in Quebec City over a year ago, our Conservative leader, the leader of the official opposition and member for Carleton, outlined the guiding principles of the Conservatives' approach to the environment. First, let me say that climate change is real. We need to face facts and adapt to it. We must continually reduce pollution and cut greenhouse gas emissions. However, choosing the right approach is where we differ. The ideological Liberal government is all about taxation and squandering money. The Conservative approach is much more pragmatic and focused on direct action. I will come back to that a little later in this speech.
This Liberal government has been in power for nine years, and here is this government's record on the environment: Canada has the worst record of any G7 country, ranking 62nd out of 67 countries. That is the reality after nine years of Liberal government. That is the result of their management.
Recently, two programs have provided the most glaring example of bad investments so far. The government implemented one program and continued to manage the other. Unfortunately, the government managed these programs the Liberal way, that is, haphazardly and with a whiff of corruption.
First of all, let us talk about the $8-billion net-zero accelerator initiative. That is a lot of money. Unfortunately, this program did not produce any results, and that is the problem. Yes, the government brags about its lofty principles and sets ambitious targets. The Liberals are always talking about their ambitious targets, but they are not getting results, and yet we are talking about $8 billion. The commissioner and the deputy minister responsible for this file stated in committee that they were unable to directly assess whether there had been a drop in greenhouse gas emissions. I am not making this up. We are talking about a net-zero accelerator, an accelerator to reduce emissions to zero, but we are unable to determine whether we actually managed to reduce emissions.
It gets worse. Let us talk about the testimony we heard in committee. The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development appeared before the committee on May 2 and 9. When we asked him how all of this was done, here is what he said, and I quote:
We also found that the department did not always know to what extent GHG emissions had been reduced by those companies that took part in the [net-zero accelerator] initiative, or whether the funding provided would lead to reduced emissions.
It is called the net zero accelerator. The Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development told us there was no way to ensure that emissions would go down. After nine years of the Liberal government, there is no making this stuff up. Later on, in his testimony, the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development said, “The majority of the contribution agreements do not have a commitment for reduction”. In fact, 12 of the 17 companies did not have to commit to reducing emissions, even though it is called the net zero accelerator. We need to speed up progress to net zero, but 12 of the 17 companies have no target. What kind of management is that? It is how the Liberals have managed things for the past nine years.
We asked for access to those documents. The government vetoed that categorically. Parliamentarians can look at the documents, but it is important to point out that it is an eyes-only situation. They cannot take notes or photos or do anything with the documents. They can only look. We sincerely hope that the documents will be made public.
Obviously, I cannot talk about what I saw, and I am certainly not going to get myself in trouble. I cannot say what was in those documents, but I can say that everything I saw should be known to Canadians. It was disturbing. All members of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development have access to it. We sincerely hope that all MPs can get access to it. Conservative members have seen the documents, and that is why my message to all Canadians is that they deserve to know how that $8 billion—the $8 billion they contributed—was spent.
Let us now talk about another program introduced by this government over the past five years, the green fund for sustainable development technologies. This fund was not a Liberal Party creation. It was active under other governments and, as a fund intended to help companies reduce their emissions, it was doing well. After disclosures were made in various media outlets, the Auditor General of Canada was instructed to look into what had happened with the now-infamous green fund. The results were very troubling, not in our estimation, or in the Conservative Party's estimation, but in the opinion of the Auditor General. Of the $500 million allocated over the past five years, this Liberal government had spent $390 million, which means that close to 80% of the money in this fund was not properly managed. Board members were allocating taxpayers' money to their own companies, in violation of the rules of good management.
When people realized how much turnover there was on the board of directors due to conflicts of interest, it became clear that some board members should not be there. So much coming and going should always be a red flag. It seems to me that this should be a wake-up call for people to want to do things differently. That is not what happened, which is very unfortunate. That is also why, after nine years under this government, not only is Canada the worst country in the G7, but it ranks 62nd out of 67 countries, according to the most recent report released at COP29 just a few days ago. In fact, I asked to table that document, but the Liberals refused.
Clearly, those folks did not meet the targets. They did not achieve what they set out to do and, more importantly, they do not know how to manage investment funds when they have them. As Conservatives, our approach is positive, constructive, effective and, above all, not dogmatic. At our convention in Quebec City a little over a year ago, in September 2023, our leader defined the four pillars of our environmental action plan.
The first pillar is the tax incentives in research and development in new technologies to reduce emissions. This needs to be done responsibly and not to make cronies happy, as the Auditor General concluded with the green fund, nor by committing billions of dollars—$8 billion in the case of the Liberals—without any real reduction commitments. As the Ethics Commissioner concluded, 12 out of 17 businesses received billions of dollars without any clear goals. What is that all about? Conservatives want a tangible, realistic, responsible approach that is respectful of taxpayers' wallets.
The second pillar involves giving a green light to green energy. We need more wind, solar, hydroelectricity, geothermal and nuclear energy in Canada. Yes, decarbonization leads to green energy. That is why we need it. We do not have enough. We need more. We need to give the green light to green energy.
The third pillar is the Canadian advantage. In Canada, we have all the natural resources we need for decarbonization. Let us take lithium, for example. As the member for Carleton said when he became leader, we need Canadian lithium to electrify our electric cars. We want to give the green light to green energy and develop all the potential energy and natural resources that we have in Canada to make progress on this front.
The fourth pillar is working hand in hand with first nations. Too often in our history, when we arrived somewhere to pursue development and first nations were there, we signed a small cheque to make them go away because we were going to develop that area. That is not the right approach. We need an approach in which we create shared wealth, work as equals and become partners in prosperity.
The Conservatives are taking climate change seriously, and we plan to provide tax incentives for new technologies, give the green light to green energy, develop natural resources to their full potential to further decarbonization and work hand in hand with first nations. I am really looking forward to an election that will result in a responsible government for all Canadians.
[English]
Madam Speaker, as opposed to focusing attention on the concurrence report, I see the tactic of the Conservative opposition is to continue an ongoing filibuster. My question for the member opposite is related to why the Conservatives continue to move concurrence reports and then return reports back to the standing committees, thereby dictating more and more. We see this as a troubling pattern from the leader of the Conservative Party, who wants to send reports back to committees and instruct standing committees what to do.
Does the member have any concerns in terms of this power grab by the leader of the Conservative Party in trying to dictate the types of issues that committees are forced to talk about because he, as leader of the Conservative Party, wants that issue discussed and is instructing them to do so?
Madam Speaker, it was very sad to see, again, that the government refused to accept an order of the Chair. This is why we have no action in the House, because the government refused to move forward with a motion asking it to give some documents to the RCMP. The government refused
On the other hand, what I want to raise, also, is that he said that we are dictating what we want to say. Yes, I want to talk about climate change. I am very proud to defend our observations and the actions we will take if we are honoured by the people of Canada in the next election.
It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings at this time and put forthwith the question on the motion now before the House.
The question is on the motion.
[Translation]
If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
[English]
Privilege
Alleged Intimidation during Proceedings of the House
[Privilege]
Madam Speaker, as promised yesterday, I am rising to make a more structured intervention on the question of privilege raised by the NDP member for London—Fanshawe.
I agree wholeheartedly with all my Conservative colleagues who have already risen on this matter. There is no question of privilege here whatsoever concerning the behaviour of the official opposition. If anything, the actual contempt here was when the NDP deputy House leader stormed up the aisle in a very physically demonstrative and verbally aggressive fashion to confront the Chair. She was quickly joined by the NDP member for Edmonton Griesbach.
That was, of course, in plain view of anyone watching the television feed of Thursday evening's proceedings of the House. She also confessed to it in her intervention Friday afternoon when she said, “After we adjourned, I approached the Chair to ask how this could have been allowed.”
That is a very polite way of putting it. If we look at the tape, the camera was still running after the Speaker adjourned the House. We can see the member in question, the NDP member, walking up very aggressively, waving wildly, pointing fingers and basically yelling at and admonishing the Speaker.
Standing Order 16(4) instructs us that, “When the House adjourns, members shall keep their seats until the Speaker has left the chair.” That clearly did not happen. If anything, the NDP deputy House leader's conduct reminded me of the incident described at footnote 345 on page 645 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition:
Perhaps the worst scene in modern times occurred in 1980 when closure was moved on a motion to establish a committee to study a constitutional resolution. Several Members, angered by the closure motion, stormed the Chair, demanding to be heard. The resulting disorder on the floor of the House led to the entrance, behind the curtains, of members of the protective staff on the orders of the Sergeant-at-Arms....
Thankfully, it did not quite get that far. We did not need armed police in here to address the NDP's chaos and disorder, but the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms did have to escort, physically, the NDP deputy House leader away from the Conservative benches after her unprofessional, erratic and unhinged attack on several Conservative MPs who, in compliance with the standing order, had remained seated and remained calm.
Like I said, if anything gives rise to a contempt, it is the storming of the Chair by the NDP deputy House leader. Had Conservatives wanted to, we could have raised our own question of privilege, which I believe would have been a slam dunk for securing a prima facie ruling from the Chair, but Conservatives believe that questions of privilege should be raised to address serious violations of the authority and dignity of Parliament, not to score cheap political points to deflect from a given party's strategic errors.
That is what I believe is behind the NDP deputy House leader's question of privilege. If you will grant me a little bit of latitude, I do believe that motive and context matters in this.
The NDP is suffering. What we are seeing is the lashing out of emotions that its predicament has built up. For three years, the NDP was in a coalition arrangement with the Liberal Prime Minister, aiding and abetting his disastrous policies for Canada, which has Canadians suffering—
There is a question of privilege on the floor. We are going to allow this intervention to end, and then we will go to the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby, who is rising on the same question of privilege, from what I can gather. If the hon. member is providing context particular to the event that happened, then that is acceptable. If it is other stuff that he wants to debate, then I would say that that is not admissible.
The hon. official opposition House leader.
Madam Speaker, out of respect for you, I will quickly move through this part.
I will just point out in the New Democrats' interventions on this, they had no problem using the House's time to come up with all kinds of wild theories and conjecture about motivations or even fabrications of what was going on. However, I will heed what you have said, Madam Speaker, and quickly just point out that clearly the New Democrats were frustrated that night.
I believe they saw an opportunity to deflect and distract from their decision to—
Some hon. members: Debate.
Hon. Andrew Scheer: No, this is what happened on Thursday night. They seized an opportunity to try to deflect from their own strategic error. That being said, Canadians are smart and recognize what they are seeing, and the NDP knows this.
All that happened during Thursday night's vote was that 100 or so Conservative MPs, proud to be here to vote on behalf of their constituents, were voicing their opinion about the NDP's voting. If the Speaker actually watches the video of the vote, she will see that the four or five NDP members who were voting physically in the House actually reacted in a playful and good-humoured way, like gesturing that they could not hear, jokingly, what the Conservative colleagues were saying, not that they could not hear the Chair or the vote callers. They were actually looking at our members, joking around and playing it up for the cameras.
In the moment, that is how those MPs interpreted the noise that was coming from down the hall. We can actually see the NDP member for Port Moody—Coquitlam jokingly asking Conservative members to speak up, because she was pretending that she could not hear them.
That was the flavour and that is visible on the cameras. That is without debate. That is not my opinion. That is what the Speaker will see if she looks at the video from that evening.
Now, I do believe that all that might have drawn a brief intervention from the Chair, and the House moved on, as it naturally would. It is the Speaker's job to enforce decorum, enforce the rules and apply them when he or she believes that it is getting to the point of being disruptive. Conservative members heeded the call of the Chair, and the House moved on, as it would.
As for specific allegations that were made, I have it on very good authority that we categorically reject the NDP's defamatory, spurious and completely unfounded allegations of anyone being intoxicated. If the Speaker really wants to take a look at the validity of those allegations, the two members who the NDP accused, in this chamber, that was again caught on video, are two members who are non-drinkers. This is not only insulting to them, but it is incredibly dangerous that somebody can use the parliamentary privilege like the NDP House leader has done to make these unfounded and baseless accusations, which now have gone out into social media and have really damaged members' reputations without any substantiation at all. That is really a problem.
If the Speaker looks at the behaviour of members that evening, if there is a question of who might have been intoxicated, it certainly was not Conservative members. Yesterday, the NDP House leader made an intervention where he asserted a number of those outrageous—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Order. Someone has the floor, and it is very inappropriate for others to be yelling out. There may be all kinds of interpretations, but the hon. member can just put his case forward. I think it is very difficult to interpret what somebody else was actually doing. Again, I ask the hon. member to please wrap it up.
The official opposition House leader.
Madam Speaker, I agree with you, but we find ourselves in this position because that is exactly what the NDP members have done with these outrageous and baseless accusations. I think it is only fair and just that, after making these kinds of allegations, the official opposition be allowed to not only defend ourselves and our integrity, but also put the actual facts of the matter before the Chair if the Chair is going to rule on this.
My NDP counterpart also claimed that pages were withdrawn from the opposition lobby because of what he alleged was the conduct of Conservative MPs. I was briefed by a representative of the House administration relating to the page program and was informed that the baseline issue that ultimately led to a decision being made happened earlier and was completely unrelated to behaviour in the lobby. It was an administrative issue within the page program itself.
I can also say that during the evening there were requests from one side to the other, from the NDP lobby, to turn the volume down on the television that was on. It is a request that was accommodated. This is in stark contrast to the actions of NDP members that evening.
I would also point out that I have been in this place a long time, and on both sides of the House. I have been in a situation where I have shared opposition lobbies with NDP members. They are often gathered together, having a jovial time, just as Conservatives were that evening. I have heard them playing guitars and leading each other in songs. That happens from time to time on late-night sittings. Both parties usually just accommodate each other when they are doing that. We have to share the same space. We try to stay out of each other's way.
This all has come as a complete shock to Conservative staff and Conservative MPs who viewed the events of that evening as exactly that. Our MPs in our corner of the lobby enjoying the evening, knowing that we were about to come in and vote on a confidence matter, having a playful time in the House of Commons, chirping the NDP members who were voting on another side of the issue, which they do all the time. They are now just being selectively sanctimonious.
That being said, let me talk a bit about the NDP member's conduct in the House. We saw unhinged conduct directed at the Conservative lobby coordinator by the NDP member for Vancouver East. Not once, but on two occasions on Thursday night, she used profane language and likened him to a certain body part. On the second occasion, an NDP staffer had to physically come between her and the staffer in question, much like how the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms had to direct the NDP deputy House leader away from the Conservatives she was harassing, as seen on the video that hundreds of thousands of Canadians have witnessed so far.
That interaction between the NDP member and the Conservative staff was an exercise of a position of power, to assert authority over and to bully an employee. There are witnesses to this conduct, as well as, I understand, a video, which I expect will be viewed in other forums.
Earlier in the evening, the hon. Conservative member for St. Albert—Edmonton was attempting to record a message for his constituents and Canadians about his work as our democratic reform shadow minister on Bill C-65, which proposes to delay the fixed-date election by a week in order to secure the pensions of 28 Liberal and NDP MPs.
An hon. member: Debate.
Hon. Andrew Scheer: Let me get to the part that is relevant.
Madam Speaker, while attempting to record this video, the member for Edmonton Griesbach engaged in disruptive, harassing, obnoxious and nuisance behaviour directed toward my colleague and his work, trying to derail his ability to record the video. At the end of the night, another NDP MP delivered a bizarre and passive-aggressive rant to a second member of the Conservative staff for the simple courtesy of holding a door, which otherwise would have automatically closed in her face. It has not stopped there.
Yesterday, in the lobby, the former NDP whip gratuitously addressed a gross slur to my chief of staff. I raise this just as another example of the bizarre, weird and unhinged pattern of behaviour that NDP members of Parliament are exhibiting around the Parliamentary precinct. If we are going to ask why pages were asked to leave the lobby, let us look at the behaviour of the NDP MPs contributing to that feeling they might have had in their workspace.
What is unusual here is that the NDP deputy House leader, whose conduct Thursday night was shameful, as seen on ParlVU and in other videos published on social media, was trying to lead the charge for parliamentary civility and decorum.
In June, she wrote to all MPs, inviting us to sign a so-called pledge with four branches. Firstly, she wanted MPs to pledge to “Support each other and call out abuse and harassment when we see it or experience it.” That is exactly what we are doing now about the excessive toxic behaviour on open display by New Democrats. Secondly, MPs were asked to pledge to “Call on all our allies to stand with us to support women in office and call out all forms of abuse”—
The hon. member is going on about other stuff that is not related to the matter at hand or to the situation that happened. It is more debate. Before it can be a debate, the decision has to be made by the Speaker on it. I would just ask if the hon. member has any additional information he would like to put on record that has to do with that particular evening that has not already been raised in the House.
The hon. official opposition House leader.
Madam Speaker, I will sum up by saying the New Democrats have made baseless and false accusations that damage the reputations of individual members of Parliament. The old saying that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its pants on is very appropriate here because they can make these allegations and, just by defending ourselves, we are contributing to the propagation of the falsehood. That puts all members in a very risky situation. Any one of us could get up at any time and make false accusations about who they saw in the parliamentary dining room bar and what one member said or did and not be held to account because the effect of the accusation plants the seed in people's minds.
Secondly, the behaviour by individual NDP MPs themselves was the cause for the breakdown of order in the House. The way they treated the Speaker, someone they have voted confidence in before, is absolutely shameful. They marched up the aisle, waving and hurling insults and abuse. It is clear that if anybody's privileges have been infringed, it is the Conservative MPs who are the subject of baseless allegations. If anybody's workplace was made toxic by behaviour, it was Conservative staff in the lobby because of NDP actions.
The proper thing to resolve this right now is for the New Democrats to withdraw their question of privilege, apologize to the Speaker for their behaviour, apologize to the Conservative MPs whose reputations they have slandered and put this matter to rest.
Order. This is exactly what we have been seeing over and over again when someone else has the floor.
The hon. member rose to speak on the question of privilege. I told him he had to wait until the previous speaker was done. I would ask members to please be respectful. Let us hear what the hon. member has to say so we can go on with the business of the day.
The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.
Madam Speaker, I was going to say that my colleague and friend has a great future as a fiction writer ahead of him once he retires from politics. He did not address the question of privilege—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Members have indicated falsehoods and that sort of thing. I would hope that all members are providing feedback, as they see it, but not implicating others. It is incumbent upon members in this House to be respectful of each other. They can put forward views of what may have transpired and the decision will be made by the Speaker.
At this point in time, I am going to allow the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby to provide any other information he wishes to add to the question of privilege now before the House. Any other debate will be put aside until it is decided whether the question of privilege is a prima facie case.
The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.
Madam Speaker, I have three points to make.
First, the official opposition House leader rose on a point of order. He did not address the question of privilege. I think that is very relevant to the considerations of the Speaker.
Second, the Speaker apologized for his failure to recognize the member for London—Fanshawe, which is important. The official opposition House leader knows this, and that error and omission is part of his torquing of this question of privilege.
Third and finally, I am glad that Conservatives have finally recognized that the pages had to withdraw from the opposition lobby for safety reasons. That acknowledgement is important for the Speaker to consider on this question of privilege moving forward.
I will not take any more time and I certainly will not get into debate. I thank the Speaker for a full consideration of this question of privilege.
Madam Speaker, while my hon. colleague was speaking about the very thing that I too witnessed on Thursday while voting, which was the member for London—Fanshawe storming through this House and aggressively accosting many of the members, in the lobby, the member for London—Fanshawe just made a knifing motion toward Conservative staff, like she was going to knife us. I just wanted to—
The Speaker generally does not rule on what happens in the lobbies, and there are better ways to address those issues. As I indicated, it is best just to bring forward the issues that happened in the House of Commons, and then we will be able to better determine whether or not a prima facie case has been made.
The hon. member for Vancouver East is rising on the same question of privilege.
Madam Speaker, I am compelled to rise to share this additional information with you. With respect to the day of the vote, what happened was that my colleague, the member for London—Fanshawe, walked up to the Speaker to register her concern for not being recognized and not being able to do her job because of the jeering and the loud noises that were coming from the Conservatives side.
This was orchestrated and premeditated to violate the rules of the House so that NDP members, when they got up to vote, could not hear their names being called. I could not hear my name being called or whether my vote has been registered. I know that was also the case for my NDP colleagues who were in the House that same day. As a result, my colleague, the member for London—Fanshawe, was not able to do her job.
Afterwards, in reference to the filming that occurred, it is true that there were, in total, five members in the House on the NDP side, and some of us did walk up to support my colleague, the member for London—Fanshawe. We walked up there to support her because there were over a hundred Conservative members on that side jeering at her, calling her pathetic and shaming her.
As we were sitting here watching this, we thought we should go and stand with her. Yes, I did make a comment about the Conservatives deliberately violating the rules of the House concerning the standing order because they were instructed by their whip staff to interrupt the proceedings of the House during the voting process when the NDP members got up to vote. This is the sum of what had occurred—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Excuse me, the hon. member does not have the floor. He should be very respectful in the House and allow others to speak.
This is becoming additional information during a debate—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes): Excuse me, but if the hon. member does not want to respect what the Chair has ordered, then I would ask him to step out.
I will ask the hon. member for Vancouver East to wrap it up because, from what I can gather, this is additional information.
Concerning the hon. member, I appreciate that he has stepped out. It looks like he is having a hard time controlling himself.
The hon. member for Vancouver East has the floor.
Madam Speaker, the member who just walked out of the House, the member you asked to respect the rules of the House, just made a gesture towards me in a threatening way. I want to note that so it is on the record.
I will just close with what happened on that night. When I was in the lobby, I thought the lobby smelled like a brewery. That is a fact. I hope the truth will prevail because I know there is a lot of spinning and twisting of the facts going on. As is always the case, the bullies always use an aggressive offence as a defence, and that is what we are seeing from the Conservative side.
I appreciate all of the interventions. Some of the testimonials provided for this question of privilege were more in the area of debate. I thank members for their additional information. We will take this into consideration as the deliberation is being made.
Madam Speaker, on the same question of privilege, I will add my voice as a person who was standing right here, which as you can see, is just eight seats away from where—
As the member is adding her voice, I want to make sure that she will provide additional information and not a repeat of what has already been said.
Madam Speaker, if I am allowed to speak and continue, I will do that.
The unique thing would be my perspective, given that I was standing right here, eight seats away from where the incident happened. It is categorically false that there were hundreds of Conservative MPs here at that time. That is just not true.
Second of all, I was standing right here when the member stormed all the way down here. The poor guy holding the mace did not really know what to do. He was standing there wondering what was going on. I watched the member, this many feet away, storm all the way down here with a very confrontational and aggressive comportment.
I certainly would not be one to lecture others about decorum when I am in the course of doing my job as a member of Parliament, standing in my place as an advocate for my constituents, but that is certainly a major distinction from storming all the way down here, with an elevated voice toward the Speaker, all of the pages and everyone around them.
More and more Conservative MPs left the chamber while that was happening. There were Conservatives at the very back who were asking what was going on and saying that the House was adjourned, so let us be done. The NDP members then made accusatory and false accusations of our deputy leader. The member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes came over here and sat eight seats away from me, in his own seat. At that point, the member came back here and was joined by at least three members from over there. They rushed over the table, to my male colleague, who was sitting down, who had walked up and sat down, and they stood over him aggressively and physically, over the front of the desk and with their voices raised, pointed down at him.
I can be heard in the video footage that has gone around saying, “He's sitting down.” No one in their right mind and with seeing eyeballs can make the argument that the person who was being a bully and intimidating another was the person sitting in his seat with three or four others standing over top of him with their voices elevated, pointing down and yelling like that. There is just no one in their right mind, and this is shown in video footage, that would say this could be concluded or perceived to be anything other than those members of Parliament, who were on their feet, physically and verbally bending over and intimidating the member sitting in his seat. That is backed up by the comments of the member for Kelowna—Lake Country, who sits right beside that member.
I cannot remember the name of her riding, and this is not her actual last name, but Ferrari—
Madam Speaker, I thought I was saying a different last name.
However, just like the member for Peterborough—Kawartha, I too have had many professional jobs before I was elected to this place almost a decade ago. This is somewhat like the incident where we all pretended that the Prime Minister did not do what he did in our first or second year of being elected here, when he stormed down to that end because he was mad about the length of time the vote was taking. Our then whip, Gord Brown, was frog-marched by him down here, but was too much of a gracious man to say anything. What happened—
The member is going into some past information. If the hon. member has anything else to add, I invite her to do so, because a lot of what she has indicated has already been raised. Also, the Speaker was here, so he saw what was going on. He experienced it, and I am sure he will be able to provide more context. We also have lots of video. I would ask the hon. member to wrap it up.
Madam Speaker, what I dearly hope is that we do not run into a situation where he experienced it differently and that we all pretend that what we cannot see with our functional brains and our seeing eyeballs is the opposite of what happened.
The members for Peterborough—Kawartha and Kelowna—Lake Country are tough women. None of us are shrinking violets. Many of us have gone through challenging things in our lives, including being in unsafe environments, and sometimes physically and verbally intimidating situations. I can speak for myself in that regard. It makes me allergic to bullies as an adult.
However, I share the comments they made. Never in my life have I been in a workplace where that kind of thing could happen and where there are no consequences. I really am looking to hear what the consequences are for members behaving in a way that is blindingly and obviously physically and verbally intimidating in a workplace.
Also, I will conclude by saying that this place is one of vigorous debate. It is one of where we have a duty to represent our constituents on the most important policy and political decisions that impact every day of their lives. These debates will get hot. These votes will be controversial. There will be lots of back-and-forth between all of us. That is the heat of the political frying pan we all volunteer to jump into. If people cannot take it, they should probably get out of it. I hope there will be—
This is really going into debate. The information was provided before and has already been submitted. I appreciate all of the additional input that members have provided, but for the most part, a lot of this has been debate. As I have said, the Speaker was here. We have lots of video to go through, and I am sure that a decision is forthcoming.
The House will now resume with the remaining business under Routine Proceedings.
The hon. member for Lakeland is again rising on a point of order.
Madam Speaker, the new thing, though, is my very close and direct perspective on everything, which is a unique perspective. The new thing I am really asking for is what the consequences will be.
We will hopefully see an answer to that, based on the decision that will be rendered. As we have just witnessed, members do get a little hot under the collar sometimes, and sometimes they do things that they may regret later or that are not acceptable in the House. Therefore, I would just ask members to please be respectful of each other.
Petitions
[Routine Proceedings]
Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.
The first petition is from residents living here in Canada. They say that Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that consists of meditation, exercise and moral teachings based on the principles of truth, compassion and tolerance. In July 1999, the Chinese Communist Party launched an intensive nationwide persecution campaign to eradicate Falun Gong and hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in forced labour camps, brainwashing centres and prisons, where torture and abuse are routine and thousands have died as a result.
Canadian lawyer David Matas and former Canadian secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific David Kilgour conducted an investigation in 2006 that concluded that the Chinese regime and its agencies throughout China have put to death a large number, in the tens of thousands, of Falun Gong practitioners of conscience. Their vital organs were seized involuntarily for sale at a high price. Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting has received about 1.5 million petition signatures from over 50 countries and presented them to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, calling for immediate action to end the unethical practice of forced organ harvesting in China and an end of the persecution of the Falun Gong.
The European Parliament passed a resolution condemning organ harvesting abuses in China and calls on the Government of China to immediately end the practice of harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.
Therefore, the undersigned petitioners request the Canadian Parliament and government to pass a resolution to establish measures to stop the Chinese Communist regime's crime of systematically murdering Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, amend Canadian legislation to combat forced organ harvesting and publicly call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Madam Speaker, I also have a petition which is indicating, first of all, that Louis Roy of the Quebec college of physicians recommended expanding euthanasia to babies from birth to one year of age who come into the world with severe deformities and very serious syndromes. The petitioners state that this proposal for the legalized killing of infants is deeply disturbing to many Canadians and that infanticide is always wrong.
The undersigned citizens and residents of Canada call on the Government of Canada to block any attempt to allow the killing of children.
Madam Speaker, I am tabling a petition on behalf of over 27,000 Canadians who are calling for tax relief for those living with celiac disease. Celiac disease affects one in every 100 Canadians, forcing them to live on a gluten-free diet that can be very expensive. The present medical exemption tax credit requires applicants to provide receipts, making it overly burdensome. Only one in five Canadians living with celiac have claimed the tax credit.
The petitioners therefore call for the creation of an annual $1,000 refundable tax credit for Canadians with celiac disease. I want to thank Celiac Canada and everyone who signed this petition. As a founding member of the all-party celiac caucus, I am proud to present it to the House.
Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition. The petitioners call on the government and the Minister of Finance to scrap plans to increase the capital gains inclusion rate to 66.6%. They note that increasing the capital gains inclusion rate will put Canada and Canadian business at a disadvantage. It is estimated that this change will have an impact on one in five Canadian businesses over the next decade. Finally, they note that a rise in capital gains taxes would strain health care resources, limit access to affordable housing options, exacerbate financial challenges for farmers and compromise retirement savings for Canadians.
Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to present a petition on behalf of constituents.
On behalf of the people of Swan River, Manitoba, I rise for the 57th time to present a petition on the rising rate of crime. The community of Swan River is struggling with crime in the area. Statistics Canada reports that, after nine years of the Liberal government, violent crime has risen 50% and gang-related homicides have nearly doubled. Within the last five years, the crime severity index in Swan River has increased by over 50%. Over 18 months, four individuals in Swan River were responsible for 309 total offences, 53 of which were violent offences. This is why the people of Swan River are demanding jail, not bail, for repeat violent offenders.
The people of Swan River demand that the Liberal government repeal its soft-on-crime policies, which directly threaten their livelihoods and community.
I support the good people of Swan River.
Madam Speaker, I have three petitions to present today.
The first petition is on behalf of the many Canadians who are concerned about the human rights protections in India. The petitioners state that, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, various actors are supporting and enforcing sectarian policies seeking to establish India as a Hindu state.
They state that Christians in India are being targeted by extremists, who are vandalizing their churches, attacking church workers and threatening or humiliating their congregations. They also state that crimes against the Dalit groups, including Dalit women and girls, are increasing. Moreover, they state that Indian Muslims are at risk of genocide, assault and sexual violence.
The petitioners are asking the Canadian government to ensure that all trade deals with India are premised on mandatory human rights provisions, that extremists be sanctioned and that the government promote a respectful dialogue between Canada and India.
Madam Speaker, the next petition I have to present is from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about human rights protections in Turkey, Pakistan and Bahrain.
The petitioners state that Turkish, Pakistani and Bahraini officials have committed gross human rights violations against thousands of Turks, including eight Turkish Canadians. They state that Turkish officials have killed hundreds, including Gökhan Açikkollu. They state that Turkish officials have wrongfully detained over 300,000 people without reason.
The petitioners state that multiple human rights organizations have confirmed the gross human rights violations in Turkey. They are asking the Government of Canada to closely monitor these human rights violations in Turkey and sanction the Turkish officials who committed violations against the eight Turkish Canadians. They call on the Turkish, Pakistani and Bahraini governments to end all human rights violations in their respective country.
Madam Speaker, the last petition I have to present today is from Canadians across the country who want to draw to the attention of the House of Commons the forced organ harvesting and persecution of the Falun Gong. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in forced labour camps, brainwashing centres and prisons, in which torture and abuse are routine and thousands have died.
They also want to call the attention of the House the work of the late David Kilgour, who conducted an investigation in 2006. It was concluded that the Chinese regime and its agencies throughout China have put to death a large number of Falun Gong practitioners of conscience and that their vital organs were seized involuntarily for sale at a high price.
The petitioners note that 1.5 million people from over 50 countries have signed petitions and presented them to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, calling for immediate action to end the unethical practice of forced organ harvesting in China and persecution of the Falun Gong. As such, they ask the Government of Canada to pass a resolution establishing measures to stop the systematic murdering of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs, to amend Canadian legislation to combat forced organ harvesting and to publicly call for the end of the persecution of the Falun Gong in China.
Madam Speaker, my colleague from Peace River—Westlock had so many petitions, I was afraid I would not get a chance, but here we go. I have a few petitions to present to the House today.
The first raises concern about the government's extreme euthanasia agenda, already the most liberal regime in the world. We see continuing proposals for further radical expansion, including one that draws the ire of the petitioners. It is a proposal to expand euthanasia to include “babies from birth to one year of age”. This proposal was made by Louis Roy of the Collège des médecins du Québec before a parliamentary committee.
This proposal for the legalized killing of infants is deeply disturbing to the many Canadians who believe it is always wrong to kill or wish the death of a child. The petitioners call on the House to block any attempt to legalize the killing of children in Canada.
Madam Speaker, the next petition is regarding human rights in Russia. Some aspects of this petition are a little dated, but it raises concern about the serious domestic repression in Russia, including violence and other measures targeting those who are advocating for freedom and democracy within Russia. We have seen, while Russia has been invading Ukraine, an escalating repression of democracy activists in Russia.
The petitioners want the House to stand with the people of Russia by working with allies to pressure the Russian government to uphold democratic and human rights norms. They want to see additional Magnitsky-style sanctions imposed against those who are undermining democracy and human rights in Russia.
Madam Speaker, the next petition I am presenting is in support of Bill S-210, a bill that seeks to bring about meaningful age verification for those accessing sexually explicit material online. Bill S-210 had the unanimous support of the Senate and the support of a majority of the House at second reading.
The petitioners note that a significant portion of the sexually explicit material accessed online is not protected by any effective age verification method. The average age of first exposure to pornography is very young. It is, in fact, 11 or 12 years of age, so many young children are consuming this material who should not be. In fact, exposing children to sexual material is a form of child abuse. The petitioners also note that there is a great deal of research on harms associated with this early exposure, including reinforcement of gender stereotypes. These harms also include the development of attitudes favourable to harassment and violence, including sexual harassment and violence, especially towards women.
The petitioners also say that online age verification technology is increasingly sophisticated and can effectively ascertain the age of users without breaching their privacy rights in any way. Therefore, petitioners call on the House to pass Bill S-210, the protecting young persons from exposure to pornography act.
Madam Speaker, the next petition highlights the horrific ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in the People's Republic of China. Falun Gong practitioners practise a spiritual discipline that emphasizes meditation and moral teachings based on the virtues of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, yet they have faced horrific violent repression by the government. That repression goes back 25 years, and it includes forced organ harvesting.
The petitioners want to see the House do more to combat the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.
Madam Speaker, I suspect this will be my final petition because of time.
This petition draws the attention of the House to human rights abuses in Eritrea, as well as actions of the Eritrean government that constitute foreign interference. Eritrea has been called the “North Korea of Africa”. There is a complete lack of basic political freedoms, and many have gone into exile. However, many of those in exile continue to face various forms of foreign interference, and their family members may be targeted with extortion as a result of the fact that members of their family are in exile.
The petitioners also note that Eritrea's government is an ally of Vladimir Putin.
Therefore, they want to see the government engage Eritrean political and human rights activists and pro-democracy groups, take a leadership role against Eritrea's human rights abuses and foreign interference activities, and enforce Canada's asylum law to prevent those who are associated with hostile regimes from being able to come to Canada. They also want to see strengthened sanctions against human rights abusers, and they are advocating for the release of various imprisoned parliamentarians and journalists in Eritrea.
Questions on the Order Paper
Orders of the Day
[Privilege]
[English]
Privilege
Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs
The House resumed from December 2 consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.
Madam Speaker, we have a continuation of a multi-million dollar game. That is really what this is all about. It is quite unfortunate that the people paying for this are Canadians in all regions of the country. Why is that? It is because the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada is more interested in himself than in Canadians. At a substantial cost, for weeks now, the Conservatives have been playing this game and denying the opportunity to have all other forms of debate, whether it is government legislation or private members' issues.
The leader needs to smarten up, do the honourable thing and allow the legislature to continue to work for Canadians, not for the Conservative Party of Canada. When is the member going to give his party's leader a shake and ask him to behave in a more responsible way? Quite frankly, he is in borderline contempt of Parliament.
Madam Speaker, I would observe that the Liberals are the ones holding up the work of Parliament. They are defying a clear and unambiguous order of the House to turn over all documents related to the Liberal billion-dollar green slush fund to the parliamentary law clerk. The law clerk can then turn them over to the RCMP. The Liberals are hiding and obstructing that order in the face of one of the largest corruption scandals in modern Canadian history. Conservatives will continue to insist that those documents be turned over; it is up to the government if they want to continue this. We will continue to hold up debate until that happens.
Madam Speaker, Radio-Canada reported yesterday that, in the ongoing interference in the Conservative leadership race by the Modi government, the member for Calgary Nose Hill was approached by agents of the Indian government to step down from the Patrick Brown campaign. We do not know whether a deal was cut or whether she was intimidated, but we do know that CSIS has identified a number of names of individuals who were involved in allowing the member who lives in Stornoway to take the leadership through now-serious allegations of interference by a foreign government.
Why does the member who lives in Stornoway refuse to get security clearance and to name the names? Will this member tell us if the member for Calgary Nose Hill is one of those identified by CSIS as being compromised by foreign government interference?
I am not sure that the questions being posed are actually related to the question of privilege, but I see that the hon. member was standing up, so he may want to respond. Nonetheless, I would ask members to please direct or at least link their question to the question of privilege.
The hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton.
Madam Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition has been very clear. He has called on the Prime Minister to release the names of all MPs who have wittingly collaborated with hostile foreign states. The Prime Minister refuses.
With respect to a security clearance, the Leader of the Opposition has also been clear. He will take the same briefings that the government provided The Washington Post and that the Prime Minister receives. However, he will not allow the Prime Minister to pick and choose which pieces of information the Leader of the Opposition is presented with and which other information might be withheld. In addition, he will not allow the Prime Minister to be the arbiter of whether he violated his oath of secrecy.
Madam Speaker, I appreciated the comments and the excellent speech that my colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton gave when this was debated yesterday.
The Prime Minister has normalized constitutional crises. We are in unprecedented territory here. The fact that the Prime Minister and the Liberals, supported by the NDP, refuse to abide by an order that was given to the government from Parliament is unprecedented territory. This is the longest privilege debate that has taken place in Parliamentary history. Here we are with the Prime Minister normalizing a crisis in what, in our system of governance, is meant to be Parliament's unfettered access to documents. I am wondering if my colleague could expand a little on how unprecedented it truly is that the Liberals refuse to release the documents.
Madam Speaker, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot is entirely right. This is unprecedented. It is unprecedented because of the degree to which and the lengths this government will go to obstruct a clear and unambiguous order of the House for the government to turn over the documents. However, this is part of a pattern, as the member alluded to, because there have been other bad precedents set by this government, also in the context of defying the will of Parliament.
This is a Prime Minister who went so far as to take the Speaker of the House of Commons to court to try to hide documents that Parliament and the Speaker had ordered with respect to the major national security breach at the Winnipeg lab. Yes, this is all the more reason why Thursday's opposition day motion cannot come soon enough, and why we need to vote non-confidence in this government and get on with a carbon tax election.
Statements by Members
[Statements by Members]
[Translation]
Historical Societies of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier
Madam Speaker, “he who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination”.
Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier has a rich history that is constantly being enriched by its many historical societies. We are currently producing an annual calendar highlighting 12 historical facts about the riding. I want to thank these historical societies for their co-operation and valuable contributions.
I want to thank the presidents and their teams: Michel Bertrand from Cap‑Santé; Louise Mercier from Deschambault‑Grondines; André Parent from Neuville; Jacques Matte from Pont‑Rouge; Pierre Gignac from Portneuf; Bertrand Juneau from Saint‑Augustin‑de‑Desmaures; Pierre Cantin from Saint‑Basile‑de‑Portneuf; Michel Tessier from Saint‑Casimir; Allen Dawson from Sainte‑Brigitte‑de‑Laval; Johanne Boucher from Sainte‑Catherine‑de‑la‑Jacques‑Cartier; Sylvain Gingras from Saint‑Raymond; Mike-James Noonan from Shannon; Réal Dufour from Stoneham‑Tewkesbury; and Debbie Chakour from Saint‑Gabriel‑de‑Valcartier.
The best way to predict the future is to study the past. I thank them for keeping our history alive.
To one and all, a very happy holiday season.
[English]
Giving Tuesday
Madam Speaker, today, December 3, we celebrate Giving Tuesday, a global generosity movement for giving and volunteering. It is a day when charities, companies, community leaders and residents join together to support their favourite cause by fundraising, donating, volunteering and spreading the word.
This Giving Tuesday across Canada, including in my hometown of Mississauga, volunteers and donors are helping organizations like Food Banks Mississauga make sure there is food on every table and the Luso Canadian Charitable Society make a difference in the lives of individuals living with disabilities, amongst many other great causes.
I encourage everyone to join millions of Canadians this Giving Tuesday as we unite to make a difference. Today and every day, let us celebrate Canadian organizations in communities across Canada, including CanadaHelps, which founded Giving Tuesday in 2013 in Canada along with several other founding partners.
[Translation]
Winter Tourism
Madam Speaker, on May 15, at Quebec's symposium on sustainable tourism, more than 100 stakeholders in Quebec's winter tourism sector sounded the alarm. Lack of snow is threatening to plunge winter tourism into an unprecedented crisis.
Last Saturday, that threat became a reality. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation, in conjunction with the resort, cancelled the Alpine Ski World Cup women's giant slalom that was scheduled to take place at Mont‑Tremblant, due to insufficient snow cover. This event is crucial to the local economy, but it will not take place this year due to climate change, despite the resort's extraordinary efforts.
This cancellation proves that climate change is disrupting our economy and our regions. However, the federal government is lagging behind in the face of this global challenge. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change and the Minister of Tourism and Minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec are Quebeckers. They know how important Quebec's economy is.
When will they take action for Quebeckers?
[English]
Convention on International Civil Aviation
Mr. Speaker, on December 7, we will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, a landmark agreement that has shaped a global vision in aviation.
This historic treaty laid the foundation for the development of a safe, efficient and interconnected air transport network, which has brought nations closer together in the spirit of co-operation and nurtured the growth of international travel and trade for the past eight decades.
[Translation]
At the heart of the convention is the International Civil Aviation Organization, a specialized UN agency that coordinates international standards for air navigation by promoting safety and ensuring the growth of air transportation.
[English]
ICAO plays a key role in fostering international co-operation and advancing the principles that keep our skies safe and accessible for everyone.
[Translation]
On this important anniversary, we celebrate not only the global impact of the convention, but also Montreal's enduring contribution to the advancement of international civil aviation.
[English]
Lambton—Kent—Middlesex
Mr. Speaker, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to each and every person in my home riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. It has been an honour of a lifetime to be their member of Parliament for these past five years.
I also want to thank each and every one of them for their incredible support and dedication in helping me to achieve this dream. During this time I have travelled countless miles and enjoyed working alongside such talented and committed individuals, who have continuously inspired me and strengthened our shared goals. It has been a privilege to listen, bring feedback and build relationships throughout our many valued communities.
I will still be their member of Parliament until we can finally put an end to the incompetence and corruption of the NDP-Liberal government.
My constituents should know that I carry forward the invaluable memories and experiences we have shared. I thank them for everything. I look forward to earning the ability to continue to represent many of them in the new riding of Middlesex—London, following the next election.
Sustainable Finance
Mr. Speaker, last week, I was thrilled to welcome over 700 change-makers from across Canada and around the world to the third annual Sustainable Finance Forum in Ottawa. Innovators, industry leaders, investors, academics and non-profits spoke on building a clean and prosperous economy for the 21st century. We shared innovative strategies to align our financial system with sustainability goals, discussed the remaining barriers and explored how we can foster an inclusive and just economy for all.
Finance plays an integral role in addressing climate change, social inequality, economic resilience and some of the greatest challenges of our time. Competing globally for capital investment, creating good-paying jobs and enhancing productivity remain key to Canada's economic success and resilience. I look forward to building on this year's momentum and working toward shaping federal policy that aligns with these goals.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Together, we are bending that arc.
[Translation]
Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise to welcome representatives of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, who are here in Ottawa to bring attention to key issues facing Canada's fire services.
[English]
Today and tomorrow, a record number of Canadian fire chiefs, 46 of them from across the country, are on the Hill to meet with parliamentarians about some of the main issues facing Canada's fire services, including issues involving equipment renewal, housing development, electric vehicles and explosives.
The chiefs will also be sharing the results of the “2024 Great Canadian Fire Census”, an invaluable tool that gives legislators and policy-makers a snapshot of the current state of the fire and emergency sector in Canada.
I urge all members of the House and the other place to avail themselves of this important opportunity to hear directly from these key representatives of Canada's 3,200 fire departments. I also invite everyone to join me tonight at the fire chiefs reception to show our support and, of course, to enjoy a little early holiday cheer.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Mr. Speaker, I have shoulder-length blonde hair, a royal blue blazer and a black blouse. Today, we recognize the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Twenty-seven per cent of Canadians have one or more disabilities that impact their daily lives, causing many to face significant disadvantages. The rising cost of living crisis in Canada has disproportionately affected many persons with disabilities, with one in six people with disabilities living in poverty in 2022, and 72% of persons with disabilities in Canada reported experiencing barriers to accessibility in their daily lives.
Canada must do better to work toward a barrier-free country. Let us recognize the contributions of persons with disabilities in our communities and to Canada, as well as recognize the many advocates and those who support and help care for persons with disabilities, who are the voices of some of the most vulnerable Canadians.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Mr. Speaker, today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. This year's UN theme is “Amplifying the leadership of persons with disabilities for an inclusive and sustainable future”.
[Translation]
Our commitment to achieving the UN sustainable development goals remains strong.
[English]
Persons with disabilities play key roles in creating accessible and inclusive communities and workplaces.
[Translation]
We need to make sure that their leadership and contributions are recognized.
[English]
Rooted in the principle “Nothing without us”, we are taking concrete action to implement the Canada disability benefit. We are ensuring that Canadians with disabilities have the support and opportunities they deserve.
I want to thank all the advocates working within the disability community for making the disability benefit a reality.
Happy International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
[Translation]
The Economy
Mr. Speaker, as Christmas draws near, a sad reality is becoming clear in Quebec. Nearly one in four Quebeckers expects to have to cut back on their holiday meals. Food inflation is hitting hard, and many people are having to choose between putting food on the table and keeping a roof over their heads.
The Bloc Québécois has voted in favour of $500 billion in Liberal inflationary spending. As a result, food aid, which was intended to be used as a temporary measure, has now become a permanent necessity under this Prime Minister. Instead of standing up for families, the Bloc Québécois is helping this out-of-touch government stay in power and continue overspending.
Quebeckers deserve better. With the Conservatives, they will have a government that cuts taxes, fights inflation and puts money back in the pockets of families.
[English]
Public Safety
Mr. Speaker, it was the Liberal Minister of Public Safety who said that bolstering the power of the CBSA to secure our borders was “not a priority”. He said this despite U.S. threats of 25% tariffs, which, if put in place, would kill Canadian jobs and crush our economy.
Last week, in just four days and on three separate occasions, 16 people crossed from Quebec into the U.S. illegally. Six of them were pursued by authorities in a high-speed chase, putting many lives at risk. In addition, we have as many as 500,000 people who are in Canada illegally, 260,000 unprocessed refugee claims and over three million temporary residents who the Liberals expect to leave voluntarily. It is astonishingly incompetent, and it creates chaos and a total loss of control at our border.
However, help is on the way. The Conservatives have a plan to fix the Liberal disorder at the border. The Conservatives will put Canada first and ensure that we secure our border to protect our security and our economy. Call the election once and for all, so we can get to work.
Foreign Interference
Mr. Speaker, we all know that foreign interference is a very serious issue. We can talk about murder. We can talk about extortion. We can talk about political interference.
Yesterday, we found out that we had a member of Parliament in the Conservative Party who had, in fact, been in touch, either directly or indirectly, with foreign interference related to the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada. That is the same leadership in which the current leader was elected.
For weeks, I have been asking and challenging the leader of the official opposition to get the security clearance and he continues to hide. I have been saying he has something in his past that he does not want Canadians to know. This is not just it; there is more to it. However, what we do know is that his leadership is a fraud, quite frankly. We need to have a foreign interference investigation across the way.
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Mr. Speaker, December 3 is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The theme for this year is amplifying disability leadership.
In my community, there are so many outstanding organizations like Kinsight, SHARE, Special Olympics and Community Living British Columbia that do that work every day.
This day also opens up an opportunity for the Liberal government to recommit to its obligations under article 28 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by fixing the inadequate and inaccessible Canada disability benefit. It must increase the amount of the benefit and remove the inaccessible disability tax credit.
I have another solution for the Liberals, too. Yesterday, I introduced a bill that would protect the CDB from clawbacks to end the injustice people with disabilities face under the current household income-tested system. The Liberals need to act on my bill immediately and protect the Canada disability benefit from their cruel and callous clawbacks.
[Translation]
International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Mr. Speaker, since today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, I want to pay tribute to three organizations that are here on Parliament Hill today: the Comité d'action des personnes vivant des situations de handicap, the Confédération des organismes de personnes handicapées du Québec and the Environmental Health Association of Quebec. They have come here to call on the government to take meaningful action.
It has been 18 months since Parliament passed the bill creating the new disability benefit, a crucial measure for lifting thousands of people out of poverty. However, 18 months on, the regulations needed for paying out this benefit are still not in place.
In the meantime, persons with disabilities are poorer and poorer, trapped in a system that does not meet their most basic needs. How much longer do persons with disabilities have to wait before the government takes action to protect their dignity and their right to a decent life? The Bloc Québécois supports their fight.
[English]
Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada
Mr. Speaker, as the ultimate test of who he is as a leader, the head of the NDP will soon be forced to vote on his own words. Does he mean what he said or is he a complete phony?
The leader said just before a recent by-election, “The fact is, the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people.” I may not agree with that Maserati Marxist on much, but I do agree with him on that. The question now is whether he agrees with himself, because he is the one keeping the Prime Minister in power.
Despite saying he ripped up the coalition agreement and even flip-flopping on his support for the carbon tax, despite voting for it 24 times, it is hard not to believe that this is not simply a self-serving ploy for him to qualify for his pension, while he continues to give confidence to the Liberals.
The question is simple. Will the leader of the NDP support Canadians, or is he only in it for his pension?
Foreign Interference
Mr. Speaker, last week, the public safety committee summoned 2022 Conservative leadership candidate Patrick Brown to appear to answer questions on foreign interference, a motion that Conservative members on the committee, unsurprisingly, voted against.
Yesterday morning, a bombshell news report came out that alleges agents of the Indian government interfered in Patrick Brown's leadership campaign. The interference, unsurprisingly again, was to the benefit of the current Leader of the Opposition. The reporting specifically alleges that Patrick Brown's national campaign co-chair, the Conservative MP for Calgary Nose Hill, was pressured to withdraw her support for him in that race.
We need to get to the bottom of these allegations. Who exactly was in contact with the member for Calgary Nose Hill and what was said? Only then will we start to understand the true depths of the foreign interference that took place.
Oral Questions
[Oral Questions]
[Translation]
The Economy
Mr. Speaker, no matter what we think of Mr. Trump's tariff threats, whether it is a negotiating tactic or a real plan, we should focus on what we can control. The Prime Minister has lost control. He has lost control of the borders. He has lost control of immigration. He has lost control of spending. Canadians are suffering in these difficult times.
Will the Prime Minister reverse his decisions to fix the damage he has done?
Mr. Speaker, when I spoke with President-elect Trump last week, I told him how well Canada and the United States work together to address the major challenges our citizens are facing, whether it is creating more economic growth, protecting our borders or protecting our citizens from the impact of fentanyl and other hard drugs. We are always going to be here to work together, and I have reassured the president of that.
As for us, here, we are going to continue to invest in Canadians, to be there to support people in difficult times, with measures like the tax break we are offering for the next few weeks, a tax break that the Conservatives voted against.
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has given President-elect Trump some big gifts. Tax hikes, the doubling of our debt, and the bureaucracy that is holding up our natural resources projects have sent $500 billion in net Canadian investments to the United States to create jobs for Americans. In the meantime, Canadians' personal income, which used to be on par with Americans', is now $20,000 lower.
Will the Prime Minister reverse his destructive policies to fix what he has broken?
Mr. Speaker, if the Leader of the Opposition were truly concerned about Canadians' well-being, he would not have voted against the tax break that we are offering to Canadians for the next couple of months. He would not have fought against the investment in the school food program for an additional 400,000 children across the country. He would not have voted against the dental care program, which has delivered services to more than one million Canadians so far.
On the contrary, the Leader of the Opposition just wants to exploit and capitalize on the challenges Canadians are facing, instead of solving them like we are doing.
[English]
Mr. Speaker, whether one thinks that President-elect Trump's tariff threats are a negotiating tactic or a real plan, what we do know is what we can control, and the Prime Minister has lost control of everything. He has lost control of the borders, lost control of immigration, lost control of spending and the deficit, lost control of inflation and housing costs, and lost control of his own caucus. This has put Canada in an unbearably weak position.
Will the Prime Minister reverse all the damage he has done, or will he just call a carbon tax election so we can do it for him?
Mr. Speaker, I think the Leader of the Opposition needs to reflect carefully on whether he really wants to amplify the erroneous narratives that the Americans are putting forward around, for example, our border, when less than 1% of migrants coming into the United States irregularly come from Canada; and where 0.2% of fentanyl coming into the United States comes from Canada. These are things that we would all do well to stand up and say that, yes, there are things we can and are working on together at our border. However, amplifying these broken narratives is simply not responsible leadership.
Taxation
Mr. Speaker, breaking things is not responsible, and that is what the Prime Minister has been doing for nine years. My job is not to cover that up for him.
In fact, he has broken our economy. He has doubled the cost of housing, doubled the national debt and doubled trouble across our economy with higher taxes on working Canadians. He is in the process of raising taxes on investment and energy right now, while an American incoming president wants to take our jobs and businesses.
It is understandable why President-elect Trump wants Canadian jobs to go south, but why does the Prime Minister want to help him do it?
Mr. Speaker, we recognize that Canadians are facing challenging moments, which is why we are stepping up to deliver for them, whether it is by delivering a tax break over the next few months that the Conservatives are totally opposed to, by delivering a national school food program that is already helping thousands of Canadians across the country and that the Conservatives oppose, or by delivering dental care that is making a real difference in the lives of over a million Canadians, which the Conservatives not only opposed but also did everything they could do to scuttle.
The Conservative leader just wants to exploit the challenges Canadians are facing, while we will solve them.
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister created all of those problems. A food program that has not served a single meal or a temporary, tiny 10¢ tax cut on a bag of potato chips will not fix what he broke, especially considering that his next plan is to quadruple the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre.
We can just picture President-elect Trump calling our businesses, encouraging them to leave Canada and set up south of the border where there is no carbon tax and where other taxes are falling.
Again, it is clear why the incoming American president wants to take our jobs. Why does the Prime Minister keep helping him do it?
Mr. Speaker, let me say it once again: The price on pollution puts more money back in the pockets of the middle class across this country than it costs it. The Canada carbon rebate is a cheque that arrives four times a year and helps eight out of 10 Canadians, in jurisdictions where it arrives, with more money than they pay on the price of pollution.
The price on pollution is how we fight climate change and build a strong economy for the future while putting money in the pockets of Canadians. That is what we are doing while the Conservative leader wants to abandon not just the environment but the economy as well.
[Translation]
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Mr. Speaker, with every passing day, we gain a better understanding of how the turbulent relationship with the Americans is evolving. It seems there was some confusion about the president's threats. Is this about trade or border security or drugs?
Now, after a long-delayed change of heart on immigration, the government is promising a detailed plan, which I hope will also be costed. When will we get that plan so we can offer assurances to the people of Quebec, Canada and, since we have to, the United States?
Mr. Speaker, we shared our immigration plan weeks ago.
We are investing to reduce the number of irregular migrants crossing our border. We have already made significant investments to hire more staff. We will continue to invest. Unlike the Conservatives, who cut staff at the border, we will invest to ensure the integrity of our border and keep protecting Canadians.
International Trade
Mr. Speaker, the sooner we get a real plan for the future, not for the past, the sooner we will be able to do something about the fact that the discussions are not focusing on real trade issues.
In addition to the threatened 25% tariffs, there are issues related to supply management, the cultural exemption, softwood lumber and aluminum. Can the Prime Minister confirm that there have been discussions about having a representative of Quebec, who is appointed by Quebec, participate in team Canada and in the future work of negotiating committees?
Mr. Speaker, I can confirm that, on Friday evening, we spoke with the president-elect not only about our borders, but also about trade, steel, aluminum, energy and softwood lumber. We talked about the issues we will be facing with the U.S. administration.
We went through this four years ago, so we know how to defend Canadian jobs, while demonstrating that doing so can benefit both sides of the border and while working together responsibly. That is what we will continue to do.
[English]
Canada Border Services Agency
Mr. Speaker, the last Conservative government fired 1,100 border officers. This allowed illegal guns and drugs to flow freely into our country. We are all paying the price of the callous Conservative cut.
I want the border officers rehired. I want thousands more recruited, and I want their mandate expanded so they can patrol the entire border. Will the Prime Minister do that?
Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is exactly right. Conservative cuts hurt Canadians. Conservative cuts hurt our border security. Conservative cuts just hurt the Canadian economy. That is why it is so bewildering that the Conservative leader continues to stand up on cuts for dental care and cuts on housing investments, cuts for the kinds of services and benefits Canadians need, whether it is a tax break for the next few months or school food programs.
The Conservatives only know how to cut. That is not how Canadians prosper.
International Trade
Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's inaction allows the Conservative cuts to continue to hurt Canadians.
[Translation]
We need to hire thousands of border officers and save good Canadian jobs. Donald Trump has apparently said that he wants to use tariffs to balance his budget. He is going to destroy the lives of Canadians to cover a U.S. deficit. That is outrageous, and the Prime Minister has to be clear.
Why did the Prime Minister return from his dinner at Mar-a-Lago empty-handed?
Mr. Speaker, indeed, the Conservative cuts that reduced the number of border officers have hurt Canada. That is why we are investing and why we will be there to invest even more to protect the integrity of our borders. We have already introduced many measures in recent years to reduce the number of immigrants and irregular arrivals and to stop U.S. guns and drugs from crossing the border into Canada.
We know that more remains to be done, and we are going to do it in partnership with the U.S. administration, since we share these security priorities.
[English]
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Mr. Speaker, despite 25% tariffs threatening to kill Canadian jobs and crush the economy, the Liberals have created border disorder between Canada and the United States. Yesterday the Minister of Public Safety said that bolstering the power of CBSA to secure our borders is “not a priority.”
After nine years, the hands-off approach is no surprise. There are half a million people here in Canada illegally. Unprocessed asylum claims are up 2,500%, and Liberals think three million temporary residents are going to leave voluntarily when their visa expires.
Where is the Canada first plan to fix the border disorder?
Mr. Speaker, we have made clear, and the Prime Minister repeated it again just a few minutes ago, that we will continue to support the important work done by the women and men who work for the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We think it is unfortunate the previous Conservative government cut the money available for this important work.
We have also said that we are prepared to increase both human resources and technology and equipment to support the important work that CBSA and the RCMP do. We will do that in collaboration with our American partners, and we still have a lot of confidence in the work that is being done.
Mr. Speaker, here is further proof of the Liberals' border disorder: Today at committee, the Minister of Public Safety was asked whether more CBSA officers will be deployed on our border. The minister does not know. Will CBSA officers be authorized to patrol between border crossings? The minister does not know. Will RCMP officers be redeployed to patrol the border? The minister does not know. The only plan the Liberals have is the plan to have a plan. It is creating border disorder.
Where is the Canada first plan to fix what Liberals broke?
Mr. Speaker, it would appear that the only plan the Conservatives have is to think up silly new rhymes in question period. What we said at the committee that the member referred to a few moments ago is something we have said for many months: We will continue to invest additional resources in the important work of the CBSA and of the RCMP.
We are obviously looking at all ideas that would help strengthen the security posture at our border. We believe that the security of our border is currently ensured. We believe in the integrity of our borders. We believe in working with the Americans and in continuing to always look to do more.
Mr. Speaker, the public safety minister said yesterday that bolstering CBSA powers to secure our borders is “not a priority.” Meanwhile, three million temporary resident visas are set to expire at the end of next year. Illegal border crossings are rising, and the newly elected U.S. president-elect is threatening a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods, which is an economic challenge we cannot ignore.
Where is the Canada first plan to end the border disorder?
Mr. Speaker, it comes down to this: Do we trust the guy who renegotiated NAFTA with Mr. Trump, the guy who secured the border during the pandemic of the century and the guy who went down to President-elect Trump's playing field to fight for Canadians to secure the border, or do we trust the guy who spent 20 years making up interesting rhymes and spent 20 years securing one and only one thing, his own paycheque and a bloated pension?
Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the Prime Minister's breaking the immigration system, do we trust the guy who did it? There are 260,000 unprocessed asylum claims right now, a record high. That is a 2,502% increase since 2015. There are around half a million people in Canada illegally, and there is a 630% increase in U.S. border control encounters of people illegally attempting to get into the United States. There are the longest wait times for many visas right now, and a backlog of two million applications.
When will the Liberals stop making up excuses and end the border disorder to help Canadians?
Mr. Speaker, I guess “broken border” was too dumb to reuse today, so the Conservatives tried something else. One cannot make this up.
We proposed a set of asylum reforms in May as part of the last budgetary exercise while we were putting money into the Immigration and Refugee Board to increase processing. What did the Conservatives do? They voted against it.
It was the same thing last week when they voted against a tax break, the thing they have been harping about for well over a year. These guys, I will say again, are all flannel and no axe.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
I am going to ask members, in particular the member for Dufferin—Caledon, to please not take the floor unless recognized by the Speaker.
[Translation]
The hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.
Mr. Speaker, there has been chaos at the border since 2017. Hundreds of thousands of people have crossed our border following the Prime Minister's reckless invitation. Canada now has 500,000 people who entered illegally. That is on top of the three million people on temporary permits who may decide to stay here.
The Prime Minister has lost control of immigration and of the border. How does he plan to fix the problem?
Mr. Speaker, we introduced reforms to Canada's asylum system back in May. We know it is necessary.
What did the Conservatives do? They did absolutely nothing. They spend their time making up rhymes and puffing out their chests, trying to look tough. They are doing absolutely nothing. When it is time to take action, they do absolutely nothing. They just sit back and do nothing.
Mr. Speaker, the first thing we did, in 2017, was immediately criticize the Prime Minister's infamous tweets. Not only were they completely reckless, they made no sense whatsoever. We have been limited to criticizing for nine years, given that we are on this side of the House. When we are on the other side, we will deal with the problem.
In the meantime, what we are seeing is a loss of control at the border. Weapons, drugs and human beings are being trafficked. Criminals are taking advantage of our weakness to bring illegal weapons into Canada. Smugglers get paid thousands of dollars to bring migrants across the border, which creates an even bigger mess.
Does the Prime Minister have a real plan or do we call an election so that the Conservatives can deal with the problem?
Mr. Speaker, it is completely irresponsible to pretend that they can solve the problem by adding to the existing misinformation about the security of our border.
I would ask our colleague to be more responsible before repeating slogans that I am sure his head office has forced on him. That is not in the interest of Canadians or in the interest of the Canadian economy.
What is in our interest is to work with the Americans, to support Canadian law enforcement agencies and their American partners in maintaining a safe, secure border while preserving its integrity, as is the case now.
Innovation, Science and Industry
Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying that the Bloc Québécois stands in solidarity with the workers who are losing their jobs at Lion Electric. It is the eleventh hour for the Quebec flagship of electric transportation, and Ottawa needs to intervene.
Lion Electric believed the Prime Minister and his government when they came to its plant in 2021 and announced billions of dollars for the electrification of transportation in Canada. Lion Electric made massive investments to be ready, but the zero-emissions transit fund did not live up to the government's promises.
Will the government finally activate its program and keep its promises?
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I think that all members of the House are concerned about the situation, particularly the plight of workers. Lion Electric is a flagship of Canada's electrification of transportation industry. We have been with Lion Electric every step of the way, having witnessed its creation and its evolution, as it grew.
Hundreds of electric buses will be built under the federal program. We will always be there for Lion Electric workers. We will continue to work with the Government of Quebec.
Justice
Mr. Speaker, Rassemblement pour la laïcité stands united with the Quebec government. Both are calling for the government to remove the religious exemption in the Criminal Code that allows people to spread hate speech without consequence.
The Liberals have said they are, and I quote, determined to find solutions that meet the needs of all Canadians. Luckily enough, the Bloc Québécois can help them out. Bill C‑373 does exactly that, and it is supported by 66% of Canadians and 75% of Quebeckers.
Will the government finally commit to supporting our bill?
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for raising an issue that brings the House together. We all have the right, and I would even say the responsibility, to support all the initiatives that we can, as the Canadian government, in order to encourage inclusivity and growth in a great country where diversity has been our strength and pride for many years. We are working with the Quebec government at all levels and at all times.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to listen to that again. It did not seem to me like an answer to the question.
Hate speech is supposed to be a crime, period. Either we believe that or not. Quebec is asking that the religious exception protecting hate speech in section 319 of the Criminal Code be repealed. The timing is good, because the Bloc Québécois's Bill C‑373 does exactly that. It is the only bill to do so. It conveys a clear principle that deserves clear support.
Will the government finally get behind the Bloc Québécois to amend section 319 of the Criminal Code and abolish the religious exemption?
Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with the Bloc Québécois's suggestion. This bill addresses a terrible situation in Canada, with hate and hate crimes on the rise across the country, both in Quebec and the rest of Canada.
To free up the House so that we can advance our debate on this bill, we would like the Bloc Québécois's help. I also want to point out that Bill C‑63 already addresses the aspects and sections of the Criminal Code targeted by this bill. If Bloc members are interested in co-operating with us on efforts to combat hate, we are all with them all the way.
[English]
The Economy
Mr. Speaker, the finance minister's report card is in. Canadians have the highest consumer debt in the G7, per capita GDP has fallen for six consecutive quarters and Canadians now make $30,000 less than their American counterparts. This is a made-in-Canada per capita GDP recession, and in the face of global trade and economic uncertainty, the finance minister's plan is to increase taxes on energy, entrepreneurs, farmers and physicians.
Will the finance minister reverse her tax increases so Canadians can keep their jobs and investments at home?
Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives seem to have an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the United States, but on this side of the house, we are proud to be Canadian. We are proud that the inflation rate in Canada has been within the Bank of Canada's target range all year; we are proud that we have the lowest debt and deficit in the G7, far lower than the United States; and we are proud of our universal single-payer health care system, which means Canadians live four years longer than our friends south of the border. We are proud to be Canadian. Conservatives should be, too.
Mr. Speaker, every day I turn around and there is another scandal coming from the government. We are proud to be Canadian, and we are going to fix it after the next election.
Since the finance minister does not like answering the complex question, let us start with an easy one. Last year, she made a commitment that the deficit would be no greater than $40.1 billion. This goes exactly to the finance minister's credibility. Will she confirm that last year's deficit was less than $40.1 billion, or has she broken yet another deficit promise?
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Order, the hon. member for York—Simcoe, please.
The hon. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance has the floor.
Mr. Speaker, if the Conservatives are so keen on supporting Canadians, as they like to claim every single day in the House, I have a great idea for them. Why do we not, together, give Canadians a tax break for the holidays? That is right. Why do we not lift the GST on prepared foods so a working mom can pick up a rotisserie chicken on the way home and make it easier for parents to buy toys for their kids for Christmas? If the Conservatives were honest and true to their professed ideals they would be supporting us in this measure.
[Translation]
Mr. Speaker, the holidays are fast approaching, and inflation is forcing Quebeckers to tighten their belts. One in four people in Quebec say they are spending less this holiday season, which is a sign that the food inflation of the past nine years is still not under control.
The Bloc Québécois is complicit in this government's inflationary spending. On top of that, the Bloc has betrayed Quebeckers and is preventing an election from being called this fall.
Everyone has just one burning question. When will the election be called?
Mr. Speaker, it seems that the member opposite is not looking at the economic figures, because the numbers show that inflation has been within the Bank of Canada's target range for the past 10 months. As a result of that success, the key interest rate has already been cut four times.
Still, we agree that Quebeckers need our support during the holidays. That is why we are going to give everyone a GST break.
The Conservatives need to help us do that.
Mr. Speaker, the best the Liberal Santa Claus and the Bloc Québécois elves can do for Canadians this Christmas is give them inflationary policies.
Canadians are struggling and will be spending less at the most wonderful time of the year because of this Liberal government's incompetence. The “Liberal Bloc” coalition is no gift.
When will Canadians no longer need a wish list? When will they get the best gift ever, a Conservative government?
Mr. Speaker, that is yet another completely incoherent question about the economy.
Nevertheless, I am very pleased that the Conservatives are talking about inflation, because we have good news for Canadians. For the past 10 months, inflation in Canada has been within the Bank of Canada's target range. That is why we can afford to give Canadians a real Christmas gift, a GST holiday.
The Conservatives need to help us do that.
[English]
Indigenous Affairs
Mr. Speaker, according to an investigation by the Ontario coroner's office, an additional 220 deaths occurred at Ontario residential schools, more than 50% higher than previously believed. This confirms what we already know. The Indian residential school system was a genocidal project, yet the government has not acted to protect survivors from rising residential school denialism, undermining truth and justice.
Will the Liberals support my bill to include in the Criminal Code the protection of survivors from denialists inciting hate?
Mr. Speaker, I think the more we find out about the residential schools, the more Canadians realize the horrific tragedies that occurred there. I can say, as a nephew of multiple aunts who went to residential school, we continue to focus on support and healing. That is why we have the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, to continue to have these discussions and to open the minds of Canadians to the experience of many first nations who went to residential school, the Métis, the Inuit, but also their descendants. We are going to continue to be focused on that support for Canadians.
Youth
Mr. Speaker, today there are nearly one million Canadians under the age of 29 who are neither employed nor engaged in training. We have not seen a youth unemployment crisis this severe since the Conservatives were in power. According to Deloitte, this will cost our economy $18 billion over the next decade. Will the Liberals listen to New Democrats and set up a youth climate corps so young Canadians can gain the skills and experience they need while protecting our environment?
Mr. Speaker, it has been a tenet of our government to support young people and we have done that in so many ways. There are 70,000 young people who have benefited from the Canada summer jobs program. The Auditor General confirmed just this week that those young people who attend CSJ actually do better in the workforce after having done so. We have always supported young people and will continue to do so.
Taxation
Mr. Speaker, the federal government has introduced a GST tax break that will put money directly into the pockets of Canadians, especially for families who need it the most. In my constituency of Davenport, every penny counts and a temporary GST tax break for the holiday season and early new year is very welcome.
My question to the minister is simple. Can she explain why the Conservative leader and his party voted against this tax break, especially when the Conservatives claim to be champions of tax cuts and affordability?
Although the preamble of the member's question dealt with a government initiative, the question itself did not.
Colleagues, I will have more to say about this at the end of question period, in terms of questions. I will mention to the hon. member for Davenport that, unfortunately, that question does not deal with the administration of government. I am afraid the question is considered out of order and I will be moving on to the next question.
The hon. member for York—Simcoe.
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General has revealed that the NDP-Liberal government has paid out $3.5 billion in taxpayer funds to tens of thousands of people who were never entitled to receive it in the first place. The Prime Minister loves to spend Canadians' money and he does not care if it is wasted or misspent, just as long as he can pose for the photo. Will the Prime Minister admit he has lost control of spending and his only solution is to raise taxes on Canadians?
Mr. Speaker, Canadians have seen many versions of the Conservative Party leader during his 20 years in Parliament, including the 2021 version that campaigned on the GST holiday. Unfortunately, this version has not supported small businesses.
Our government is giving Canadians a GST tax break starting December 14 that will benefit retailers across Canada. In fact, the Retail Council of Canada affirmed that our tax break will create major tax savings for Canadians, along with economic stimulus for our industry. Having more money overall in consumers' wallets should also benefit sellers of other goods not captured in the announcement.
Liberals will be there for small businesses and that will never change.
Small Business
Mr. Speaker, every day there is a new scandal after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government. Now the Auditor General reports another billion-dollar boondoggle, as $3.5 billion in taxpayers' money was paid to 77,000 people who were not even eligible under the CEBA program. Liberals gave Accenture $313 million to run the program without even having to bid on the contract to hire workers in Brazil. Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
When will the Prime Minister stop the incompetence and stand up for taxpayers for a change?
Mr. Speaker, I have already addressed this question. What Canadians really want to know is why the leader of the Conservative Party refuses to get his security clearance. Our leader has his security clearance. The NDP leader has his security clearance. The Bloc leader has his security clearance, and the Green Party leader has her security clearance. Two former CSIS directors have made it clear there is no substitute for clearance.
The Conservative leader owes his caucus and Canadians an explanation. Why does he not get his security clearance and what does he have to hide?
Seniors
Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberals, it is just more waste and mismanagement. The Auditor General's scathing report slammed the Prime Minister's treatment of seniors. The government broke the new horizons program. There are value for money concerns with nearly half of the approved projects. In one case, the government paid $23,000 for a door in a senior's residence that was never installed.
When will the Prime Minister actually start caring for seniors, end the waste and call an election?
Mr. Speaker, how dare the Conservative Party of Canada members stand up in the House and talk about the treatment of seniors. I will remind the member that her former leader, Stephen Harper, went to Davos for the World Economic Forum, instead of going to King—Vaughan, to announce to Canadians that henceforth, the retirement age would be moving to 67 from 65. We reversed that. That member should be ashamed of herself.
Also, we built the door.
[Translation]
Small Business
Mr. Speaker, nine years of this Liberal government means nine years of financial irresponsibility.
Yesterday, the Auditor General of Canada revealed that 77,000 ineligible businesses managed to get $3.5 billion from the Canada Emergency Business Account. This program was in part managed in Brazil.
Why does this Liberal government prefer to enrich foreign businesses and costly consultants instead of supporting our local businesses?
Mr. Speaker, our government helped nearly 900,000 small businesses through its CEBA loans, and more than 80% of them have paid back their loan and took advantage of the loan forgiveness program. We extended the deadline of the loan not once, but twice. We did what we had to do to help small businesses.
Seniors
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's report proves that the Liberals do not know what they are talking about when they say that seniors are so rich, they do not deserve support. The Auditor General showed that Ottawa is not collecting any data about whether its programs, such as old age security, are really meeting seniors' needs, and so it does not have that information now, nor will it in the future.
In short, the Auditor General has proven that, when the Liberals say that seniors do not deserve a pension increase or a $250 cheque, it is strictly a political choice.
Why are the Liberals choosing to abandon retirees?
Mr. Speaker, the member spoke about a political decision. Was it a political decision for the Bloc Québécois to vote against every increase to the guaranteed income supplement?
What did the Bloc Québécois do when it came time to support the Canadian dental care plan for the most vulnerable seniors in Quebec and Canada? It made a political choice to say no to dental care for seniors. That side of the House is where the political choices are being made.
On this side, we will always be there for seniors.
Mr. Speaker, again, according to the Auditor General, the federal government has no data it can use to determine whether its programs, like old age security, are meeting seniors' needs.
It seems to know for certain that $3 billion for increasing seniors' pensions is too much. At the same time, this same government is telling us that $6 billion in election goodies is just fine. No party agrees with these election goodies. However, all parties agree on increasing seniors' pensions.
Instead of improvising and thinking only of the next election, when will the government make the right choice and give Bill C-319 a royal recommendation?
Mr. Speaker, let us not get into the Bloc Québécois's political choices. It has made several political choices that are bad for the future of Quebec and for the future of seniors in Quebec.
On a different note, we have improved the Canada pension plan. Quebec adopted its own version to improve retirement pensions for future generations and future seniors. The Bloc Québécois was against that. We were for it.
Unlike the Bloc Québécois, we are there for the seniors of today and the seniors of tomorrow.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
[English]
Liberal Party of Canada
Mr. Speaker, the NDP leader put on a big phony show this summer on the eve of a by-election, pretending to rip up the coalition deal. Recently, he said, “[The Liberals] will always cave to corporate greed, and always step in to make sure the unions have no power.” We could not have said it better ourselves.
Conservatives have put forward a motion agreeing with the NDP leader. Canadians will soon find out whether or not the NDP leader means anything he ever says, or if he will sell out union brothers and sisters to keep this corrupt Liberal government in power just so he can keep his pension.
The question to the government is this: Have the Liberals put the coalition deal back together so that the Prime Minister keeps power and the NDP leader keeps his pension?
I will speak to this after question period, but that, again, was not about government business.
However, I do see that the hon. government House leader wants to answer.
Mr. Speaker, I wish you had afforded the same courtesy to the Minister of Finance, who also wanted to answer a question. I think it would be appropriate to make sure that we apply the same standard moving forward.
However, what I would like to say to the Leader of the Opposition is that we gave him an opportunity to debate that, and instead of taking it, the Conservatives ran away afraid. I am surprised that the member is even bringing this up, because when we gave them an opportunity to hold that vote, they said “no”. That is just another pattern of their behaviour, where they say one thing and do another.
Mr. Speaker, that is just not true. They just got mixed up about what day the debate is going to be held. It is going to be held this Thursday. The vote will be on Monday, and all Canadians will be watching to see who is on the side of Canadian workers. The Prime Minister launched a brutal assault on workers. He devalued their paycheques with his inflation. He drove up prices with his carbon tax. He has doubled housing costs. He has hiked taxes, cancelled big projects that put union members back to work and issued edicts that undermine their collective bargaining rights.
Once again, my question to the government is this: Have they put the coalition deal back together so that the NDP leader will qualify for his pension while Canadian workers suffer?
Mr. Speaker, the member seems to be referring to incidents last summer where, I might add, I consulted with the Conservative Party, which was urging me, as we did at the time, to come to the aid of farmers in Saskatchewan and throughout western Canada who were trying to get what was a bumper crop to the ports and international markets, which is the pride of Canada. We intervened to save Canadian farmers and to save Canadian union jobs. That is what we did. The Conservatives sat on the sidelines. We will always stand for Canadian workers.
Mr. Speaker, the NDP leader claims to have ripped up the deal with the Liberals, calling the government weak, selfish and beholden to corporate greed, yet he has voted over 24 times to hike the carbon tax, driving up the cost of everything. Meanwhile, two million Canadians visited food banks last month, and 18% of them were workers.
Will the leader of the NDP sell out Canadians again, or has the Prime Minister made another backroom deal with the leader of the NDP to secure his pension at the cost of Canadian workers?
Mr. Speaker, again, I am not sure that the question had anything to do with government business, but on this side of the House, when we do that, whether it was the member for Kingston and the Islands or the member for Davenport, our questions were taken away even though they were in regard to government business.
However, what I can say is that the Conservatives keep running scared. Whenever we give them an opportunity to do what they say, they vote against it. When it is cutting taxes and giving people a GST holiday, what do they do? They vote against it. When it is actually coming forward with a motion to vote confidence in the government, what do they do? They vote against it. They are too scared to actually act on their issues. They would rather provide slogans than solutions. On this side of the House we're acting for Canadians.
[Translation]
Taxation
Mr. Speaker, the government has introduced a GST break that will put money directly into the pockets of Canadians, especially the families who need it most. Unfortunately, we know that the Conservatives voted against this measure and continue to vote against the affordability measures we are putting forward.
Can the minister explain how all of us in the House can support Canadians in these difficult times?
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Ottawa—Vanier for her excellent question.
Indeed, the Conservative leader is very inconsistent. He says he wants to cut taxes, yet he voted against the tax break last week. He says he is against the Canadian dental care plan, which helps three million Canadians. The dental plan clearly exists, yet he says it does not. He is against social housing because he says it encourages Soviet-style living. He is against investing in building affordable housing in Quebec because he wants to stop construction, and he says that these units and projects also do not exist.
How much more inconsistent can the Conservative leader get?
[English]
New Democratic Party of Canada
Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the Prime Minister, Canadians cannot afford their rent or mortgages. The NDP leader has called the Liberals too weak, selfish and beholden to corporate interests to fight for Canadians, but it is the NDP leader who is keeping the Prime Minister in power. Conservatives have tabled a motion of confidence using the NDP leader's own words.
Will the NDP leader stand behind his words, or has the government made another spineless, backroom deal at the expense of Canadians?
Mr. Speaker, the Conservative members of Parliament are really getting to be pretty ridiculous around here. They have an opportunity to ask real questions of the government, but instead they choose to play petty politics. Yesterday I introduced a motion that would give them the opportunity to do that. Remember, the Leader of the Opposition tweeted about that over the weekend?
However, when given the opportunity they said no. Why? They are too afraid and too weak to actually do what they say. On this side of the House, we are going to stand up for Canadians and provide real affordability measures, even if they try to stand in our way.
Mr. Speaker, what is ridiculous is Canadians are struggling to feed, heat and house themselves while the NDP leader waits to get his pension. In a by-election stunt, he claimed to rip up his agreement with the Liberals, yet the NDP's actions prove the carbon tax coalition is driven by his pension and the Prime Minister's lust for power. Canadians cannot afford this costly coalition.
Will the NDP vote non-confidence or has the Prime Minister crafted yet another spineless backroom deal?
Mr. Speaker, it kind of boggles the mind that the Conservatives are talking about pensions for their members when the leader of the opposition has a $2-million pension from the House of Commons. It is unbelievable what they say. They say one thing, they do another. We cannot trust these Conservative members of Parliament with anything they say because pretty much what they are accusing others of is exactly what they do.
Public Safety
Mr. Speaker, Tara Desousa sexually assaulted a three-month-old baby. That baby needed reconstructive surgery. Tara Desousa is in a women's jail in B.C. This women's jail also has the mother-child program, which allows mothers to raise their children. I visited that jail and I saw exactly where Desousa was standing. There was a straight line that took me less than a minute from where Desousa was standing to the mother-child house, no large fences, a straight pathway.
What is this government doing allowing sex offenders near children in jail?
Mr. Speaker, the safety and security of children who participate in the mother-child program is obviously a top priority for the Correctional Service of Canada. It is important to understand that this program has existed for decades, including during the time that Mr. Harper was prime minister of Canada. There are eligibility criteria and protocols to participate in this program. It includes child welfare screening done by competent provincial authorities. The member opposite should be careful before he tries to politicize such tragic circumstances and these most heinous crimes.
Families, Children and Social Development
Mr. Speaker, our plan for a national school food program is moving forward quickly. We know that access to healthy food can make all the difference in a child's day. Children deserve to be properly fed at school and the benefits to families are obvious. On Friday, we saw more great news.
To the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, what is happening on school food?
Mr. Speaker, last week, in P.E.I., we announced that 1,500 more children will receive lunch this school year, and 800 more kids will get breakfast or snacks at school. Because of this program, 184,000 more kids this school year will receive food at school, almost 1.5 million meals. Now, the leader of the Conservatives said even today that this does not exist. I challenge him to ask the 184,000 kids, and they will school him.
Seniors
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are letting seniors down. They do not even track the impact of the programs meant to support them. Seniors are falling through the cracks and the government has no plan to fix it. They excluded them from the recent $250 rebate. The Conservatives want to cut support for seniors altogether. Seniors have been saying for years that the OAS does not cut it. Cruel and callous GIS clawbacks are putting them even farther behind.
Why do the Liberals care so little about seniors?
Mr. Speaker, happily, the member and her party have supported the Liberal record of success in supporting seniors, on things like dental care, expanding old age security and topping up the guaranteed income supplement. We have managed to accomplish this in this Parliament and it is a great tribute to those members who have voted for those things.
Unfortunately, we have had to do so walking into the headwind across the aisle from the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois, who, systematically, every time, vote against seniors.
Veterans Affairs
Mr. Speaker, veterans with mental health conditions do not need more red tape to get help, like support with home care services, cleaning and mowing the lawn. They must prove their condition every year. This policy is discriminatory, sexist and completely unnecessary. The Liberals are letting veterans down just like the Conservatives did when they cut veterans' services.
Does the minister recognize the extra burden she is placing on MST survivors, veterans and their families?
Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House, we have always been there to help support veterans. Since 2016, we have invested more than $11.5 billion in additional money to help support veterans and their families. Unlike the Conservative Party of Canada that closed nine Veterans Affairs offices, on this side of the House, we opened them. We also hired additional staff to make sure that the appropriate assessments and adjudications were done in a timely fashion. When it comes to mental health benefits, we have made improvements to ensure that when veterans apply for benefits, they have access to them immediately.
On this side of the House, we will always be there to help support our veterans and their families, as they deserve it.
Points of Order
[Points of Order]
The precedent that had been set in this place is that even if a member asks a question that is not related to government business, if the minister gets up then the Speaker had recognized that minister to speak. I am just asking for some consistency and fairness in the practice so we all know, as members of Parliament, the frame of how these questions should be asked and whether an answer is respected or is given or not, as well as the consequences when a member from the opposition asks a question that is out of order.
Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. While the government did ask its questions, you challenged them on their relevance to the administration of government, which is articulated very clearly throughout the course of our Standing Orders. When it comes to asking questions directly related to the confidence of the government, the coalition agreement and the fact that the fourth party continues to back the government in this place, this has direct relevance to the administration of governments. If a government cannot command the confidence of the House, it cannot administer the government.
Mr. Speaker, I am rising on the same point of order. To add to the intervention of the House leader, I would like to submit the following to you. There seems to be a precedent developing that if a member is of the side of the government, they belong to the political party of the government, and their question will not be answered if you deem it not to be in line with government business. The problem with that is that the member for Davenport and I are not members of the government. We are not parliamentary secretaries and we are not in cabinet. Therefore, we are entitled to the exact same rights you afford to every other member of the House.
If you are deciding that a precedent will be set and that they will be able to have their questions answered, you must afford the exact same respect to our questions. Otherwise, I would argue that you are breaching our privilege.
Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a different point of order, but it is related to the same question about when a member stands and poses a question that you find not to be within the proper frame of government business. If someone had stood and asked a question that used an inappropriate word, that member would be given an opportunity to rephrase the question and ask it again. In this instance, the hon. member for Davenport has lost that opportunity to ask a question forever. I wonder if you could see the latitude to see if a member can quickly reframe a question and make it within the proper framework of government business.
Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, if you look at the jurisprudence and the traditions of the House, you just have to point to references from decisions made by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle when he was Speaker of the House, when he determined that you were absolutely correct in cutting off a Liberal question that was not dealing with government business. You would be equally right in cutting every single one of those frivolous and vexatious questions coming from the Conservative Party. It is not as if its members do not know the rules; they just refuse to respect them. I would ask you to have them respect the rules; that if the question is not dealing with government business, you cut it off immediately and not let them finish, because that is what the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle put in place in the House.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
I have to admit I could not hear the last sentence he said, but I will read Hansard to inform myself as to what he said.
Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a different point of order. I am asking for an apology and retraction from the Minister of Labour in his use of unparliamentary language and ad hominem attack against the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. He referred to him as a slimeball. I clearly heard it. Colleagues beside me heard it. I asked him about it. He doubled down. It was unparliamentary and unprofessional.
Mr. Speaker, there was a time in the House when the honour of the members was to be presumed. The question that came from across was strongly intimating that the Minister of Public Safety willingly put children in danger. We do not do that in the House. We should not do that in the House. That is not cool and that is not correct.
That member should apologize to the Minister of Public Safety for impugning his character and raising such an absurd question in the House of Commons.
I withdraw that insult if those snowflakes cannot take it.
Order. It is perfectly clear to this Chair that members are certainly in need of returning to their homes for the holidays.
I am going to ask the hon. minister to withdraw that last comment as well, and I then will come back to the House on the rest.
Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of the season where white stuff is indeed on the ground, if members take offence to being called a snowflake, then I certainly withdraw the snowflake comment that I said about the snowflake thing.
The Chair is going to come back to the House on this matter.
I see the hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo is rising. I hope the hon. member's comments will be germane.
Mr. Speaker, that is a member of His Majesty's cabinet. There is no place for that. Second, to address the substance of the point, I did not say that the minister is putting people in danger. There are facts and the government—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
I thank the hon. member. I am going to come back to the House on this matter.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
I will address the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. The only reason why I was getting to the point is because I made an engagement to members that on the issue that was raised by the member for Brantford—Brant, I would come back to the House on this matter.
I certainly will invite the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo to get straight to the point, please.
Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the government policy puts people in danger. Three-month-old babies with sex offenders—
That is clearly debate. The Chair will come back on this matter.
To the matter that was raised by the hon. government House leader, as well as the member for Kingston and the Islands, the member for Davenport as well as the member for Battle River—Crowfoot, it is really important to recall that during Oral Questions, questions are to be addressed, of course, to the government, meaning to the minister or to a parliamentary secretary, regarding matters of the administrative nature of any government. The only exceptions are questions addressed to committee chairs regarding the agenda of a committee or to a representative of the Board of Internal Economy. It is not in order to ask questions of members of opposition parties, nor to ask the government to answer for positions taken by opposition parties.
I would like to remind all members that when they are preparing their questions, they clearly should take that into account. Members have been very good about having some preambles, or perhaps, at the very end, putting in a hook that relates to the administrative matters of government, or to a committee or to the Board of Internal Economy, and those questions are considered in order.
However, there are occasions when questions are determined to be out of order, and I allow the minister to respond, especially in cases where, and I will be very careful about this, the question contains criticisms of the government and I want to afford the government an opportunity to respond.
In the cases where questions from members of the governing party contain criticisms of opposition parties, without it being under the responsibility of the government, then allowing a response from the minister would only seem to compound that criticism without giving the opportunity for the party that is being criticized to respond.
That is the reason why we have these rules. That is the reason why it has been brought forward. I brought this forward last fall in a ruling to members. I will come back with a more detailed version of this, but I want to give members a quick top-line view on this matter.
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, could you then please explain why the party that comes from the governing side even has three questions? The point is for us, as MPs who are not part of the government, to still hold the government accountable. That is the whole point. Therefore, you have to afford the exact same treatment to every member who is not a member of the government.
Routine Proceedings
[Routine Proceedings]
[English]
Committees of the House
Indigenous and Northern Affairs
The House resumed from December 2 consideration of the motion, and of the amendment.
It being 3:34 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the amendment of the member for St. Albert—Edmonton to the motion to concur in the 18th report of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
Call in the members.
[Translation]
The House divided on the amendment, which was agreed to on the following division:
(Division No. 905)
YEAS
Members
AboultaifAitchison
Albas
Alghabra
Ali
Allison
Anand
Anandasangaree
Angus
Arnold
Arseneault
Arya
Ashton
Atwin
Bachrach
Badawey
Bains
Baker
Baldinelli
Barlow
Barrett
Barron
Barsalou-Duval
Battiste
Beaulieu
Beech
Bendayan
Bergeron
Berthold
Bérubé
Bezan
Bibeau
Bittle
Blair
Blanchet
Blanchette-Joncas
Blaney
Block
Blois
Boulerice
Bradford
Bragdon
Brassard
Brière
Brock
Brunelle-Duceppe
Calkins
Cannings
Caputo
Carr
Carrie
Casey
Chabot
Chagger
Chahal
Chambers
Champagne
Champoux
Chatel
Chen
Chiang
Chong
Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek)
Collins (Victoria)
Cooper
Cormier
Coteau
Dabrusin
Dalton
Damoff
Dance
Dancho
Davidson
Davies
DeBellefeuille
Deltell
d'Entremont
Desbiens
Desilets
Desjarlais
Dhaliwal
Dhillon
Doherty
Dong
Dowdall
Dreeshen
Drouin
Dubourg
Duclos
Duguid
Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry)
Dzerowicz
Ehsassi
El-Khoury
Ellis
Epp
Erskine-Smith
Falk (Battlefords—Lloydminster)
Falk (Provencher)
Fast
Ferreri
Findlay
Fisher
Fonseca
Fortier
Fortin
Fragiskatos
Fraser
Freeland
Fry
Gaheer
Gainey
Gallant
Garon
Garrison
Gaudreau
Gazan
Généreux
Genuis
Gerretsen
Gladu
Godin
Goodridge
Gould
Gourde
Gray
Green
Guilbeault
Hajdu
Hallan
Hanley
Hardie
Hepfner
Holland
Housefather
Hughes
Hussen
Hutchings
Iacono
Idlout
Ien
Jaczek
Jeneroux
Jivani
Johns
Jones
Jowhari
Julian
Kayabaga
Kelloway
Kelly
Khalid
Khanna
Khera
Kitchen
Kmiec
Koutrakis
Kram
Kramp-Neuman
Kurek
Kusie
Kusmierczyk
Kwan
Lake
Lalonde
Lambropoulos
Lantsman
Lapointe
Larouche
Lattanzio
Lauzon
Lawrence
LeBlanc
Lebouthillier
Lehoux
Lemire
Leslie
Lewis (Essex)
Lewis (Haldimand—Norfolk)
Liepert
Lightbound
Lloyd
Lobb
Long
Longfield
Louis (Kitchener—Conestoga)
MacAulay (Cardigan)
MacDonald (Malpeque)
MacGregor
MacKinnon (Gatineau)
Maguire
Majumdar
Maloney
Martel
Martinez Ferrada
Masse
Mathyssen
May (Cambridge)
May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
Mazier
McCauley (Edmonton West)
McDonald (Avalon)
McGuinty
McKay
McKinnon (Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam)
McLean
McLeod
McPherson
Melillo
Mendès
Mendicino
Miao
Michaud
Miller
Moore
Morantz
Morrice
Morrison
Morrissey
Motz
Murray
Muys
Naqvi
Nater
Noormohamed
Normandin
O'Connell
Oliphant
O'Regan
Patzer
Paul-Hus
Pauzé
Perkins
Perron
Petitpas Taylor
Plamondon
Poilievre
Powlowski
Qualtrough
Rayes
Redekopp
Reid
Rempel Garner
Richards
Roberts
Robillard
Rodriguez
Rogers
Romanado
Rood
Rota
Ruff
Sahota
Sajjan
Saks
Samson
Sarai
Sauvé
Savard-Tremblay
Scarpaleggia
Scheer
Schiefke
Schmale
Seeback
Serré
Sgro
Shanahan
Sheehan
Shields
Shipley
Sidhu (Brampton East)
Sidhu (Brampton South)
Simard
Sinclair-Desgagné
Singh
Small
Sorbara
Soroka
Sousa
Steinley
Ste-Marie
Stewart (Toronto—St. Paul's)
Stewart (Miramichi—Grand Lake)
St-Onge
Strahl
Stubbs
Sudds
Tassi
Taylor Roy
Thériault
Therrien
Thomas
Thompson
Tochor
Tolmie
Trudeau
Trudel
Turnbull
Uppal
Valdez
Van Bynen
van Koeverden
Van Popta
Vandal
Vandenbeld
Vidal
Vien
Viersen
Vignola
Villemure
Virani
Vis
Vuong
Wagantall
Warkentin
Waugh
Webber
Weiler
Wilkinson
Williams
Williamson
Yip
Zahid
Zimmer
Zuberi
Total: -- 325
NAYS
NilPAIRED
Nil
I declare the amendment carried.
The next question is on the main motion, as amended.
If a member participating in person wishes that the motion, as amended, be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you will find agreement to apply the results from the previous vote to this vote. Liberal members will be voting in favour.
[English]
[Translation]
Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois agrees to apply the vote, and we will be voting in favour, along with the member for Manicouagan.
[English]
[Translation]
[English]
(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)
(Division No. 906)
YEAS
Members
AboultaifAitchison
Albas
Alghabra
Ali
Allison
Anand
Anandasangaree
Angus
Arnold
Arseneault
Arya
Ashton
Atwin
Bachrach
Badawey
Bains
Baker
Baldinelli
Barlow
Barrett
Barron
Barsalou-Duval
Battiste
Beaulieu
Beech
Bendayan
Bergeron
Berthold
Bérubé
Bezan
Bibeau
Bittle
Blair
Blanchet
Blanchette-Joncas
Blaney
Block
Blois
Boulerice
Bradford
Bragdon
Brassard
Brière
Brock
Brunelle-Duceppe
Calkins
Cannings
Caputo
Carr
Carrie
Casey
Chabot
Chagger
Chahal
Chambers
Champagne
Champoux
Chatel
Chen
Chiang
Chong
Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek)
Collins (Victoria)
Cooper
Cormier
Coteau
Dabrusin
Dalton
Damoff
Dance
Dancho
Davidson
Davies
DeBellefeuille
Deltell
d'Entremont
Desbiens
Desilets
Desjarlais
Dhaliwal
Dhillon
Diab
Doherty
Dowdall
Dreeshen
Drouin
Dubourg
Duclos
Duguid
Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry)
Dzerowicz
Ehsassi
El-Khoury
Ellis
Epp
Erskine-Smith
Falk (Battlefords—Lloydminster)
Falk (Provencher)
Fast
Ferreri
Findlay
Fisher
Fonseca
Fortier
Fortin
Fragiskatos
Fraser
Freeland
Fry
Gaheer
Gainey
Gallant
Garon
Garrison
Gaudreau
Gazan
Généreux
Genuis
Gerretsen
Gill
Gladu
Godin
Goodridge
Gould
Gourde
Gray
Green
Guilbeault
Hajdu
Hallan
Hanley
Hardie
Hepfner
Holland
Housefather
Hughes
Hussen
Hutchings
Iacono
Idlout
Ien
Jaczek
Jeneroux
Jivani
Johns
Jones
Jowhari
Julian
Kayabaga
Kelloway
Kelly
Khalid
Khanna
Khera
Kitchen
Kmiec
Koutrakis
Kram
Kramp-Neuman
Kurek
Kusie
Kusmierczyk
Kwan
Lake
Lalonde
Lambropoulos
Lantsman
Lapointe
Larouche
Lattanzio
Lauzon
Lawrence
LeBlanc
Lebouthillier
Lehoux
Lemire
Leslie
Lewis (Essex)
Lewis (Haldimand—Norfolk)
Liepert
Lightbound
Lloyd
Lobb
Long
Longfield
Louis (Kitchener—Conestoga)
MacAulay (Cardigan)
MacDonald (Malpeque)
MacGregor
MacKinnon (Gatineau)
Maguire
Majumdar
Maloney
Martel
Martinez Ferrada
Masse
Mathyssen
May (Cambridge)
May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
Mazier
McCauley (Edmonton West)
McDonald (Avalon)
McGuinty
McKay
McKinnon (Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam)
McLean
McLeod
McPherson
Melillo
Mendès
Mendicino
Miao
Michaud
Miller
Moore
Morantz
Morrice
Morrison
Morrissey
Motz
Murray
Muys
Naqvi
Nater
Noormohamed
Normandin
O'Connell
Oliphant
O'Regan
Patzer
Paul-Hus
Pauzé
Perkins
Perron
Petitpas Taylor
Plamondon
Poilievre
Powlowski
Qualtrough
Rayes
Redekopp
Reid
Rempel Garner
Richards
Roberts
Robillard
Rogers
Romanado
Rood
Rota
Ruff
Sahota
Sajjan
Saks
Samson
Sarai
Sauvé
Savard-Tremblay
Scarpaleggia
Scheer
Schiefke
Schmale
Seeback
Serré
Sgro
Shanahan
Sheehan
Shields
Shipley
Sidhu (Brampton East)
Sidhu (Brampton South)
Simard
Sinclair-Desgagné
Singh
Small
Sorbara
Soroka
Sousa
Steinley
Ste-Marie
Stewart (Toronto—St. Paul's)
Stewart (Miramichi—Grand Lake)
St-Onge
Strahl
Stubbs
Sudds
Tassi
Taylor Roy
Thériault
Therrien
Thomas
Thompson
Tochor
Tolmie
Trudeau
Trudel
Turnbull
Uppal
Valdez
Van Bynen
van Koeverden
Van Popta
Vandal
Vandenbeld
Vidal
Vien
Viersen
Vignola
Villemure
Virani
Vis
Wagantall
Warkentin
Waugh
Webber
Weiler
Wilkinson
Williams
Williamson
Yip
Zahid
Zimmer
Zuberi
Total: -- 324
NAYS
NilPAIRED
Nil
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, my vote was recorded as a nay on the vote on the amendment. I would just like to have that clarified and recorded as a yea and ensure that on the subsequent vote, which was applied, it would be counted as a yea as well.
[Translation]
[English]
Environment and Sustainable Development
The House resumed consideration of the motion.
The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the previous question to the motion to concur in the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
The hon. government whip.
Mr. Speaker, I believe that if you seek it, you will find agreement to apply the results of the previous vote to this vote, with the Liberal members voting in favour.
[Translation]
[English]
[Translation]
(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)
(Division No. 907)
YEAS
Members
AlghabraAli
Anand
Anandasangaree
Angus
Arseneault
Arya
Ashton
Atwin
Bachrach
Badawey
Bains
Baker
Barron
Barsalou-Duval
Battiste
Beaulieu
Beech
Bendayan
Bergeron
Bérubé
Bibeau
Bittle
Blair
Blanchet
Blanchette-Joncas
Blaney
Blois
Boulerice
Bradford
Brière
Brunelle-Duceppe
Cannings
Carr
Casey
Chabot
Chagger
Chahal
Champagne
Champoux
Chatel
Chen
Chiang
Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek)
Collins (Victoria)
Cormier
Coteau
Dabrusin
Damoff
Dance
Davies
DeBellefeuille
Desbiens
Desilets
Desjarlais
Dhaliwal
Dhillon
Diab
Drouin
Dubourg
Duclos
Duguid
Dzerowicz
Ehsassi
El-Khoury
Erskine-Smith
Fisher
Fonseca
Fortier
Fortin
Fragiskatos
Fraser
Freeland
Fry
Gaheer
Gainey
Garon
Garrison
Gaudreau
Gazan
Gerretsen
Gill
Gould
Green
Guilbeault
Hajdu
Hanley
Hardie
Hepfner
Holland
Housefather
Hughes
Hussen
Hutchings
Iacono
Idlout
Ien
Jaczek
Johns
Jones
Jowhari
Julian
Kayabaga
Kelloway
Khalid
Khera
Koutrakis
Kusmierczyk
Kwan
Lalonde
Lambropoulos
Lapointe
Larouche
Lattanzio
Lauzon
LeBlanc
Lebouthillier
Lemire
Lightbound
Long
Longfield
Louis (Kitchener—Conestoga)
MacAulay (Cardigan)
MacDonald (Malpeque)
MacGregor
MacKinnon (Gatineau)
Maloney
Martinez Ferrada
Masse
Mathyssen
May (Cambridge)
May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
McDonald (Avalon)
McGuinty
McKay
McKinnon (Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam)
McLeod
McPherson
Mendès
Mendicino
Miao
Michaud
Miller
Morrice
Morrissey
Murray
Naqvi
Noormohamed
Normandin
O'Connell
Oliphant
O'Regan
Pauzé
Perron
Petitpas Taylor
Plamondon
Powlowski
Qualtrough
Rayes
Robillard
Rogers
Romanado
Rota
Sahota
Sajjan
Saks
Samson
Sarai
Sauvé
Savard-Tremblay
Scarpaleggia
Schiefke
Serré
Sgro
Shanahan
Sheehan
Sidhu (Brampton East)
Sidhu (Brampton South)
Simard
Sinclair-Desgagné
Singh
Sorbara
Sousa
Ste-Marie
St-Onge
Sudds
Tassi
Taylor Roy
Thériault
Therrien
Thompson
Trudeau
Trudel
Turnbull
Valdez
Van Bynen
van Koeverden
Vandal
Vandenbeld
Vignola
Villemure
Virani
Weiler
Wilkinson
Yip
Zahid
Zuberi
Total: -- 207
NAYS
Members
AboultaifAitchison
Albas
Allison
Arnold
Baldinelli
Barlow
Barrett
Berthold
Bezan
Block
Bragdon
Brassard
Brock
Calkins
Caputo
Carrie
Chambers
Chong
Cooper
Dalton
Dancho
Davidson
Deltell
d'Entremont
Doherty
Dowdall
Dreeshen
Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry)
Ellis
Epp
Falk (Battlefords—Lloydminster)
Falk (Provencher)
Fast
Ferreri
Findlay
Gallant
Généreux
Genuis
Gladu
Godin
Goodridge
Gourde
Gray
Hallan
Jeneroux
Jivani
Kelly
Khanna
Kitchen
Kmiec
Kram
Kramp-Neuman
Kurek
Kusie
Lake
Lantsman
Lawrence
Lehoux
Leslie
Lewis (Essex)
Lewis (Haldimand—Norfolk)
Liepert
Lloyd
Lobb
Maguire
Majumdar
Martel
Mazier
McCauley (Edmonton West)
McLean
Melillo
Moore
Morantz
Morrison
Motz
Muys
Nater
Patzer
Paul-Hus
Perkins
Poilievre
Redekopp
Reid
Rempel Garner
Richards
Roberts
Rood
Ruff
Scheer
Schmale
Seeback
Shields
Shipley
Small
Soroka
Steinley
Stewart (Toronto—St. Paul's)
Stewart (Miramichi—Grand Lake)
Strahl
Stubbs
Thomas
Tochor
Tolmie
Uppal
Van Popta
Vidal
Vien
Viersen
Vis
Wagantall
Warkentin
Waugh
Webber
Williams
Williamson
Zimmer
Total: -- 117
PAIRED
Nil[English]
Mr. Speaker, I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to apply the results of the previous vote, with Liberal members voting in favour.
[Translation]
[English]
[Translation]
(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)
(Division No. 908)
YEAS
Members
AlghabraAli
Anand
Anandasangaree
Angus
Arseneault
Arya
Ashton
Atwin
Bachrach
Badawey
Bains
Baker
Barron
Barsalou-Duval
Battiste
Beaulieu
Beech
Bendayan
Bergeron
Bérubé
Bibeau
Bittle
Blair
Blanchet
Blanchette-Joncas
Blaney
Blois
Boulerice
Bradford
Brière
Brunelle-Duceppe
Cannings
Carr
Casey
Chabot
Chagger
Chahal
Champagne
Champoux
Chatel
Chen
Chiang
Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek)
Collins (Victoria)
Cormier
Coteau
Dabrusin
Damoff
Dance
Davies
DeBellefeuille
Desbiens
Desilets
Desjarlais
Dhaliwal
Dhillon
Diab
Drouin
Dubourg
Duclos
Duguid
Dzerowicz
Ehsassi
El-Khoury
Erskine-Smith
Fisher
Fonseca
Fortier
Fortin
Fragiskatos
Fraser
Freeland
Fry
Gaheer
Gainey
Garon
Garrison
Gaudreau
Gazan
Gerretsen
Gill
Gould
Green
Guilbeault
Hajdu
Hanley
Hardie
Hepfner
Holland
Housefather
Hughes
Hussen
Hutchings
Iacono
Idlout
Ien
Jaczek
Johns
Jones
Jowhari
Julian
Kayabaga
Kelloway
Khalid
Khera
Koutrakis
Kusmierczyk
Kwan
Lalonde
Lambropoulos
Lapointe
Larouche
Lattanzio
Lauzon
LeBlanc
Lebouthillier
Lemire
Lightbound
Long
Longfield
Louis (Kitchener—Conestoga)
MacAulay (Cardigan)
MacDonald (Malpeque)
MacGregor
MacKinnon (Gatineau)
Maloney
Martinez Ferrada
Masse
Mathyssen
May (Cambridge)
May (Saanich—Gulf Islands)
McDonald (Avalon)
McGuinty
McKay
McKinnon (Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam)
McLeod
McPherson
Mendès
Mendicino
Miao
Michaud
Miller
Morrice
Morrissey
Murray
Naqvi
Noormohamed
Normandin
O'Connell
Oliphant
O'Regan
Pauzé
Perron
Petitpas Taylor
Plamondon
Powlowski
Qualtrough
Rayes
Robillard
Rogers
Romanado
Rota
Sahota
Sajjan
Saks
Samson
Sarai
Sauvé
Savard-Tremblay
Scarpaleggia
Schiefke
Serré
Sgro
Shanahan
Sheehan
Sidhu (Brampton East)
Sidhu (Brampton South)
Simard
Sinclair-Desgagné
Singh
Sorbara
Sousa
Ste-Marie
St-Onge
Sudds
Tassi
Taylor Roy
Thériault
Therrien
Thompson
Trudeau
Trudel
Turnbull
Valdez
Van Bynen
van Koeverden
Vandal
Vandenbeld
Vignola
Villemure
Virani
Weiler
Wilkinson
Yip
Zahid
Zuberi
Total: -- 207
NAYS
Members
AboultaifAitchison
Albas
Allison
Arnold
Baldinelli
Barlow
Barrett
Berthold
Bezan
Block
Bragdon
Brassard
Brock
Calkins
Caputo
Carrie
Chambers
Chong
Cooper
Dalton
Dancho
Davidson
Deltell
d'Entremont
Doherty
Dowdall
Dreeshen
Duncan (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry)
Ellis
Epp
Falk (Battlefords—Lloydminster)
Falk (Provencher)
Fast
Ferreri
Findlay
Gallant
Généreux
Genuis
Gladu
Godin
Goodridge
Gourde
Gray
Hallan
Jeneroux
Jivani
Kelly
Khanna
Kitchen
Kmiec
Kram
Kramp-Neuman
Kurek
Kusie
Lake
Lantsman
Lawrence
Lehoux
Leslie
Lewis (Essex)
Lewis (Haldimand—Norfolk)
Liepert
Lloyd
Lobb
Maguire
Majumdar
Martel
Mazier
McCauley (Edmonton West)
McLean
Melillo
Moore
Morantz
Morrison
Motz
Muys
Nater
Patzer
Paul-Hus
Perkins
Poilievre
Redekopp
Reid
Rempel Garner
Richards
Roberts
Rood
Ruff
Scheer
Schmale
Seeback
Shields
Shipley
Small
Soroka
Steinley
Stewart (Toronto—St. Paul's)
Stewart (Miramichi—Grand Lake)
Strahl
Stubbs
Thomas
Tochor
Tolmie
Uppal
Van Popta
Vidal
Vien
Viersen
Vis
Wagantall
Warkentin
Waugh
Webber
Williams
Williamson
Zimmer
Total: -- 117
PAIRED
NilPrivilege
Refusal of Witness to Respond to Questions from Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security—Speaker's Ruling
[Speaker's Ruling]
I am now ready to rule on the question of privilege raised on November 7 by the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford concerning the refusal of a witness to answer questions at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Speaker: I will invite members to please carry on their conversations outside so that all other members who wish to can hear this message, especially the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford.
The committee had reported earlier that same day, in its 14th report, that a witness had refused to answer questions, even after being formally ordered to do so. This was Ms. Lauren Chen, who appeared before the committee on November 5.
According to the member, the witness showed contempt for the committee and the House by refusing to answer. The member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford asked the Chair to find a prima facie question of privilege so that he could, according to his notice, move a motion calling Ms. Chen to the bar of the House to receive an admonishment and answer questions.
[Translation]
The member for Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia argued that this situation constituted a breach of privilege and even a contempt of the House. She noted that the witness refused to answer even the simplest questions and that these types of refusals are unfortunately becoming a trend. However, she did concede that Ms. Chen's refusal was based on the fact that she is facing a criminal investigation in the United States. This raises questions about the extent of the usual protections that a committee witness can expect from the cloak of parliamentary privilege. For that reason, the member suggested that the matter should be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
[English]
The member for Kildonan—St. Paul contended that Ms. Chen’s refusal to answer the questions of committee members was contrary to the House committees’ well-established expectation to receive answers from witnesses. She emphasized that allowing witnesses to disregard committee questions hindered their ability to seek accountability from individuals appearing before them. She urged the Chair to ensure that Ms. Chen was held to account for her flagrant disregard for the House’s authority.
The parliamentary secretary to the government House leader also intervened. He stated that Ms. Chen’s reasons for not answering questions were based on her concerns about the risk of self-incrimination while under criminal investigation in the United States. He suggested that, while the House has the power to compel responses to members’ questions, the House needs to use its authority thoughtfully.
According to the parliamentary secretary, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is the appropriate body for examining the circumstances and making recommendations to the House on a way to proceed. He also asserted that making a prima facie finding now would be premature and that both the Chair and the House should wait for the committee to report on the matter first.
[Translation]
Historically, the House has tended to view the refusal by witnesses to answer questions with great seriousness. Having reviewed the committee proceedings of November 5, 2024, and having also considered the committee's report, it is clear to the Chair that Ms. Chen repeatedly refused to provide answers to questions posed by committee members. She stated that her refusal stemmed from concerns about self-incrimination in relation to ongoing investigations and court proceedings in the United States.
As stated in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at pages 1078 and 1079, and I quote:
Witnesses must answer all questions which the committee puts to them. A witness may object to a question asked by an individual committee member. However, if the committee agrees that the question be put to the witness, the witness is obliged to reply. On the other hand, members have been urged to display the “appropriate courtesy and fairness” when questioning witnesses. The actions of a witness who refuses to answer questions may be reported to the House.
[English]
While the Chair understands Ms. Chen's concerns about self-incrimination in the United States, it is not the Chair's role to rule on legal matters. My responsibility is to ensure that the House's authority is respected.
Accordingly, I am satisfied that this matter touches on parliamentary privilege, and I am prepared to find that the matter constitutes a prima facie question of privilege. However, in the case before us, the Chair is also obliged to consider other unusual factors, especially in light of the course of action the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford proposes to take.
[Translation]
There are limits on the House’s jurisdiction over an individual located outside of Canada. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, on page 981, in footnote 155, confirms that an order of the House to compel the attendance of a witness depends on the witness being in Canada. This is similar to a summons issued by a House committee. On the same page, it states:
The Standing Orders place no explicit limitation on this power. In theory, it applies to any person on Canadian soil.
[English]
Erskine May, 25th edition, in a section entitled “Witnesses from overseas”, states at page 977, “Committees sitting abroad cannot exercise a power formally to send for persons, papers and records. Nor are witnesses summoned from overseas to give evidence in the United Kingdom”. On the same page, in respect of foreign nationals, Erskine May states that the power to summon is unlimited as long as the individual is “present within the jurisdiction of Parliament”. To my knowledge, Ms. Chen is currently in the United States.
[Translation]
These procedural authorities point to a central truth about the House’s power to compel the attendance of an individual, namely, that in using this power, the House must ensure it has the means to guarantee the desired outcome it seeks.
The motion the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford appears to want to move would call for Ms. Chen to be found in contempt and be ordered to appear at the Bar. However, it may not be within the control of the House at this time to compel Ms. Chen’s presence before it. The situation very much leaves the Chair in a conundrum, as it does not serve the House’s interests to adopt orders it cannot enforce.
[English]
Accordingly, and as indicated already, I am prepared to find a prima facie case of privilege. I believe that, in the circumstances, the best course of action would be for the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford to move that the matter be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. This would enable the committee to properly consider the unique elements of this case and suggest an appropriate and timely course of action to the House that ensures its privileges are respected. It may also provide more general guidance for any witness in similar circumstances to Ms. Chen’s.
I would like to make one last point. The House is currently seized with two motions on different matters of privilege. Only after the proceedings on the two questions of privilege are adjourned or disposed of will the member be in a position to move his privilege motion. This will afford time for the member to consult the clerks at the table for advice before finalizing the wording of his motion.
Given the unanimity of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security's report on this matter, it is the Chair's hope that members will be able to come to an agreement quickly as to how to best dispose of this motion and, if adopted, to allow the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to undertake its study expeditiously.
I thank all members for their attention.
Orders of the Day
[Privilege]
[English]
Privilege
Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs
The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.
The hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke has the floor.
I wish to let all members know that there will be great latitude in the hon. member's intervention.
Mr. Speaker, this morning I handed a letter to your office informing you of my resignation, effective in January.
After more than four years waiting, I now have a family doctor, and it is time to listen to his advice about putting my health first. This means these are likely my final remarks as the member of Parliament for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. I want to thank the Speaker and the House in advance for granting me some latitude today and, by doing so, perhaps saving me from having to write a book.
Let me start by thanking all those who have supported me over what has been nearly 14 years as a member of Parliament.
First and foremost, I want to thank the constituents of Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke for giving me the privilege of representing them here for four terms. It has been and continues to be an honour to work with the diverse communities that make up this riding, including six municipalities, four first nations and the large contingent of military families. In particular, I am thankful for the support I have received from the South Asian community, the Jewish community and, of course, the 2SLGBTQI+ community, both in my riding and from across the country.
Special thanks also go to my campaign teams in six elections and all the volunteers and donors and the many trade unionists who always came out to support me.
My biggest thanks, of course, goes to my husband, Teddy Pardede. When I first told him I was considering running for office, he said, “Okay, honey, you go do that,” but he has steadfastly stood by me as a public figure despite it turning out to require a little more than that from him and to be a little more complicated all round. He has supported me as a public figure for 20 of the 25 years we have been together.
Members know I am a crier, and I promised I would not cry completely through the speech, but I am going to get a few opportunities.
I have to confess that sometimes I am still a little astonished to actually be standing in the House. How did a queer kid from a farm in Nebraska, from a working-class family riven by domestic violence and child abuse, both shrouded in silence, become a member of Parliament? It was never part of my plan. I will always be grateful to Canada for providing me refuge more than 50 years ago, when it was still illegal for men to have sex with men in the United States, and for giving me so many opportunities to build a life here.
Who is to blame for me being a New Democrat MP? Well, it started with Tommy Douglas, who signed me up as a party member when he was my MP in Nanaimo more than 45 years ago; I had to sign the card before I got dessert. That resulted in my working with and for the party for over a decade, including a stint on Ed Broadbent's staff here in in Ottawa nearly 40 years ago.
After that time, I spent over a decade involved in human rights and international solidarity work. When I arrived back in Canada after a year of human rights work abroad and took up teaching again, I fell for an invitation from the new NDP leader, Jack Layton, to have lunch to discuss my human rights work. We did discuss human rights, but at the end of that lunch Jack said, “I'll bet you think there should be gay members of Parliament,” and of course, I agreed. Then he said, “Well, how do you think they get there if people like you will not run?” So I agreed, despite repeatedly having said no before and despite the many, myself included, who thought the path for a gay New Democrat running in the second-largest military riding in the country was more than a little uphill.
When I came to the House, it was after two losses, but more importantly, it was after more than 20 years teaching criminal justice, after serving as a municipal police board member and city councillor, and after working as an international human rights researcher in Indonesia, East Timor and Afghanistan, where I was often in the field alongside Canadian peacekeepers. I have tried to be true to who I am and to bring the expertise I acquired along the way to my work here in the House. As an out and proud member of the queer community, I hope I have demonstrated that diversity is one of our strengths as a nation and that more diverse Parliaments do indeed make better laws.
From 2011, I have been privileged to serve as the NDP spokesperson for queer rights. Fourteen years as the critic on one topic may be some kind of record, I am not sure, and we are still the only party to have such a position. I am proud to have successfully led initiatives in the House to add transgender rights to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the hate crimes section of the Criminal Code, to ban conversion therapy, to bring an end to the gay blood ban and to provide a path to safety in Canada for queer and trans refugees whose lives are at imminent risk. However, I want to stress that any progress on queer rights that has been made here has only been possible because of years of struggle at the grassroots level across the country by the queer community and the always unwavering support of my caucus, our leader and, I have to say, key MPs in other parties.
In the House, I have also served as the NDP public safety, defence and justice critic over the years. Again, I have been able to lead initiatives in the House that have led to the elimination of criminal records for the personal possession of drugs in this country and to expand access to community-based bail supervision, both to help make communities more safe and also more just.
Some things are still left undone. My initiative on coercive and controlling behaviour in intimate partner violence, now in the form of the member for Victoria's private member's bill, Bill C-332, remains stuck in the other place, despite having passed here unanimously last summer. I remain disappointed that my repeated attempts have failed to convince both Conservative and Liberal governments to remove self-harm from the military code of conduct as a disciplinary offence, an initiative that would signal an important change in attitude toward mental health in the military.
I have been privileged to be able to bring the whole of who I am to my work here in the House, despite increasing levels of harassment and threats for doing so. I am disappointed that we failed to pass my private member's bill to add the queer community to federal employment equity legislation so we can have a workforce that fairly represents the whole of the country we are. As a gay man who lost many friends in the first round of the AIDS epidemic, I remain perplexed by the government's failure to take the measures necessary to eliminate new cases of HIV in this country by 2030. All it would take is decriminalizing HIV non-disclosure and modest annual expenditures on community-based testing and treatment programs.
As an MP, I have also worked to provide strong service to my riding. I successfully secured better protections for southern resident killer whales, got federal funding for the initial cleanup of Esquimalt Harbour and delivered support for the local shipbuilding industry, as well as providing strong advocacy for individual constituents in their dealings with the federal government.
Let me stop to say how important the support is that I have received from my staff here in Ottawa and in my constituency office, most of whom, breaking the rule, are here in the gallery right now. They have been loyal and long-serving. Again, maybe I have set some records here; I have one staff person who has been with me from day one, and we refer to the other person in the office as the junior staff person because they have only been here 12 years. The same is true in my constituency office. None of what I have been able to accomplish would have been possible without their support.
I am especially proud to be part of this, my fourth, NDP caucus, which is particularly skilled and hard-working and which, under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh, has secured many important victories for ordinary working Canadians—
Mr. Speaker, this is my last speech, so I did that on purpose.
This includes dental care, an indigenous-led housing program and anti-scab legislation, but I am also proud to be part of a caucus that recognizes we truly live in a climate emergency and there is so much more that has to be done.
I came to the House believing, as most of us do, that we can work together despite our differences to make both Canada and the world a better place. I have worked with MPs from all parties on common initiatives and much of that work was done at the committee level. During my time at the defence committee, over five years, I worked with Liberal chair Stephen Fuhr and the Conservative spokesperson, the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, and together we were able to visit Canadian Forces trainers working in Ukraine, members stationed with NATO in Latvia and Canadian peacekeepers in Mali. As well, we managed to send the House more than 20 unanimous reports on how to improve Canada's defences.
I only wish committee work like this would get half the public attention that the theatre that is question period gets from both the media and the public.
Unfortunately, we now live in the midst of a rising tide of hate and violence, and it is more important now than ever that each of us continues to speak out against hatred. I remain appalled by the constant attack on transgender Canadians, especially transgender kids. I am disturbed by the ongoing wave of incidents of anti-Semitism nationally and even in my own riding. Solidarity matters when fighting against hate, whether it is directed toward my community or any other community in this country. As once a new Canadian myself, I will always speak out against attempts to blame newcomers for all our ills. None of this hate, none of this attack on immigrants, none of this attack on transgender people is part of the Canada that most of us have always been so proud to be part of.
While remaining a firm advocate for my riding, the queer community and greater equity in Canadian society, my time in Parliament has always been devoted to finding common ground to advance all Canadians, especially the most marginalized among us. I hope those of us members of Parliament who still believe we can find the common ground necessary to move forward will stand against those who wish to make MPs nothing more than cheerleaders for opposing teams seeking power. There is always a choice for each of us as a member of Parliament, and I am hopeful MPs from all parties will make the choice to rise above these current challenges.
I thank everyone. It has been great to be a colleague of all members and an honour to serve my constituents and all Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, when I learned that the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke would be back in the chamber, I was delighted, but then I learned that he will be in the chamber for a very short amount of time even right now. He informed me, as he has informed all of us, that he is leaving this august place, but I believe his last day here in Ottawa may actually be tomorrow.
I have given a lot of speeches in the chamber, but I am just going to speak personally here about a person, a gentleman, whom I have come to know personally. The first word that comes to mind is simply the word “class”. The member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, and it is a mouthful just pronouncing his riding, is just a classy individual and a classy human being.
He started by recognizing his constituents, for whom he stood for office six times, four times successfully, and I have always known him as a fierce defender of his riding and his community. I want to join him in saluting his staff for all the work they have done to make the member such an accomplished one and a person who contributes so much in the chamber.
The second thing I have known the member for is obviously his work on justice files. We had a lot of interactions, in my time as parliamentary secretary and also now in my time as minister, on passion projects of his, but he also spent time teaching me about the other things he would be working on, whether they related to public safety or defence causes, etc.
With respect to the passion with which he approached the fight and the causes that he believes in, we will not find a more dedicated advocate for the 2SLGBTQI+ community than the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. I also remember his telling me, “Arif, that's such a mouthful”, and asking me why we do not just use “SOGI”, which is “sexual orientation and gender identity”. I thought that made a lot of sense, but I will use whatever terms he wants, because I take my cues on such issues from the member.
I have known the member as a passionate advocate for working diligently on projects that really affect all Canadians. We have heard him talk about the fact that the fight for the rights of the queer community extends all of the time to people right around the country, but never more so than with the rights of transpeople right now, and particularly trans children. I salute the member for the leadership he has shown on a cause that really should not be partisan in the chamber or anywhere else, because ultimately we are dealing with a subset of a community and with young, vulnerable kids. That is a testament to what the member puts his priorities into and where he dedicates his energies.
Working together with the member on issues such as medical assistance in dying and how we move from where we were in 2016 through 2019 and through 2021, I have always relied upon his wise counsel and advice. There has obviously been a partisan element to the work we do; that is part of what we do here in the chamber, but what I have always found in the member is that he understands where to replace partisanship with principle in terms of collaborating productively to advance the causes.
In terms of advancing the fight against hate, again, I have not seen a more co-operative or collaborative member, who is willing not just to step up to the task at hand but also to make it personal, because ultimately politics is personal. When he has stood up with such alacrity and such candour and talked about his own life experiences, as he just did here in a very emotional moment for him, talking about how his own life has taken him through different twists and turns and brought him to the place where he stands as a four-time member of Parliament, he has spoken honestly and compassionately about what he believes in. I applaud him for that.
I remember distinctly the conversations we had during the blockade of this city, and what he faced as a gay man in terms of particular targeting during that time. We talked about what we need to do collaboratively together, as all parliamentarians of every political stripe, to combat that kind of hatred.
We have also had important conversations about abuse and about children. I salute the member for always putting the needs of kids above all else. I will give one tangible example. I represent the largest Tibetan diaspora in the world outside South Asia. What I have found in the member, through his work with constantly taking on Tibetan Canadian youth as interns in his office, is an effort by him not just to do right by those young people and to provide them with mentorship, but also to actually take it to the next level, where he both provides mentorship to the young people and also uses tools on the floor of the chamber to actually advance causes.
What I am talking about are things like the effective use of Order Paper questions and of petitions. In doing so, he is not just taking on a young person who might not otherwise get a chance, but he is actually advancing the yardsticks of causes that they believe in, which is I think is the best of both worlds in terms of a mentorship exercise. He is not just committed but he is also savvy about the parliamentary tools. He mentioned some of those tools in the work he had done on the defence committee, in terms of advancing the yardsticks.
What I would say about the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, and why I insisted to my staff that I would be going in to listen to the speech and would be providing some words about him, is simply that from my perspective, he represents the best of what it means to be a parliamentarian in the chamber. He is committed to his riding. He is committed to his portfolio. He is committed to defending the interests in which he believes.
If politics is the art of the possible, I would say that the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke shows always what is possible and what can be achieved, with tremendous success. He has distinguished himself in committee. He has distinguished himself in the chamber as a man of principle and as a man of integrity. What I would say is that he will be missed. He should enjoy retirement; my friend deserves it.
Mr. Speaker, it was very powerful when the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke shared that Jack Layton had recruited him. If Jack should have the credit for recruiting him, I will take a little credit for trying to keep him in the House for as long as possible. I mean that really personally. I had to ask the hon. member multiple times to stay on as member of Parliament. I owe him a life debt of gratitude for agreeing.
I asked the member to stay on for many reasons. One is that I trust his counsel very dearly. He is someone who gives me a lot of really great advice. As we can see, he does a lot of really important work in the House.
One of the things about the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke that I want to share is that he shared the pain he endured as a child, the trauma and the violence that he saw and that he himself experienced. What we can see in his life's work and in the way he brings himself to the world is that he did not let that pain extinguish his joy and his deep belief that we can build a better world. Despite the pain he endured, he approaches his life with the passion that better is possible.
Another thing that we might know about the member is that he wants no other child to ever experience that same pain again, to feel like they do not belong. It is a big part of what guides him in the work he does. I see that and I feel that we are all better off because of the passion that he brings, the care that he brings and the personal tragedy that he turns into the powerful motivation for the work he does.
On a personal note, I remember when the member first told me that he was going to message me on my cellphone, not often but whenever he thought it was appropriate. I did not realize that meant he would send me essays on my cellphone. Those essays that he would send every now and then, true to his word, not all the time but when he did, would guide me in the right direction and would encourage me when times were tough.
The member reminded me often that he chose me and endorsed me early on and that he never regretted his choice. There are times when he might have, or times when it was hard to say that he continued to support me, I would say, but I really value his friendship, his commitment, his loyalty and the fact that he reminded me often that he was proud of his choice.
I am proud to call the member a friend. I am proud to call him an ally. I am proud that he chose to be a part of the movement. I am so thankful he said yes to Jack. I think all of us in the chamber have seen the difference that he has made. Kids in this country are safer because of him. Because of his work, there are more little members for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke who are going to be less scared, less afraid and less feeling like they do not belong.
[Translation]
Mr. Speaker, I am not a member of the NDP caucus, but, if I were, I would have a great deal of respect for our colleague, the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke.
I had the pleasure and privilege of serving with him on the Standing Committee on Justice over the past few years. I do not know him very well, but I can say for sure that he is a man of integrity, a dedicated man who always passionately represented his constituents, as well as all persecuted people and all Canadian groups who need to be properly represented in our parliamentary institutions.
The member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke was compassionate and sympathetic to virtually every cause. People knew he understood. I do not know how much he agreed with every point of view, but that is not necessary. He clearly had a good understanding of every point of view. He was sensitive to individuals' misfortunes and represented them honestly and with tremendous dedication.
I will remember him as a man of integrity, commitment and passion. We will miss him.
[English]
Mr. Speaker, I would just add my voice of thanks to the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke on what could be his last day.
Often this place is defined by the disagreements we have with each other, but all Canadians who are watching should see that there are times when, despite those disagreements and policy differences, there is common ground that can be found.
I just want to thank the member. Specifically, I know that I have a few family members who live in his constituency. I am not sure that they vote for him, but nonetheless, I know his dedication to his community. In particular, we share something when it comes to the areas we represent, and that is having a military installation. The care that I know that member has shown throughout his time, putting the policy issues aside, for the people of our armed forces is deeply moving to those whom he has had an opportunity to connect with.
I want to thank him for his service and to wish him all the best in what is next to come in his life.
Mr. Speaker, I want to join colleagues in giving honour to the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke. As a newer MP in this place, I can say that he is an hon. member whom I have been really grateful to have had the chance to learn from and I am grateful for our time here to have overlapped. In my time prior to being here, he was someone I really looked up to as someone who continued to stand up for the queer community across the country. As we heard from his speech, he has had such an impact on the laws of this country in the way that so much more needs to be done.
As we close this round of speeches, though, to me it is appropriate that the member would have the last word. If the Speaker would allow me, I would remark that the tenor in this place at times, and certainly now, can get somewhat partisan. The member had some important reflections for us on how important it is that the reasons that MPs arrived here, the causes that they and their communities care about, should come first.
I wonder whether the member could offer some advice for those of us here, particularly newer members like me, on how we continue to ensure that the issues we are looking to address remain more important than the parties we happen to be here representing, and that our constituents should remain first. Can he offer some reflections for us on that?
Mr. Speaker, I just want to thank all the members who spoke for their kind words. I said what I said in my speech, and I really mean it. I think that the great majority of us come here wanting to work together to do good for Canadians. I think we sometimes lose sight of that in the chamber, and we need to remind ourselves regularly and to rise above the forces of partisanship to try to make this a better country and a better world.
I will just say that we will miss the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, but I would rather use the French way of saying it: Il va nous manquer; “he will be missing from us”. I thank him for his service. I know he will be around for a little bit, so I look forward to saying goodbye.
It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, Foreign Affairs, the hon. member for Bow River, carbon pricing; the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, natural resources.
Mr. Speaker, just before I dive into the substance of what will be, I have no doubt, of great interest to all those in this place when it comes to the SDTC scandal that has continued to paralyze this place and the Liberal government, specifically the Prime Minister's refusal to simply release the documents, there are just a couple of quick things I would like to note. One is very personal.
When I get home on the weekends, I see, in particular, my grandmas. My one grandma, she texts me. My other grandma, I just see her whether it is at church on Sunday or when I go to visit her. They often compliment me on my speeches and whatnot. Sometimes I think we wonder if anybody is actually watching these proceedings. I know both my grandmas, Linda and Nora, are, so here is a shout-out to both Grandma Linda and Grandma Nora, two fine women, and to my grandfathers who have passed on. They have an incredible legacy there. I love my grandma, and I love my grandma. This is a shout-out to them because there is a good chance they are watching. I am thankful for that latitude.
Here we are back debating the green slush fund, where we have an instance of nearly $400 million of taxpayers' money. Let me pause there because I think there is an important distinction I would like to elaborate on a little bit. We have an instance where there is this $400 million that has been misallocated, wrongly allocated to organizations, companies, etc. It has been called into question. It is close to $400 million.
What is important is not just the dollar amount. Do not get me wrong; it is a huge number. What is key in understanding this and why it is such a significant thing for us to get answers on and for us to get true clarity when it comes to what happened here is that this is $400 million not of the government's money. The government does not have money in and of itself, but rather it has money it derives from taxes. It is the money it derives from taxes that it then spends. This is often forgotten in this place.
As parliamentarians from all parties, we need to take seriously that it is not the government's money to spend, but rather it is for us to be stewards of the dollars paid in taxes by Canadians. This fundamental premise is so often forgotten. We have seen time and time again over these last nine years under the NDP-Liberals that they have forgotten where the money comes from. The result of that is an utter disregard that leads to scandals like the one we are seeing today, where we have an unbelievable amount of money, close to $400 million, being misallocated, allocated where there were conflicts of interest, etc.
I will get into the privilege side of that here in just a moment, but what is absolutely key is that the amount of money this relates to is truly astonishing.
In comparison, most Canadians who will be watching, whether it is my grandmas, as I referenced earlier, or so many others, are wondering what the deal is with this $400 million. It is said that, when economists do evaluations when it comes to the dollars in an economy, often the most easily understood dollars in terms of amounts are not the numbers and figures parliamentarians quite often throw around when an announcement has millions or billions of dollars associated with it. When it really comes down to it, an average Canadian family's biggest expense it will make is the purchase of its home.
While we have seen a doubling of house prices over the last decade under these NDP-Liberals and we have seen some real challenges in terms of Canadians being able to afford the basics, the carbon tax impact on all of these things and the inflationary effect it has had across our economy and everything related to that, the average Canadian spends less than a million dollars on a home.
We have an example where the largest purchase that the average Canadian family ever makes is one four-hundredth of the tax dollars that have been abused when it comes to this green slush fund. The scale and the impact is truly astonishing, and we can break that down further.
A common investment within most households is that of a vehicle. I know it has been called into question. I did not even know Maserati made SUVs, but that has certainly been publicized here as of late as the choice of vehicle for the leader of the fourth party. I looked at the price. For somebody who claims to be from the middle class, that is quite a claim when someone drives that type of vehicle.
We have the average vehicle. When it comes to what Canadians spend, the average between Canadians buying used vehicles and those who buy new, we have before us the average price of a vehicle equating to about $40,000. That is the average from the very expensive Maserati, like the one the leader of the fourth party drives, to Canadians who are just starting out drive, like a 16-year-old buying their first vehicle for several thousand dollars. We have an average of about $40,000.
We can think about the scale of $400 million versus $40,000. It puts it into context. The reason I am flagging this and providing that context is that it is truly astonishing, the scale of this scandal with the hard-earned dollars taxpayers earned and paid to the government through taxes. We saw money misallocated and misappropriated, and through a scandal-ridden process, we have this abuse.
I would suggest this bears repeating because of the failures that have been exposed. The former minister of industry took an organization that, under the previous Harper government and under the scandal-plagued Martin and Chrétien governments before, was operating fairly well. It had a high efficiency rate and a good return on investment, and it certainly did not have the types of scandals that we are seeing today.
We had three successive governments that, under their leadership, saw this organization do its job, which was to invest in sustainable technologies. This included times when there might be a business case with a bit higher risk, so going with partnerships in terms of private lending and whatnot. We saw a good return on taxpayers' investments, those hard-earned dollars that the government takes that could be leveraged for economic development. However, in 2018, the former minister, Navdeep Bains, fired Harper's board and installed Liberal insiders. This is where the problems began to brew.
We have seen, over the last five or six years, the result of this $400 million that has been called into question. It is truly astonishing the scale of the scandal we have before us. Now we have, I believe, week six, maybe going into week seven, of Parliament having been seized with this issue. It has been paralyzed by this scandal that has shaken the very foundations of our democratic infrastructure and is calling into question for so many Canadians whether or not they can trust the government.
I talk often about trust in this place because trust is a key element of what we do here. It is the idea of the social contract. In fact, I spoke to a class this morning, and it was a very interesting discussion. I always appreciate it. It was a grade nine class from the Prairie Christian Academy in Three Hills, Alberta. They are a great group of kids with great questions and very engaging conversation. It truly was a great opportunity to talk about how to get involved in government, citizenship and the responsibility of that. It was an incredible conversation.
One of the things that we talked about was the idea of the social contract. Although that is often a topic of conversation that happens in university philosophy classes, the reason I bring up the idea of the social contract is that there is this back-and-forth, this tension that exists. Citizens have responsibilities in order to have freedoms. There is a tension that exists. We have to be able to trust the government for it to be able to function appropriately in our country.
Where we see the social contract being called into question is that, after nine years of the Liberals, there has been an erosion of trust that has taken place. The erosion of trust that has taken place is forcing many Canadians across our country to lose trust not only in the person who is in charge, the current Prime Minister and those in the Liberal Party and the NDP who continue to prop him up, but they are losing trust in the very foundational institutions of our democracy.
Those institutions have persisted, in the case of Canada, for 157 years, with responsible government coming several decades before that and different types of administrations prior to that point in time. Our history of our democratic system dates back more than 800 years to the United Kingdom, wherein the first few sentences of the British North America Act, now known as the Constitution Act of 1867, talk about its being similar in form to that of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Westminster system.
We are seeing this mismanagement call into question the trust that Canadians should have in their institutions. I would suggest today that of all the things that we debate, this truly is one of such significance because it is the keystone on which we continue to ensure that we have a strong and functioning democracy.
We have to be able to trust that our government works. Let me unpack that for just a moment. We need to ensure that it is not simply trust in an individual, because no government is an individual. The reality here is that we have an erosion of trust in the institution in and of itself. Whereas we used to be able to say we might not like the guy or gal in charge but we could respect the office, it has come to the point where, truly, there are so many instances of people losing trust in the institutions themselves. That is something that should seize each and every one of us as parliamentarians.
The basic premise of trust in our institutions underlies the debate we are having, and when it comes to the very basics, we have to release the documents. It is simple, just three words: Release the documents. It is not that hard.
We have Parliament, which has constitutionally unfettered access and the ability to demand documents. In fact, in the constitutional framework, which was written long before the advent of computers, we have the ability for government to demand any document that exists in Canada. Any Parliament can demand that. It is within its rights to demand any document.
Over the last nine years, we have seen something that I would like to unpack a little here. Not only is it a refusal of the government to release the documents in relation to this $400 million in taxpayers' money that has been misallocated where there were conflicts of interest, etc., but we are seeing how, in the midst of this, it is truly the continuation of a pattern. This pattern could be summed up by a phrase: It is that the Liberals, under the Prime Minister, have normalized constitutional crises. I say that, not flippantly, but with all seriousness, because, time and time again, we see how they have an utter disregard for the Constitution.
When most Canadians think of the Constitution, they think of the thing that is often on the walls of classrooms, which is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is an important aspect of our Constitution. It has Pierre Elliott Trudeau's signature at the bottom of it, although in the history of that, for those who might be watching, what was eventually adopted was certainly different from what Pierre Elliott Trudeau had envisioned, but he was certainly happy to take credit for it.
However, we have that as part of our Constitution, as well as a host of other constitutional documents, including one I referenced earlier, which is the British North America Act, or the Constitution Act 1867. We have a host of constitutional documents, dating back to the foundation of this country, which lead all the way to where we are today. There was a minor constitutional amendment just a number of years ago on the number of MPs who would represent each province in this place. We have a series of documents and, when it comes to constitutional law, it is a series of written and unwritten laws that define the Westminster system.
What we have before us shows that the government has an utter disregard for constitutional conventions and for the role of the 800-plus years of constitutional history that has built this Westminster system. The Liberals have an utter disregard for the things that have allowed us to function as a free and open democracy. It is not without its challenges, but certainly the Liberals are putting our institutions at risk with the normalizing of constitutional crises. I would highlight one that comes to mind, and I often hear from constituents about this. It is the Winnipeg lab scandal, when there were documents that Parliament demanded. It was a minority Parliament. The 2021 election, despite the Prime Minister's promise that he would not call it, but then he called it anyway, seemed to leverage much of the fear that Canadians had about the COVID pandemic, which seems to be a big part of it.
What happened during that summer was absolutely astounding. The government took Parliament, specifically the former Speaker, to court over a document request and a constitutional crisis. This was unbelievable and unacceptable. The election took place. Was that the reason the Liberals called the election? Was there something that was so revealing that it would have brought down the Prime Minister and the government and would have exposed them? I do not know, but what is very clear is that the Liberals will stop at nothing, including ripping up the Constitution, to try to cover up their scandals time and time again.
In 2020, the Liberals proposed to give themselves unlimited spending and taxation powers. Just to give some context, that would have torn up 800 years of tradition that demands responsible government, including money only being spent with the permission of the House and taxes only being levied by Parliament.
We see that we have before us an astounding series of events that have lead us to the privilege debate we are having today. The Liberals could end this immediately. They could end it. They simply have to release the documents. In doing so, they would put to rest the crises that they have brought forward, which have not only kept them from being able to accomplish their agenda, but also caused an erosion of trust in the very institution of this place.
I will conclude my remarks by referencing some of the extraordinary Canadians whom we work for. I had the opportunity to meet with constituents, including the fire chief from Hanna, Alberta, Mr. Mohl, and a couple of his colleagues. One was from Redwater and the other from Grande Prairie. They are small-town and small-city fire chiefs. It was a good conversation. They came and saw question period. What was encouraging in the midst of that was to see Canadians at work. In this case, they are small-town emergency services personnel who are ready to do the work when called upon. I compliment them. I know there is advocacy that is taking place on the Hill this week, and I wish them the best in that. I appreciate the opportunity to have met them earlier.
When it comes down to it, we need to take seriously our responsibility as parliamentarians. We need to ensure that we are responding to the call and, when it comes to the very crux of the issue here, that we restore trust in our institutions. That can start with the Liberals releasing the documents so we can get back to work.
Mr. Speaker, despite two and a half months of this, no one is talking about this. Nobody cares about this issue. The member keeps talking, and Conservatives have now put up over 200 members to speak to this issue, but Canadians are not talking about this.
What they are talking about, and what is on the news tonight, is that five people within Patrick Brown's campaign have now come forward to say that the member for Calgary Nose Hill knew that Indian diplomats were affecting Patrick Brown's campaign. She even had a conference call, according to what is being reported, where she brought it up.
Does this member not agree that the member for Calgary Nose Hill should be going to the public safety committee and answering questions about what she knows when it comes to foreign interference in the Patrick Brown leadership campaign?
I will offer a reminder to hon. members that one of our Speakers has ruled that we want to try to keep questions and comments as close to the topic at hand as possible.
Mr. Speaker, the leader of the official opposition won the leadership of our party with the largest margin of any major national leadership campaign in Canadian history. I think the evidence speaks for itself and is commanding a massive amount of support.
Quite frankly, unlike many Liberals, it seems, we actually like our leader, the work he is doing and the message he is offering to Canadians. I would suggest that Canadians are increasingly on our page. Certainly, I am hearing from Canadians coast to coast to coast who are ready for change because they are sick and tired of the corruption, the waste and the Liberals' dividing of Canadians for political reasons.
I would like to reference something the member said, which was that Canadians do not care about this. Well, there are 400 million reasons that would suggest otherwise, and the fact that the member and the Liberals, supported by the NDP, would so flippantly not care about $400 million in misallocated, misappropriated tax dollars is an absolute shame.
[Translation]
Mr. Speaker, we are living in difficult times, and the president-elect of the United States, who will be returning to power, has made threats with very serious consequences for the Canadian economy and job stability. He did so while saying that we are not capable of looking after our border.
Can my colleague admit that we are being criticized for having a porous border today largely because Stephen Harper's government cut 1,100 border officer positions? Was it not the Conservatives' cuts that fuelled the threats facing Canada's economy?
[English]
Mr. Speaker, a member of my staff just texted me that I have received thousands of emails about the green slush fund, so the member for Kingston and the Islands is simply out to lunch.
When it comes to the issue of our borders, we absolutely need to take this seriously. After nine years, including five during which the government has been propped up by the fourth party, which is sitting in the corner over there, the fact is that crime was on its way down when Stephen Harper left office and Justin Trudeau took—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Damien Kurek: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I withdraw that and reference the Prime Minister. When he took over, illegal border crossings were down, smuggling was on its way down and, by almost every objective measure, life in Canada was getting better. Despite there being much global economic uncertainty at that time, Canada was well positioned. Then the Liberals and the Prime Minister took over, and for the last five years, they have been supported by the fourth party, the NDP, and we are seeing the consequences of this each and every day. Now it is putting our country's economic future at risk.
I understand why the president-elect of the United States wants to stand up for American jobs, but why does the Canadian Prime Minister want to help him?
Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech, and he was bang on. This is about our parliamentary democracy and our privileges. I am going to be speaking next, and I will be talking about censorship and how the government has really ramped that up.
I want to ask the member about these repeated crises because he talked about the sponsorship scandal and the border crisis. We could go on and on. I wonder if he thinks that the Liberals are normalizing these constitutional crises because it seems it is a means for them to grab more power. We saw it during COVID, where they were going after people's bank accounts and stopping people from travelling. It just seems that they want to normalize these crises as a power grab. Could he comment on that, please?
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister seems to want to be like his dad when it comes to doing things that are truly unprecedented, which includes the invocation of the Emergencies Act. He is the first prime minister in history to do so. For the previous version of that act, the War Measures Act, the only prime minister to have invoked it, outside of wartime, was Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
I do not know what it is about the Liberals or, in particular, the left in general. They are so desperate and hungry for power that they trod over the Constitution. In the case of our country, to fulfill their political objectives, they would trod over the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has the signature of the Prime Minister's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, on it.
What we have before us is a normalization of constitutional crises. It seems like, every which way we look, the Liberals have trod over the very institutions that have been built up in our country over 157 years to serve Canadians. They are trying to turn them into servants of themselves. That is wrong. It needs to be rejected outright. Conservatives will fix what the Prime Minister and the Liberals have broken.
[Translation]
Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to think about the problem with SDTC in the current context. Also, in the context of the election of the president-elect of the United States, how can Canada and Quebec compete economically with the United States? There is a North American context, and there is a context of interdependence in which we must be able to deal with the Chinese market in particular.
I would like my colleague to talk about the importance of a fund like this one for investing in SMEs that build our economy on innovation. I would also like him to talk about the importance of investing in processing strategic critical minerals as they are mined. That is how we can gain a competitive advantage over the United States. We need this type of fund.
I agree that we need to get to the bottom of this matter. There was wrongdoing, poor governance and fraud. However, if the government were to change, would my colleague, as a member of the Conservative caucus, commit to ensuring that money is invested in sustainable development?
[English]
Mr. Speaker, I think the evidence speaks for itself. This fund was performing with exemplary ratings and great integrity prior to the Prime Minister and the former industry minister, Navdeep Bains, going in and firing all of Stephen Harper's appointees and appointing their own, which has led to this incredible level of mismanagement, incompetence, conflicts of interest, et cetera.
I think the member from the Bloc raises an interesting point, which is the idea of Canada's place in the world. We have seen, under the Liberal Prime Minister and the Liberal government, propped up by the fourth party, the NDP in the corner over there, an erosion of Canada's reputation internationally.
I found it interesting in question period today when one of the ministers stood up and listed off what he called the government's accomplishments. I was wondering to myself if he was listing his accomplishments or the government's failures because, with every single one of those things, the results certainly were not in the best interests of the country. I would suggest that, as a result, Canada is weaker today in its standing in the world than it was when the Prime Minister took over. There are also all the challenges that we face domestically.
It is time for Conservatives to come in and fix what the Prime Minister has broken.
Mr. Speaker, talk about a party being desperate for power. The party opposite tried to become government in 2015, 2019 and 2021.
The member opposite is a straight shooter, and I respect him for that. Here is my question for him: There is clearly something going on with respect to the fact that his leader will not get a security clearance. What is up with the foreign meddling in the leadership contest?
The member opposite is a straight shooter, so I want a straight answer as to why his leader will not get his security clearance. Canadians want to know.
Mr. Speaker, I would simply say to the member for Saint John—Rothesay that it is time for the Prime Minister to do what he is legally allowed to do under the Official Secrets Act, which is to release the names. In fact, there are very clear provisions that allow him to release the names in the public interest. He refuses to do it. The question I think many Canadians have is what does he have to hide.
Mr. Speaker, I am not pleased to rise to speak to this yet again. I am aware that we are now at the point where we have had over 200 Conservative people speak to this particular issue. It is extremely troubling that the Conservative Party of Canada is completely disregarding the needs of Canadians and has chosen to filibuster the entire House and prevent it from doing any work whatsoever.
All we have to do is look back at what has happened over the last couple of months. The Speaker had made a ruling in favour of an individual who raised a question of privilege. In that ruling, he agreed that this issue should go to PROC, which is the procedure and House affairs committee, to be dealt with. Unfortunately, Conservatives chose to use that opportunity to force this issue to be debated endlessly.
Let us just reflect on what has actually happened. The Conservatives moved a motion, based on the Speaker's ruling, that this particular issue go to PROC and that PROC deal with it. Conservatives moved it; it was their motion. They have now put up over 200 speakers. They do not have 200 members in the House. They have had multiple people speak multiple times. I have seen people get up and give speeches that were written for them or generated by AI on a number of occasions.
People I have not even seen in the House in so long are coming out of the woodwork and giving speeches on this issue. They are interested in one thing only, and that is delaying the government's ability to do any work whatsoever.
Some hon. members: Yes.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: They say “yes” and cheer.
Mr. Speaker, Conservatives are intentionally filibustering their own motion. I have the exact number, just because I think it is important for anybody watching this and trying to weigh how seriously Conservatives take this issue, including those who are heckling me now. I would like to bring to the House's attention and Canadians' attention the number of people who have spoken to this particular issue.
Two independents, one Green Party member, seven New Democrats, seven Bloc Québécois members and eight Liberals have spoken to this; I guess my speaking now makes it nine Liberals. How many members do we think spoke from the Conservative Party?
An hon. member: Two hundred.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: It was more than 200.
Mr. Speaker, Conservatives have risen 213 times, not splitting their time with anybody and consuming the entire 30-minute period. This is because Conservatives are not interested in sending this to PROC, where their own motion calls for it to go. They are interested in preventing the House from doing any work. Until this point, it would have been work on meaningful and important legislation that has a genuine impact on Canadians. Now, we need to deal with a really serious issue that this country is facing, but Conservatives are preventing us from talking about it. That issue is foreign interference.
In a question I asked just moments ago, and I am glad that the member tried to answer it, I asked the member for Battle River—Crowfoot about the serious issue we could be debating right now instead of this: foreign interference and the member for Calgary Nose Hill. I said that there are serious allegations by five people from the campaign that the member for Calgary Nose Hill co-chaired for Patrick Brown. They said she was contacted by Indian diplomats and pressured not to continue supporting Patrick Brown.
What did the member for Battle River—Crowfoot say in response to my question? He said the Leader of the Opposition won handily. I bet he did, especially with a bit of help, but that is not the question. Nor is the question whether the member for Calgary Nose Hill was coerced or ultimately made a decision based on the conversations that were had with her. The question is this: Did any foreign diplomat or foreign individual say anything to the member for Calgary Nose Hill? If they did, and if they were trying to influence the outcome of the campaign she was involved in, then that is considered foreign interference.
It does not matter who won. It does not matter whether she was influenced by it. What matters is whether the interference took place. Conservatives will try to cloud this and say that the member for Carleton won handily anyway; he took all of Alberta, and there is absolutely no issue. The member for Calgary Nose Hill will say that there was nobody and that she is a seasoned politician who knows how to handle herself. We would not know that by the way she ran away from the CBC yesterday. However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether she was contacted and somebody tried to influence her. That is foreign interference. Canadians have a right to know if she was approached. We have a right to know who those actors are so that we can properly deal with them and they do not continue that behaviour. That is in the public interest. That is in Canada's interest.
However, instead, everybody lines up behind the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Carleton, and recites his slogans ad nauseam.
An hon. member: Yes, it works.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: It works.
Mr. Speaker, what does it work for, as was reported earlier this week? It works for gold stars in caucus meetings, so members can be paraded around and celebrate how many times one member said a particular slogan. It works. I will pick up on that heckle. When the member says that it works, he is fully admitting that they are just throwing out slogans to try to persuade people. They do not care about policy or anything else; they are just throwing out stuff to try to fool Canadians. What response do I get when I say that? It is that it works. Conservatives are admitting that their plan to fool Canadians with their slogans is working. That is, ultimately, where we are.
Why is this so important, and how does it tie back to this particular motion? As I said earlier, Conservatives are absolutely only interested in their own political agenda. They are only interested in what they can possibly gain politically, and they have zero interest in what they could do to support Canadians. This is where we are. My friends in the Bloc and the NDP know how to work with us. We have done it before. There is no reason to continue allowing Conservatives to do this.
Conservatives have to accept the fact that 213 of their members getting up to speak for half an hour is enough. At some point, people are going to start asking why that is. People know there is really important legislation they thought the government would be debating this fall, but it is not being debated.
An hon. member: You're going to spend more money.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: I hear Conservatives saying we have to spend more money.
Mr. Speaker, Canadians should be genuinely concerned about the amount of money that Conservatives have spent on this charade and everything that makes this place function. Millions of dollars have been spent supporting this filibuster exercise.
Conservatives will miss no opportunity to remind people that it is unacceptable to spend money recklessly on behalf of Canadians, but then they come in here and do it every single day, filibustering their own motion. One would think that they could at least stand up and explain to Canadians why they would filibuster their own motion. They put forward a motion asking for an issue to go to PROC. Usually, we would hear from the opposition, giving every reason it should not happen. Instead, we have Conservatives routinely getting up and speaking ad nauseam.
I genuinely hope that we have come close to the end of this. I hope that it is an opportunity for my friends in the Bloc and the NDP to realize that Canadians really want us to get back to business so that we can do what is important for Canadians and do the work on their behalf.
This charade that has been going on for so long needs to come to an end. People have things that need to be taken care of, and that is our job. It is not the job of the Conservatives to hijack Parliament. It is their job to hold the government accountable, and they have failed in doing that. The only thing they are looking out for is their political interests.
Mr. Speaker, there was a time, a couple of years ago, when the Liberal government decided it did not want to do any work. As far as I am aware, it is the only government in the world that did not function as a government during COVID. Suddenly, we were simply a committee of the whole, and nothing was done. How long did that last?
Mr. Speaker, the member voted in favour of it. Those were unanimous consent motions. I sat in here until 5:30 in the morning while they were worked out, debated and negotiated among the parties.
For every Conservative who gets up and decides to be critical of the measures that the government took during COVID, I would remind them that they voted in favour of them. We unanimously voted in favour of those measures, including the member who just asked the question.
[Translation]
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague the following question. Is he not embarrassed at all by the current situation? Does his government not want to be transparent about Sustainable Development Technology Canada? I see this as an important issue because it has to do with this government's credibility in the eyes of Parliament.
It is also a matter of credibility in the eyes of our SMEs, particularly businesses that need investments to make the energy transition. We are also in a context where this government is choosing to invest billions of dollars at the end of the investment chain. It is going to make companies like Honda, Stellantis and Volkswagen dependent on lithium from China, rather than creating processing opportunities here, close to where those resources are mined, particularly in Quebec's regions.
[English]
Mr. Speaker, as it relates to this issue, if members want to be credible, they have to be responsible too. On this particular issue, the reality is that the responsible thing is to send this matter to PROC so that PROC can look at it.
The Conservatives continually demand that documents should be released for everybody to see. When it comes to these documents, we have heard from the Auditor General and the commissioner of the RCMP. They say that this is not the right way to distribute information. They do not need Parliament to get in the way and tell them what evidence they need. They have the ability, the authority and, if necessary, the courts to obtain that information.
Yes, it is very important to be responsible, and responsibility is incredibly necessary if members want to be credible. Unfortunately, the Bloc and the NDP have found themselves in a weird predicament. They supported this last spring, but they are now probably starting to have second thoughts, thinking that perhaps they should not have acted the way they did.
Mr. Speaker, no, I am not having second thoughts. I sat at the industry committee, which actually had the SDTC file. They could actually see what they wanted.
The member mentioned the RCMP. One thing I would like to get to is his opinion about the CBSA officers right now. Under the Conservatives, they laid off and fired 1,100 officers, who have not been restored by the Liberal government. Second to that, the proposal is actually to give CBSA officers back the powers they lost in 1932. I want to make sure the member understands that these are things we can control and do right now. While the House may be bogged down, there is no reason we could not increase staffing and enforcement powers for CBSA officers, who have been left on their own.
Mr. Speaker, it is true that when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, CBSA officers were laid off in droves. As somebody from a riding very close to a border, I am very familiar with this. This government has continued to invest significant resources in our borders. With the most recent comments made by the President-elect of the United States, we have also committed to working with him to ensure our border with the United States can remain safe.
For the NDP member to suggest we have not done any of that is just completely false. The reality is that we have been investing in our borders and we will continue to do that to ensure they stay safe and secure.
Mr. Speaker, I know the member represents many young people in his community. I wonder if perhaps he can highlight some of the things we are unable to move forward on, because of this privilege motion, that young people are counting on us to achieve. We have done so much, but perhaps he can let the House know.
Mr. Speaker, it is true there are a lot of young people in my community, but there are a lot of young people throughout the entire country who are waiting on this Parliament to adopt important legislation that will positively affect them.
The reality is that we know it can happen, because it happened just a few days ago. The NDP was willing to set things aside to allow us to debate one thing for one day. When NDP members found a motion or an issue that was important enough to them, they allowed us to set aside the games that Conservatives have been playing in order to bring forward legislation that actually impacted all Canadians, not just young Canadians.
NDP members now need to come to terms with what is important enough to them. There is a lot of legislation out there right now that we would love to debate. Is the NDP basically saying, “Well, the GST was important, but other issues that other people care about are not important”?
It is time for the NDP to come to terms with the fact that this has gone on long enough, after 213 Conservative speakers speaking for 30 minutes, and now is the time to put this to rest so we can get back to working on behalf of Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, I was wondering about the net-zero accelerator, an $8-billion fund, basically, for the heaviest emitters in Canada that was supposed to reduce emissions. However, the independent environment commissioner found that over 70% of the contracts made no commitment to reduce emissions.
Flash forward to the environment committee demanding to see the documents on why these contracts were not transparent. The Prime Minister ended up putting a gag order on all of us, and upon review of the contracts, we found that over 360 pages of these contracts had been ripped out. Does the member know why those 360 pages were ripped out on the $8-billion fund?
Mr. Speaker, does the member know that if he lets this issue go to committee, he might get answers to the questions he wants? The irony is that Conservatives are going to stand in here and just lecture all day long, but in letting this get to committee, the member might start to get answers.
By the way, I thought this whole issue was about getting the documents for the RCMP. That is what they kept talking about, and now, suddenly, they are trying to suggest it is something else.
The reality is that Conservatives are hell-bent on ensuring this issue jams this place so they can keep talking about it. The member does not really want an answer to that question. He wants to keep asking hypothetical questions that can make people go “oh yeah” and draw conspiracy theories and go down rabbit holes. That is what that line of questioning is all about. It is not about getting to the truth, because if it was, he would let this motion pass and go to committee.
Mr. Speaker, members know the old adage “where there is smoke, there is fire,” and there is clearly something smouldering across the House.
The Leader of the Opposition, for months now, has refused to get his security clearance. In my riding, more and more people are asking, “What is up with the Leader of the Opposition?” Then we hear about the foreign interference. The member for Calgary Nose Hill was apparently approached by foreign actors who instructed her to back away from Patrick Brown.
Where there is smoke, there is fire. There is something smouldering over there. I would ask the member to give his comments on that.
Mr. Speaker, tonight it was reported that five people close to and tied to the Patrick Brown campaign were aware of the member for Calgary Nose Hill's being approached by Indian diplomats. The member needs to come forward and tell the truth about what happened. I am not suggesting that she was influenced, that she was coerced or that it was of her own volition. If she says so, for her reasons for leaving the campaign, I will accept them.
However, that is not what is important. What is important here is whether people, Indian diplomats in particular, approached her, because that is considered foreign interference and that is what Canadians deserve to get an answer to.
Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the outstanding constituents of Oshawa and to speak to the question of privilege. I just want to take the opportunity as well to wish members of the House and my constituents in Oshawa a very Merry Christmas. I do not know whether I will have an opportunity to rise in the House again before the break, but certainly we need some more Christmas spirit around here. I think the best Christmas gift we could get the people of Oshawa would be a carbon tax election, because the government is not worth the cost or the corruption.
My speech this evening is going to be more or less about censorship, disinformation and misinformation. The Liberal government is moving down a spiral of authoritarianism. It is a very deceptive government that is definitely not about transparency as it originally promised it would be. It is a government using every single legislative tool to censor and to control.
Around the world, government censorship is constantly being used to silence opposing opinions, suppress transparency and accountability, and consolidate power. We see this form of government censorship in several countries: Russia, China, North Korea and, yes, Canada. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, we are witnessing a new level of government censorship more than ever before in Canada. The issue today is about contempt of Parliament and about fraud.
The government's censorship threatens the very foundations of our democracy. Without the ability to demand production of documents, speak our mind, express our views and challenge the status quo, we are left with nothing but the hollow illusion of freedom. The government censorship we are witnessing here today is not about protecting Canadians from harm or ensuring public safety. Instead it is about silencing dissent, shutting down debate and consolidating power. It is about covering up corruption and fraud.
With respect to the question of privilege, we are addressing government censorship regarding the failure to produce documents ordered by the House on the scandal involving Sustainable Development Technology Canada, otherwise known as the Liberal billion-dollar green slush fund. However, while the power of the House is supposed to be supreme, the Prime Minister's personal department, the Privy Council Office, decided to execute the order by telling departments to send in documents and censor them through redaction to cover up corruption and to cover up fraud.
This form of government censorship completely breaches a member's privilege because the order from the House did not say to redact. The government has opted to defy the House and to censor information in the SDTC documents at every single step of the way, as it does not want Canadians to know that through the green slush fund, $400 million has gone to Liberal insiders. It may be twice that amount because the Auditor General could not complete the full audit.
The scandal as well, it is really important to recognize, compromises two current cabinet ministers and one former cabinet minister. I would like to say that it is a surprise that the government would behave in this manner, but based on the government's track record, government censorship and fraud are nothing but the expected. In other words, for the government, it is business as usual.
Perhaps this is a very good time for my colleagues to talk a little bit about a history lesson. Remember the Liberal sponsorship scandal? The last time the Liberals were in power, they funnelled $40 million to their friends and orchestrated a sophisticated kickback scheme. Then they got caught at fraud, corruption and cover-ups.
The best predictor of future behaviour, I would suggest, is past behaviour. Is the SDTC scandal part of the latest Liberal kickback scandal? Where did the money go? This one scandal is at least 10 times greater than the sponsorship scandal. It is another in a long list of scandals that the Liberals are trying to cover up through censorship.
I should probably define what I mean by censorship. Censorship is “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.” I would suggest “politically unacceptable” is why the Liberal-NDP government champions censorship. I should probably define a few other terms. Misinformation is “the inadvertent spread of false information without intent to harm”. Disinformation is “false information designed to mislead others and is deliberately spread with the intent to confuse fact and fiction.”
Another word is a controversial new term, malinformation, used to describe the NDP-Liberal government, a “term for information which is based on fact, but removed from its original context in order to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” In other words, malinformation is “true but inconvenient” for the government and its narrative.
Under the guise of combatting disinformation and hate speech, the government has implemented policies that give it the power to silence voices, censor information and withhold documents that do not conform to its own woke ideological agenda. This censorship is spreading across Canada, through our institutions, not just here in the House of Commons.
We saw this last week when independent journalist Ezra Levant was arrested for simply filming and reporting on a pro-Hamas rally occurring in his own neighbourhood. Instead of arresting provocative pro-Hamas supporters who spewed hate, celebrating genocide while chanting “from the river to the sea”, an independent member of the press was arrested for simply doing his job, arrested by the very police who have sworn to protect his charter rights.
We wonder why Canadians are questioning whether this is the country they grew up in. When a Jewish man gets arrested by Toronto police in his own neighbourhood while supporting a vigil for families whose loved ones were massacred and kidnapped on October 7, while members of the hateful mob are allowed to continue their mockery of the victims' suffering, we have to ask ourselves why the government condones this hateful behaviour, censors first-hand accounts of cruel anti-Semitism and supports police who discriminate. When governments and our institutions condone this behaviour, it is as if they give a stamp of approval, and that definitely is not okay.
What about the government's history of pushing through authoritative legislation? Let us take a look at that. Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, according to the NDP-Liberals, aims to modernize the Broadcasting Act. However, it harms Canadian digital creators by limiting their services and ability to reach global audiences. It also allows the government boundless powers to regulate digital content and gives it the authority to control what Canadians can and cannot access online.
This is a direct assault on the freedoms of expression and access to information that have flourished in this digital age. Instead of letting Canadians choose for themselves what to watch and listen to, the government seeks to impose its own narrative, prioritizing state-approved content over independent voices and diverse viewpoints. Our young, bright Canadian content creators are being stifled. If other jurisdictions also decide to put forward legislation like this, it will mean Canadian content will be a lower priority for the rest of the world and that could damage our entertainment exports.
The government's censorship does not stop there. Bill C-18, the Online News Act, also allows the government to get in the way of what people can see and share online. This bill requires Internet companies to distribute royalties to newspapers whose content is shared on a site. It demonstrates the government choosing to side with large corporate media while shutting down small, local and independent news, as well as giving far too much power to the government to regulate without limitation. As a result, local and independent media outlets that might challenge the government's narrative are left vulnerable, and those that conform are rewarded.
Common-sense Conservatives believe we need to find a solution in which Canadians can continue to freely access news content online, in addition to fairly compensating Canadian news outlets. However, when we offered amendments to the bill that would address these several issues, the NDP and the Liberals voted them down.
Bill C-63 is another testament to this government's continuous commitment to censorship. The online harms act would create costly censorship bureaucracy that would not make it easier for people experiencing legitimate online harassment to access justice. Instead, it would act as a regulatory process that would not start for years and would happen behind closed doors where big-tech lobbyists could pull the strings.
The common-sense Conservative alternative to the online harms act is Bill C-412, proposed by my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill. It would keep Canadians safe online without infringing on their civil liberties. It would give Canadians more protections online through existing regulators and the justice system, and would outline a duty of care for online operators to keep kids safe online while prohibiting a digital ID and giving parents more tools.
For another outrageous example of withholding documents and censoring information, let us not forget the cover-up at the Winnipeg lab. The Liberals allowed scientists loyal to the Chinese Communist Party to work at our most secure lab. The Liberals gave them a Canadian taxpayer-funded salary and allowed them to send dangerous pathogens back to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where they work on gain-of-function research. When exposed, the Liberals, whom we know admire the basic dictatorship of China, let these scientists escape the country without proper investigation. When Parliament asked for these documents, the Liberals actually took their own Liberal Speaker to court and then censored our ability to disclose those documents by calling an early election. We still have not found out what happened there.
On top of censoring Parliament, let us not forget about the NDP-Liberal government's track record of censoring individual expression. We have seen countless individuals, physicians, scientists and organizations being punished for simply speaking out against the current government's policies. The government froze bank accounts. People were labelled as promoting hate speech and disinformation, or as conspiracy theorists, racists and misogynists, by their own Prime Minister.
We were warned that this could happen. In one of his final interviews, esteemed scientist Carl Sagan noted, “We’ve arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces.”
Who is running science and technology in a democracy if the people do not know anything about it? We have seen this technocracy weaponized by governments during the COVID pandemic through various unjustifiable mandates and government censorship surrounding medical research. Now, the new head of the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, Marty Makary, has said on the record that the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic was the United States government, and it is the same here in Canada.
The weaponization of medical research is not just an American issue. Dr. Regina Watteel, a Ph.D. in statistics, has written, an excellent exposé on the rise of Canadian hate science. Her books expose how the Liberal government, through repeated grants from CIHR, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, hired Dr. David Fisman, a researcher for hire from the University of Toronto medical school, to manipulate COVID statistics to support a failing government policy.
He was touted as an expert, but his only expertise was manipulating statistics to support government overreach. His sham studies were used to justify some of the most draconian COVID policies in the world and were quoted extensively by the Liberal-friendly media. Any criticism of Fisman's fraudulent statistical analysis has been shut down and censored. Again, this is a Canadian example of a result that Carl Sagan warned us about decades ago: the fall into technocracy, where government-sanctioned expert opinion trumps hard scientific data.
Sadly, the government's censorship has now extended to our judicial systems and other institutions, including the Parole Board of Canada.
While the Liberal justice minister brags about appointing 800 judges out of the 957 positions, we can see the soft-on-crime consequences of his woke ideological agenda. We saw an outrageous example of this last week when the French and Mahaffy families desired to participate in the parole hearing of their daughters' brutal murderer. Locally, Lisa Freeman, a constituent in Oshawa and the inspiration behind my private member's bill, Bill C-320, was recently informed by the Parole Board of Canada that the axe murderer who brutally murdered her father while on parole at the time will be subject to a closed-door review.
In the past, Ms. Freeman has been denied her rights as a registered victim and, as a result, has been continually revictimized, only this time by the very institutions that should be putting her mental health and safety and the safety of victims first. Attending and meaningfully participating in an in-person hearing to deliver a victim statement is not only fair and reasonable, but well within Ms. Freeman's rights, as per the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights under the right of participation. It is crucial that Ms. Freeman be able to express the emotional pain and turmoil the murder of her father caused and continues to cause. She also deserves to be able to gauge for herself the accountability of the offender. This is something she has previously been unable to ascertain.
The brutal murder of her father has not only vastly impacted her life and the lives of her loved ones, but also continues to cause post-traumatic stress, which is exacerbated by the complete lack of care by the Parole Board of Canada for her rights as a victim. It is completely unacceptable that Ms. Freeman is once again being censored by the Parole Board of Canada as they plan to make a closed-door decision regarding the offender's continuation of day parole and full parole without holding a hearing.
It is shameful that the NDP-Liberal government seems to care more about censoring victims than keeping repeat offenders off the streets. What they do not understand is that government censorship does not fulfill the requirement of protecting people from harm in society. Instead, government censorship is the harm to society. It threatens our fundamental democratic values, which we should be championing. To quote the famous author, George Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
The Marxist communist Vladimir Lenin once said, “Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?”
More and more we are seeing these quotes and Marxist ideas implemented under the NDP-Liberal government. We must stand up for the idea that truth is not something that can be determined by the state. We must insist that Canadian citizens, not censoring politicians, should be the ones who decide what information they believe, what opinions and values they hold and with what content they engage. We must continue to reject the government's idea that censorship is the solution to every problem, though it may be the solution to their problems, and instead embrace the idea that freedom of expression and freedom of conscience are part of the solution of a more free and prosperous Canadian society.
Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritative regime”. That is what we see with the tired, divisive, Liberal government of today. Canadians have indeed lost confidence in the weak Prime Minister and the corrupt Liberal Party. If we allow government to censor the rights of the people's elected representatives and the Internet; squash individuality, opinions and expression; and curtail our freedom of movement, then indeed the Marxists have won the ideological war.
In closing, Canada is not the greatest country in the world simply because I say it is. Canada is the greatest country in the world because we care and fight for our fundamental, democratic values. We have a history of that people from around the world in other countries would love to have, so these values must not be taken for granted. When we, in Oshawa, sing our national anthem, we take “The True North strong and free” to heart.
The current SDTC scandal, with the refusal of the NDP-Liberal government to release the requested unredacted documents to the people's representatives, threatens the very essence of our democracy, which generations of Canadians died to protect and must be respected and fought for. At our cenotaphs, service clubs and in the sacred House of Commons, the people's voices will be heard.
Canadians are listening today, and they have a core identity. We are proud Canadians. We are not the first post-national state. When people ask us which country we admire the most, we do not say that we admire the basic dictatorship of China. We say we admire Canada.
Hopefully, like most things that criticize the government, such as this speech, the Liberal-NDPs do not decide to censor it. Let us see what they have to say.
Madam Speaker, where I wanted to pick up is exactly where that speech ended. I am sure all the members in this place are well aware that we just heard a long speech, which was highly critical of this government, that will not be censored. In fact, that is exactly what happens in this country: We allow for freedom of expression. It is in our charter.
I just wanted to pick up on the beginning of the speech, where I believe the member opposite said that we were akin to North Korea. I was hoping perhaps he could elaborate on that, because that certainly does not seem to be the experience of most Canadians. I would like to know how he sees us as being akin to North Korea.
Madam Speaker, what I said was about the rise of censorship around the world, and what I did was I included Canada and the government in that. The reason I did that is that the evidence is very clear. If we look at the last time the Liberals pulled this stunt, a very similar stunt, it was with the Winnipeg lab, when they refused to give the House documents. What were they hiding? This is what Canadians really want to know.
We have heard the Liberals throughout this entire debate not want to actually talk about the essence of what we are talking about here today, which is the right of Parliament, the supremacy of Parliament, to be able to order these documents and see them as the people's representatives. Instead of releasing them, the Liberals are making this debate go on and on. Each time they get up, instead of actually debating us on it, they bring up another issue. When I am talking about censorship and comparing us to other countries that are perhaps much more authoritarian, it is a warning because we are heading in that direction and Canadians do not want us going in that direction.
Madam Speaker, it was a crazy speech, just wacky. My first point being, of course, that it was because of NDP MPs that we got to the bottom of the SNC-Lavalin scandal and to the bottom of the SDTC scandal and WE Charity as well. In each case, the NDP played a key role.
However, we do know when authoritarian tendencies took place in this country, and that member was in the House during the dismal nightmare years of the Harper regime, where Parliament was shut down and padlocked by Harper and his cronies so that we could not get to the bottom of any of the scandals. I can mention them because he is well aware of them. The G8 scandal was a billion dollars. The ETS scandal was $400 million. The Phoenix pay scandal was $2.2 billion. I could go on and on. There were the Senate scandals. There was a scandal every single day, and every single day the Harper regime and his cronies in the House of Commons shut down any sort of debate, shut down any sort of parliamentary inquiry and shut down committees. It was a nightmare.
The nightmare ended in 2015 when we finally got rid of the Harper regime and the corruption, the scandals, the cronyism and the refusal to allow Parliament to do its job.
Does the member have any sense of shame for his participation in all of those events?
Madam Speaker, we see again the NDP standing up in the House and instead of actually debating me about what I was talking about, which is censorship, taking the action of I guess the person they really respect and look up to. I am going to read a quote from one of the NDP's favourite authors, whose name is Vladimir Lenin. He said, “It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than attempt to relate [or] to explain”. This is—
That is not a point of order. It is a matter of debate.
I am going to let the hon. member for Oshawa attempt to answer the question.
Madam Speaker, I always enjoy when this member gets up and goes way over the top. What we are talking about is $400 million that has gone missing, and his party has stood in the House repeatedly to support the government. The last time it happened, it was $40 million with the sponsorship scandal. This one scandal is $400 million.
The principle is that Parliament is supreme. We have the right to see these documents. He is causing this mess because he is supporting that government.
Madam Speaker, I will bring everything back to the $400-million details: $58 million went to 10 ineligible projects, $334 million went to over 186 cases of projects in which board members were in a conflict of interest and $58 million went to projects without guaranteeing that terms and conditions were met. This is why we have been standing on our hands and our heads, trying to get the government's attention to release the documents. The Liberal government does not seem to give a wingding about this.
Could the member let me know what he thinks about these numbers?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
“Wingding” actually works. Madam Speaker, we see how the Liberals are heckling right now because they want to talk about anything other than the corruption, this scandal and what they are trying to hide. We also see heckling from the NDP again, as usual.
Canadians in Oshawa, my constituents, are sick and tired of this. I did a survey in Oshawa and asked my constituents if they were fed up and if they wanted an election. Out of the 600 responses we have gotten so far, and we are getting a lot of responses, 98% of respondents want a carbon tax election now. They are sick and tired of the corruption of the Liberal government and the opposition party, the NDP, supporting it each and every step of the way.
Madam Speaker, I come here, week in and week out, to do work for my constituents. I want to do work for the country. I want to be up in the House talking about such things as the housing accelerator. Some Conservatives wanted it, and some did not; some wanted it but could not speak up for it because their leader would not let them. It was unbelievable.
I want to speak about the Canada child benefit, child care and the school food program. However, we cannot, because we are involved in this debacle, week in and week out.
There is obviously one speech. It is like a Christmas fruitcake that gets handed from member to member. I am tired of listening to the same thing.
The member for Calgary Nose Hill was clearly approached by foreign actors asking her to pull out. Therefore, I want to ask the member what happened. Let us clear the air. Let us be transparent. I want to know this: What is up with the foreign interference with respect to the leadership?
Madam Speaker, again, the member wants to talk about anything other than what we are talking about today. This is one of the members of the Liberal Party who signed a letter to kick out the Prime Minister because he has no confidence in him, for which he will get a lot of support on this side.
As far as foreign interference is concerned, let us just talk about the Prime Minister's statement that he admires the basic dictatorship of China, as well as the cash for access fundraisers he had early on. Do people around here remember that? Does the member remember the amount of money that was given to the Trudeau Foundation in order to buy influence with the Prime Minister, who openly received it? His ideology is not the ideology of Canadians.
When Conservatives are asked what country they admire the most, they do not say they admire the basic dictatorship of China. They say they admire Canada, our democracy and the principles we stand for.
Parliament is supreme. The government needs to release the documents.
Madam Speaker, Conservatives continually avoid answering one of the questions out there in the media right now. Today, it was reported that five people very close to Patrick Brown's campaign team in 2022 knew that the Conservative member for Calgary Nose Hill was approached by Indian diplomats who were trying to influence her support away from Patrick Brown. This led up to the leadership of the member for Carleton, the current Leader of the Opposition.
Does the member think Canadians have the right to know if there are foreign actors trying to interfere in the electoral process in Canada, yes or no? Should the member for Calgary Nose Hill come to the public safety committee to provide an answer to that question?
Madam Speaker, I believe that the member from Calgary Nose Hill already put out a statement on that.
I am going to read another quote from their friend, Vladimir Lenin, who said, “Truth is the most precious thing. That's why we should ration it.”
The former environment minister actually said, “We gave them some real advice—
Madam Speaker, today is December 3, and here we are again, discussing the privilege motion regarding the submission of documents to Parliament. We should not be debating the motion; we should not be debating it today, and we should not have been debating it this week, last week—
Madam Speaker, I just want to congratulate the member on being the 215th speaker to the question of privilege.
Madam Speaker, we should not be debating the motion, and we should not have been debating it for the past six or seven weeks, since September 26, because the Liberals should have released the information regarding the green slush fund weeks ago, as requested. They should have given it to the RCMP and to Parliament.
However, the Liberals, as is typical of them, are just snubbing their nose at Parliament. It is a lack of respect for the institution and for the Canadian people, because this is the people's House. The Liberals blame the Conservatives, saying it is our fault for continuing to speak about the issue.
The fact of the matter is that the Liberal Speaker made the ruling. He is supposed to be a non-partisan Speaker. He is not just a regular Liberal member who became the Speaker; he was the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister. He was pretty close. He has ruled on the privilege motion. That is why we are here, so the Liberal members should take it up with the Speaker.
The Liberals had their back up with the former Speaker, who was a Liberal member of Parliament, the member from Nipissing—Timiskaming. The Liberals were quite happy to get rid of him even though he was on their side and had been elected as a Liberal. Why were they? It was because in the last Parliament—
Madam Speaker, this is actually a real point of order. The member just referred to the former Speaker and said that he “was on their side”. One of the tried and true parts of the House is that the Speaker is impartial. Speaking negatively or implying motive—
To the hon. member's point, I was just actually consulting on the matter. It is true that Speakers are meant to be impartial; there are no sides. Speakers rule. That is it; that is all. I would ask members to respect that.
Saying that the Speaker is on one side or the other and—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès): This is getting very disruptive. The hon. member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge is trying to make a speech. I would like to know exactly which standing order hon. members are referring to, before they rise on a point of order.
Madam Speaker, on a point of order and with respect to the insinuation, all members including the Conservatives vote individually and privately for the Speaker. The Conservatives are part of this.
I have addressed the issue. We should not be referring to the Speakership as being partial or impartial. The Speakership is impartial by nature.
Therefore I would just remind the hon. member to not refer to the Speaker as taking sides. The hon. Speaker does not take sides, and I would like him to retract the comment, please.
Madam Speaker, thank you. I retract the comment. If you do not mind my saying, the Speaker, whoever the Speaker is, will normally be a member from the party that is in government, whether Conservative or Liberal. It is not a matter of being partisan; it is just the case. I am just mentioning where my thoughts were.
This is about the Speaker; it is not about partisanship. I think the ruling has been made, and I would like us to move on. The hon. member may continue his speech but may not make references to the Speakership.
Madam Speaker, in the last Parliament, we found ourselves in a similar situation. Documents were to be presented to Parliament, but the Liberals said, “No, we cannot have transparency”. The Speaker made a judgment, and he ordered documents to be produced unredacted. It sounds like it is a repeat. The Prime Minister and all those who were surrounding him decided to take that Speaker to court to sue him or to throw away the keys and forget about him. I am not sure.
I would like to read excepts from an article from The Globe and Mail from June 23, 2021, by Robert Fife and Steven Chase:
The Liberal government is taking the House of Commons Speaker to court, in an unprecedented move to prevent the release of uncensored documents to members of Parliament that offer insight into the firing of two scientists from Canada’s top infectious-disease laboratory.
The government said in a court filing that the disclosure of this information could not only jeopardize national security but also, possibly, Canada’s international relations. ...
The legal challenge against a ruling of the House stunned opposition MPs.... An order of the House backed by a majority of MPs....called on the Public Health Agency to produce records it has been withholding from a Commons committee for months.
[The Speaker] called the court action an “urgent matter” and vowed to vigorously fight the government, saying House of Commons law clerk Philippe Dufresne will prepare a legal defence.
“The Speaker’s Office will defend the rights of the House. That is something I take very seriously,”.... “The legal system does not have any jurisdiction over the operations of the House. We are our own jurisdiction. That is something we will fight tooth and nail to protect and we will continue to do that.” ....
Mr. Dufresne told MPs before a Commons committee...that “to his knowledge” the Canadian government has never before gone to court to try to elude an order of the House to produce documents.
That sounds like today, when it could have jeopardized the Liberals' political fortunes.
Now, Canada is 157 years old. This was about three years ago, so it was 154 years old. It had never been ordered to produce documents. The article continues:
He said the House “has exclusive authority” when it comes to matters that fall under parliamentary privilege. ...
For months, opposition MPs have been seeking unredacted records from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), that explain why Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. The two scientists lost their security clearances, and the RCMP was called into investigate, in July, 2019. They were dismissed in January [the following year].
More than 250 pages of records have been withheld in their entirety and hundreds of others have been partly censored before being provided to MPs.
We had the same thing here. In 2024, the Liberals said that they produced the documents. However, they used up all the ink in the printer, because they blacked out most of it. They have actually mocked Parliament.
The documents also relate to the March 2019 transfer of deadly virus samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology that was overseen by Dr. Qiu. It is interesting. Does Wuhan remind members of any place? It should, as it is where the COVID virus began, and it was closed down. MPs put in safeguards that required the House of Commons law clerk to review the documents or redact information that would cause national security questions or criminal investigation before making them public. The former House of Commons law clerk, Rob Walsh, said that the Federal Court should deny the Liberal government's request.
Here is what happened. The Liberals did not want scrutiny into this lab scandal. These were Chinese spies. It showed the connection of Canada, China, the Wuhan lab and the world-wide pandemic. Now, that would really not be good for the Liberals' political fortune, because they had spent hundreds of billions of dollars on COVID. We are going to see how much of that was lining their own pockets and the pockets of those who were close to them. It was just a total disaster. Canada's debt doubled during that time. Just as much debt had been added during a short period of time, in the past few years, under the Liberals, than has been added throughout Canadian history. It is a shame.
The thing is, giving out all this money, with very little accountability, would all go to naught. There were some things we Conservatives supported, but in many respects it was poorly managed, and it was politically driven, which is my interpretation. The Liberals said it was for COVID supports, but now the Auditor General has just announced that the Prime Minister's CEBA program was just another billion-dollar disaster during the COVID period. There was $3.5 billion in taxpayers' money paid to almost 80,000 recipients who did not meet eligibility requirements. I know the Liberals wanted to hurry and get it out, but it was just a disaster.
The Auditor General found that the Liberal Minister of Finance did not provide effective oversight for the CEBA program. Billions of dollars was given out to people who had lost their unemployment, to people who were incarcerated, to high school students and to addicts on social assistance, and this actually exacerbated the addiction crisis.
What did the Liberals do in 2021? They did not want this information coming out, because it showed too much of a connection with the COVID virus coming from Wuhan to Canada. It did not look very good, but their polling numbers were looking good. They had said that they would not take advantage of a national emergency like COVID to call an election. However, what did they do? Well, they called an election in 2021, and that kind of closed the books on the procurement of documents.
There are “philosophical razors”, a term I was not familiar with until I looked it up this morning. In philosophy, a “razor”, is not something one shaves with but a principle that allows one to eliminate or shave off unlikely expectations for an occurrence. I believe someone quoted here today during question period Hanlon's razor. Robert J. Hanlon said, “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Let us just say that the Liberal's fiscal management is not a strong suit for them. I would like to quote a couple of economic razors from our Prime Minister and the Liberals. Here is one, which we could take to the bank, or not: “the budget will balance itself.”
That is the way that the Liberals have run this country. This is a quote from the Prime Minister saying that budgets just balance themselves. They do not just balance themselves. It takes a lot of work, sacrifice and attention. That is something that we see from the Liberals, supported by the NDP, inattention and fiscal imprudence, which are dragging our nation down.
Here is one that the Prime Minister said a week or two ago: “We're focused on Canadians. Let the bankers worry about the economy.” When we make stupid economic decisions, when there is no fiscal restraint, things spiral out of control. Who pays the price? Canadians pay the price, with higher interest rates, increased mortgage payments and the higher cost of living. That is what we are seeing and what is being felt on the streets and in homes across Canada.
We have also seen that the per capita income in Canada has been stagnant since they have been in power, beginning 2015. The New York Times, at the time it was quoted, said, Canada has the “world's richest” middle class. This was in 2015. I wonder who was in power at that time. It was the Conservatives under Harper.
That is not the case now. We are declining, year after year, in our standard of living in comparison to much of the world. We were one of the top six for many years, for decades. We are now, I do not know, maybe approaching number 30.
That is after the Prime Minister has lost control of spending. A few weeks ago, the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported that the deficit will be $7 billion higher than the Liberal government's own $40-billion spending cap for this year alone. Liberals cannot control one year. It is just not in them. They just do not know how, it seems. That is serious, but it is an unserious government.
The Liberals inherited a surplus budget under the Conservatives. I will say, also, that the Conservatives inherited a surplus budget under the previous prime minister, Paul Martin, of the Liberals. That was a different party.
I was going door to door on the weekend in Fort Langley and Cloverdale for a by-election. I was talking to people, people who had voted for Liberals. They are just shaking their heads now. They said that under Martin, under others, they supported them, but with these guys, it is a clown show. It is not just a clown show. It is a disaster.
It is a disaster and they are being supported. They would not be here if it were not for the NDP. It rests on the NDP.
The Liberals promised in 2015 that there would be a $10-billion deficit and we would be okay after that. That has not been the case at all, for any of those years. We then have a quote from the finance minister. They are two peas in a pod. She called Canada's current state a “vibecession”. That sounds like the disco days. No, this is economics. She said, “Canadians just aren't feeling that good”, which has caused them to slow down their spending, thereby causing vibecession. That is basically what she is saying. It is an insult. She is insulting Canadians, saying that it is all in our heads, that it is not real, that Canadians do not know or understand reality.
It is the finance minister. It is the Prime Minister. It is the Liberal government, backed by the NDP. It just shows how clearly ignorant they are on where Canadians are at and where their policies have dragged our nation to.
I had much more I wanted to talk about on this topic. I will say we would not even have this opportunity to debate if the NDP had voted along with the Liberals. The thing is, the New Democrats, which is a bit surprising, have to show a bit of a separation from the Liberals. If anybody looks at polling from the past year and a half, or even sneaks a peek, it is not going great for the Liberals. I know it is only a snapshot, but there have been lots of snapshots. It has been more like a movie for the past year and a half.
The NDP members say they are not supporting the Liberals, but they vote with them every time, but not here. They have to show a bit of separation: “We are different from the Liberals. Look, we are allowing this debate to continue.” I will say they have missed 35 speaking spots. They have put six speakers up. This is an opportunity to share what is in their hearts and there is a lot of flexibility.
As far as Conservatives go, we do not agree with the agenda of the Liberals. We are quite happy to discuss this. We would much rather have a carbon tax election today.
Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's intervention, especially since he ran for Speaker in this place as well. I think it is really important to talk a bit about the Canada-China foreign investment protection and promotion agreement that his former leader Stephen Harper signed with the Communist Chinese regime.
The cozy Conservative-Communist coalition has actually led to a 31-year agreement. Stephen Harper went over to China, into Beijing, watched all the goose-stepping and celebrated the agreement. There are current Conservative members in this chamber today who are on the press releases and the contribution agreements, who were participating as Communist China was allowed to buy up Canadian companies, like Nexen and others. We were selling Canadian natural resources because the Liberals did not want Petro-Canada to exist; we sold it off under Paul Martin. We were then putting Canadian natural resources up for sale to Communist China.
Will the member apologize for Stephen Harper going over to Beijing and selling Canada out to the Communists because of the cozy relationship between the Conservatives and Communist China?
Madam Speaker, I find the NDP member's comments quite interesting. He talks about natural resources and his is a party that, along with the Liberals, stymies all development of natural resources. Whether it be oil and gas, agriculture or fishing, everywhere we look, we see the tentacles of the leftist and socialist parties trying to choke the working Canadian.
I hear it all over the place. People who used to support the NDP say it does not support their jobs, that it supports woke interests. The blue-collar people are leaving the NDP. We would think that with the polls showing the Liberals going down, the NDP would boost up, but it is not the case because Canadians see them as one and the same.
Madam Speaker, I noticed my colleague did not answer the question with regard to Stephen Harper going to Beijing and selling Canada out. That agreement is in place to this day. The member sits with colleagues, who are very close to him, who celebrated the agreement that binds us for 31 years.
New Democrats actually supported keeping Petro-Canada, which was sold off at a loss by Paul Martin at that time. I was here in the chamber when we tried to stop him from doing that and he would not stop. Stephen Harper doubled down on selling Canadian natural resources, even trying to build pipelines out there to ship our oil and natural resources to Communist China for its benefit. The Conservatives have not reconciled that piece of history, which is germane today.
Again, I ask, why does the member not do anything or at least apologize for when Stephen Harper went over to Beijing, celebrated the Communist regime goose-stepping all over Canadians and made sure we were going to put our future at risk with the agreement that was signed and is in print today?
Does the member not have a sense of dignity for Canada? Members come in this chamber, they complain about Communist China and they complain about the Prime Minister's comments about Communist China, while at the same time the former prime minister opened the door.
Madam Speaker, I find the member's comments to be quite ignorant when using expressions like “goose-stepping”.
I was not a member in this House at the time, but was in the provincial government in British Columbia. Developing relationships and trade with China are important. We have a lot of trade. Even in the provincial legislature, I remember warning my colleagues that we should not get too joined at the hip with the Communist regime, recognizing who it is.
We need to think of “Canada first” interests, unlike the Liberals and NDP. Trump is bringing in a 25% tariff against Canada. We need to have strong Canada first policies. We are suffering the consequences of poor governance, whether it be in drugs, immigration, resource development and many other respects. The mocking of the president-to-be and his party has been very harmful for our relationship and for Canadians, because most of our exports go to the States.
Madam Speaker, as we are not talking about the motion now, since the last few exchanges and the member's speech had nothing to do with this issue, perhaps I will go off topic, too.
I am wondering if the member can provide his thoughts on the fact that the member for Calgary Nose Hill is implicated in foreign interference. It is certainly alleged that she was influenced to abandon Patrick Brown's campaign for leadership back in 2022, a leadership campaign that ultimately led to the election of the current leader of the Conservative Party. Is he concerned at all, like many Canadians are, that foreign diplomats would approach a member of Parliament and try to influence their support for a candidate? I would ask for a simple yes-or-no answer.
Madam Speaker, we have been very clear that we want all the names to be released. We are not trying to hide anything. We are not afraid of anything being released. We are asking the Liberals to release all the names. Conservatives believe in transparency. We want to see who the members of Parliament and senators are. That is important.
Going back to the motion, Conservatives want the truth. The truth is important. We need to shine some light on the truth. That is the only way things will improve and changes will be made.
Madam Speaker, going back to the debate and what the member said in his speech, what does he think the government is trying to hide in this $400-million scandal we are talking about today where the Liberals refuse to produce the documents? Is he speculating at all about what companies are involved and how much additional money, beyond the $400 million, the government has siphoned off to its friends?
Madam Speaker, I had about 20 pages of notes and got to page six. I certainly wanted to discuss money being siphoned off and corruption. That is not a word I use lightly. Time after time with the green slush fund, we have seen the vast majority of the $800-million fund, 82%, going to insiders and companies the money should never have gone to. We have seen the ArriveCAN scam that should have cost a quarter of a million dollars, the WE Charity and so many different things. I would love to be asked more questions.
Madam Speaker, in response to my question, the member said he wants to know who the 11 implicated members of Parliament are. I would suggest to him that one very well might be the member for Calgary Nose Hill. If the RCMP or CSIS was not aware, the member could even be the 12th member, I do not know.
Does the member have any insight into whether she, indeed, was one of the 11 members he speaks of?
Madam Speaker, I will repeat myself: All the information should be released. This is important.
Going back to the topic right here, in terms of corruption, we have another former Liberal minister who received $120 million in contracts under a so-called indigenous company. He was claiming to be indigenous, which he is not. It is just a scam. The more we kick the tires, the more rot there is. Canada needs a new government, and soon.
Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the hard-working people of Flamborough—Glanbrook, who are struggling with the cost of living challenges, as are millions of Canadians across the country. Families are grappling with the skyrocketing cost of groceries, with rising interest rates on their mortgages, rents that have more than doubled since a decade ago and, of course, a jump in the gas price every time the carbon tax goes up. These are the real, tangible struggles Canadians and people in Flamborough—Glanbrook are facing every day.
Amid these struggles, Canadians are learning more and more about yet another Liberal scandal through this debate. They are upset because they work hard for the tax dollars they send to this place and to the Government of Canada, and that money is clearly being wasted on mismanagement, insider deals and flagrant conflicts of interest.
They know that the $400 million in the SDTC scandal did not go to green technologies or innovations that will create jobs as the program was intended to do; rather, it went to those with Liberal connections. I would note that this is almost half a billion dollars. Canadians know it is part of a pattern with the Liberals.
We can contrast this with the case of a senior I spoke with about a month or so ago. He told me that, despite the good pension he receives from his years of work with a utility, he just had to take a part-time job to help make ends meet, to buy groceries. Grocery prices continue to rise because of the carbon tax. Of course, seniors on a fixed income are hit hardest by this. This is what makes the $400 million in the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund scandal so egregious.
This is not just a story of bad accounting; it is a story of betrayal. The SDTC fund was created with a noble purpose: to drive innovation, to support small businesses, to invest in sustainable technologies that could help Canada actually meet its emissions targets. This is unlike the carbon tax, which is only a tax grab and a tax plan. Instead, this program has become a glaring example of government mismanagement and misplaced priorities.
The Auditor General's investigation uncovered 186 conflicts of interest connected to SDTC, involving millions of dollars being funnelled to businesses tied to senior Liberal officials. This is not just negligence; it is systemic. The 186 conflicts of interest identified by the Auditor General are what we know about thus far. Surely, more conflicts will be identified in what has yet to be reviewed once these documents are released unredacted. The government needs to turn over the unredacted documents to the RCMP as asked by Parliament, the majority of members in this place.
Corruption does not just happen in a vacuum. It thrives where accountability is weak, where oversight is lacking and where governments forget their fundamental responsibility to the people they serve. The government's repeated ethical failures are not just individual lapses; they are symptoms of a deeper problem, a culture that prioritizes insiders and political optics over transparency and fairness.
It is taxpayer money being used to fund ineligible projects. These projects failed to meet basic criteria, overstated their environmental benefits or, worse, delivered no measurable outcomes at all. Can we believe that?
Four hundred million dollars is not just a number. It represents real opportunities lost. It could have been used to equip hospitals with life-saving MRI machines. It could have been used to strengthen our border, to stop the flow of illegal guns that are threatening communities such as mine. I hear about this every day.
That $400 million could have gone toward supporting small businesses, helping them to adapt in what is clearly an increasingly challenging economy. Imagine if the wasted $400 million had been invested in infrastructure, repairing the aging bridges and roads that Canadians depend on every day. These are not just luxuries. These are lifelines for families to commute to work, for businesses to transport goods and for communities to stay connected. Instead, these funds were squandered, leaving Canadians to contend with potholes and gridlock while Liberal insiders reap the rewards
However, the SDTC scandal is not just a story of waste; it is also one of trust. Canadians are supposed to trust their government to act responsibly, to manage their tax dollars with care and to prioritize the public good, but with every scandal, that trust is eroded. When Parliament demanded transparency and demanded unredacted documents related to this scandal, the Liberal government's response was silence and then refusal, a blatant disregard for the will of Parliament and the trust of Canadians. That is why we are here again today continuing to debate this motion. The government could simply turn over the documents unredacted, which is what this Parliament, the majority of us members here, the representatives of the people who sent us to this place, asked for in June.
I remember when the Prime Minister said, “sunshine is the [world's] best disinfectant”. What a stark difference after nine years. The consequences of this scandal strike to the very core of what it means to govern with integrity and accountability. Unfortunately, the mismanagement seen in the SDTC scandal is not an exception. Rather, it is emblematic of a troubling trend within the government.
Time and time again, we have witnessed decisions that prioritize political optics over meaningful outcomes, leaving Canadians to bear the cost. Nowhere is this pattern more evident than in the carbon tax, a policy that claims to address climate change but in reality disproportionately burdens Canadians while doing little to deliver tangible results. The senior I spoke to pays the price of that carbon tax, but we know, because just recently there was a report that Canada continues to be 62nd out of 67 countries in meeting our emissions targets, that the carbon tax is not an environment plan. It is a tax plan.
It is a tax, and since the carbon tax drives up prices across the board and fuels the cost of living crisis, it is even worse than that. Canadians are justifiably angry when they see this SDTC scandal and they see the Liberal government continue to tax them more and more, while Liberal insiders get away with lining their pockets through a government program. Canadians are footing the bill, and they are tired of footing the bill. The government continues to show its true priorities: protecting insiders, evading accountability and perpetuating a cycle of waste, mismanagement and corruption.
Let us talk about what the government's refusal to release documents related to the SDTC scandal really means. When Parliament demands transparency, it is exercising its duty to uphold accountability on behalf of the people who elected us, yet the government has chosen to ignore those demands. The Speaker of the House has ruled that parliamentary privilege was violated. This is not a minor infraction. This is a blatant disregard for the democratic process.
What does the government have to hide? That certainly is the question that it begs. What are the Liberals so afraid of revealing in these documents? Canadians deserve to know the truth because they are paying the bills. They deserve to see how their hard-earned money is being spent.
The refusal to release the documents is not just a violation of privilege; it is also an insult to every Canadian who pays taxes and to every Canadian who expects integrity and accountability from their leaders. When a government wastes public funds, the impact is not just financial; it is also personal for Canadians. It undermines their confidence that their tax dollars are being used to create opportunities, to solve problems and to build a better future, and it deepens the frustration of the people who are already struggling to make ends meet.
Since we are on the topic of tax dollars being wasted, and the findings of the Auditor General, there was another example yesterday in the Auditor General's report on the CEBA loans during the pandemic. The report says that another $3.5 billion was mismanaged by the Liberals. The Auditor General found that over 77,000 recipients of the Canada emergency business account program went to businesses that did not meet the eligibility requirements. That was another $3.5 billion in wasteful spending by the government.
It is no wonder that I hear from constituents in Waterdown, Binbrook, Mount Hope and in all of the communities throughout Flamborough—Glanbrook who are renewing their mortgage. Maybe they were on a fixed-term mortgage that has come up for renewal, or maybe they are on a variable mortgage. They are seeing higher interest rates. That, of course, has a huge impact when their monthly or biweekly payment is going to be more. It has a massive impact on their household budget.
I remind constituents that this is the impact of government overspending, because we know from major banks that 2% of the interest rate increases, and therefore obviously 2% of the mortgage rate increases, is attributable to government overspending. Whether it is increased taxes or increased interest rates, it is Canadians who are paying the price when the Liberals try to sweep scandals like SDTC under the rug and continue the cover-up. People who are renewing mortgages in the communities in my riding pay the price.
What is worse is that when governments waste tax dollars and evade transparency, they weaken the public's faith in our institutions. Accountability is not just a political talking point; it is the foundation of our healthy democracy. We must recommit ourselves to the values that Canadians hold dear: honesty, fairness and respect for the public trust, respect for tax dollars and the work that goes into providing them. The scandal represents more than just an ethical lapse; it is also a betrayal of the trust of Canadians in their government. It sends a dangerous message that accountability is optional, that rules are for others and that people in power can operate with impunity.
Sadly, this is not the first time we have seen this kind of behaviour from the Liberal government. It is part of a disturbing pattern. We can think back to the WE Charity scandal, where hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars were funnelled into an organization with deep connections to the Prime Minister's family, or to the SNC-Lavalin affair, where senior officials attempted to interfere in a criminal prosecution to protect a politically connected corporation.
More recently, we can think back to the ArriveCAN app, which we know could have been produced by a couple of smart people in a basement, maybe over a case of beer. It started with an initial price tag of $80,000 but ballooned to an over $60-million fiasco. That is the amount we know about thus far; it could be more. The fiasco exposed yet another example of the government's inability or unwillingness to manage taxpayer dollars responsibly.
Of course, as my other colleagues have brought up, let us not forget about the Winnipeg lab cover-up. The government chose to prorogue Parliament rather than allow Canadians to know what really transpired in that lab. Time and time again, we see the government prioritize secrecy over accountability, insiders over taxpayers and political survival over the public good.
Let us also not forget that it was the ad scam scandal in the early 2000s that resulted in the Gomery inquiry that would eventually bring down the Liberal government of that day. It is worth noting that scandal involved $40 million. Today we are talking about the SDTC scandal that involves $400 million. It is ten times the size, yet the refusal to provide the documents is treated so casually. A $40-million scandal brought down a government. Today there is a $400-million scandal and a refusal to release the documents to the RCMP, as Parliament has ordered.
What was true then, in the early 2000s with ad scam, is true today. It is the same question: What do the Liberals have to hide? In each of these scandals I have mentioned, we see the same playbook: waste, secrecy and a refusal to be held accountable. Canadians who pay taxes are tired of it. They are tired of a government that prioritizes insiders over taxpayers, seeing the money they worked so hard for squandered on projects and programs that deliver little benefit. They are tired of bearing the cost of the government's failures through policies like the carbon tax and other taxes that are levied to pay for these wasteful spending. These unnecessary taxes, coupled with scandals like SDTC, create a perfect storm of financial strain and shattered trust. Canadians are left wondering, if the government can waste $400 million with no consequences, why should they believe any tax revenue is being used responsibly? It is not just about dollars and cents; it is about trust in government, leadership and the very institutions that are supposed to serve the people. When Canadians see a government that refuses to release the documents, hides behind excuses and repeatedly puts its friends and allies ahead of public good, that trust is eroded.
The impact of this serious erosion goes beyond politics and affects the very fabric of our democracy. It undermines the belief that government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. The government had the opportunity to do the right thing. It could have chosen transparency, acknowledged its mistakes and taken steps to rebuild trust. It could have released those documents, unredacted. It still can, but instead it continues to choose secrecy and defiance, further deepening the divide between itself and the Canadians it is supposed to represent. The cost of this distrust is more than just political; it leads to disengagement, skepticism and a growing belief that government itself is incapable of serving the public interest, which is why accountability and integrity matter. It is also why the Conservative Party will not stop fighting to restore these values to government. We will continue to demand answers, to hold the government accountable and to ensure the voices of Canadians are heard in the House.
The time for excuses is over. The time for accountability is now. It is not just about addressing one scandal, but addressing the culture of entitlement and mismanagement that has plagued the government for far too long. Canadians deserve better. They deserve a government that respects their hard-earned dollars, prioritizes their needs and upholds the principles of democracy and accountability. Conservatives stand ready to deliver that kind of leadership.
On March 25, 2022, the MP was endorsed by Patrick Brown. On June 7, a month and a half later, he officially switched and started supporting the Leader of the Opposition. Nine days later, on June 16, the member for Calgary Nose Hill left and we know that she was contacted by foreign diplomats.
Can the member comment as to whether he was contacted by foreign diplomats?
The hon. member knows that does not really relate to the hon. member's speech.
The hon. member has about 20 seconds to provide an answer, if he so wishes.
Madam Speaker, I was absolutely not contacted by foreign diplomats.
What I can tell the member is that I made that decision of my own volition because I watched the hon. member for Carleton and I saw that he had the qualities of leadership we needed in our party. He had the qualities of leadership we needed for the prime minister of Canada. Every single day since then, as I have watched him here in the chamber, through this Parliament and on the road in southern Ontario, I see why he is the prime minister that Canadians and Canada need—
Adjournment Proceedings
[Adjournment Proceedings]
[English]
Madam Speaker, I am back tonight to continue to call for action from the federal government in the face of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, one that has been documented and affirmed by experts, including the University Network for Human Rights, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and the UN special committee.
A few weeks ago, in question period, I spoke of an IDF missile strike that had burned Palestinians alive at a hospital tent camp. In the time since, Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita in the world. More aid workers have been killed, and as a result, aid organizations like World Central Kitchen have had to pause their operations in Gaza altogether, while 1.1 million in Gaza face catastrophic hunger. UN officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. Nearly 70% of the over 44,000 killed are women and children.
In the face of all of this, the world must not sit idly by. Canada must not sit idly by. Yet today, we remain complicit, and the calls to act continue to echo across the country. Just this morning, a hundred Jewish Canadians occupied the Confederation Building on Parliament Hill, demanding the Government of Canada end its complicity in this genocide.
Here are the words of one of the organizers, Niall Ricardo: “Our politicians cannot be complacent in these marble hallways while Israel continues to burn Palestinians alive in their tents”. Niall is right.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mohammed Awad, coordinator of the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations, recently said at committee, “The Palestinian people have been failed several times, more and more by the international community and, unfortunately, by Canada as well.”
There is much the Government of Canada could do today if it were serious about ending its complicity in this genocide. At the bare minimum, it could start by enacting a true two-way arms embargo on Israel and cancelling all active military export permits to the country. Second, Canada could, today, recognize the state of Palestine, which should be self-evident if Canada believes in, and it says it does by its foreign policy, a two-state solution. How can we possibly believe in a two-state solution if Canada does not affirm that one of the two states even exists? This, at a time when experts have shared at committee in recent months that it is an obviously critical step for peace and preservation in the region.
Canada can and should call for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.
The government could fix the temporary resident visa program for Palestinian Canadian family members looking to get out of Gaza, following the recent Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East report showing this program was intended to fail. We could follow through on our Geneva Convention obligations, including preventing genocide. We could sanction extremist cabinet ministers who have said, for example, that starving civilians in Gaza might be justified, or that perpetrators of settler violence are heroes.
Years from now, no doubt, politicians will come together to memorialize the genocide in Gaza, but more important than those words of memoriam in future years is action right now.
Tonight I ask the parliamentary secretary, again, when will the government's actions align with its words when it says, “Never again”?
Ms. Pam Damoff (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Consular Affairs), Lib.):
Madam Speaker, I will begin by thanking the member for Kitchener Centre for his question and his ongoing attention to this subject. We too share the member's immense sense of grief, and our hearts break for the tragic loss of civilian life in Israel and Gaza. In particular, we grieve for the children, who have been disproportionately affected by this ongoing conflict. However, let us also acknowledge that this debate is taking place after a ceasefire was secured between Israel and Hezbollah. Though we remain horrified by the loss of civilian life in Lebanon and northern Israel, this ceasefire is the product of tireless and creative diplomacy. As our world becomes increasingly unstable, direct diplomatic engagement remains the most productive tool in building peace.
Of course, the horrific attacks by Hamas against Israeli citizens on October 7 still shock us all. We continue to condemn Hamas, a listed terrorist organization, unequivocally. We will never forget the pain and suffering caused by its heinous acts of violence. Canada also condemns Hamas's unacceptable treatment of hostages. We continue to call for not only the immediate and unconditional release of all remaining hostages but also the return of the bodies of hostages killed in Gaza.
What has been happening in Gaza is catastrophic. The humanitarian situation was already dire. Civilians in Gaza have nowhere else to go and, as the minister has said, asking them to move again is unacceptable. The violence must stop. Canada has been calling for an immediate, sustainable ceasefire for months, but this cannot be one-sided; Hamas must lay down its arms.
Humanitarian aid must also be urgently increased and sustained. The need for humanitarian assistance in Gaza has never been greater. Rapid, safe and unimpeded humanitarian relief must be provided to civilians. Canada was the first G7 country to act, and we will continue to work with partners towards ensuring sustained access to humanitarian assistance for civilians, including food, water, medical care, fuel, shelter and access for humanitarian workers. Today, Canada has announced $215 million in humanitarian assistance to address the urgent needs of vulnerable civilians in this crisis.
When it comes to UNRWA, we understand the vital role it plays in delivering aid to Palestinian civilians. Legislation passed by the Israeli government aimed at revoking the privileges and immunities of UNRWA is cause for grave concern. It is also critical that UNRWA continue its reform program, demonstrate its commitment to the principle of neutrality and ensure that its activities remain entirely in line with its mandate. We continue to urge the Israeli government to abide by its international obligations and allow for the full, rapid, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the unfolding tragedy. Canada's commitment to life-saving humanitarian aid remains unwavering.
We condemn the killing of civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. We continue to insist that civilians be protected. Attacks on hospitals, aid delivery sites and refugee camps have caused the deaths of dozens of civilians seeking refuge.
When it comes to South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice, the court has been clear on the provisional measures. Israel must ensure the delivery of basic services and essential humanitarian assistance, and it must protect civilians. The court's decisions on provisional measures are binding.
We have also seen the expansion of settlements accelerating in the West Bank as settler violence continues. We continue to respond to the urgent needs—
Madam Speaker, I appreciate that the parliamentary secretary spoke of the importance of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. She also spoke of condemning the murder of civilians in Gaza. In light of that, what I have been calling for is what we have heard from activists across the country: Canada should resume its work as a peacemaker in the world.
If we are going to stand up in the face of this genocide in Gaza, we should start by calling for a true, two-way arms embargo and following through on that. The parliamentary secretary and I have spoken about that in this place before, along with recognizing the state of Palestine, as I shared earlier. In light of her comments tonight, will she advocate within the government to ensure that we have a true, two-way arms embargo in place?
Madam Speaker, Canada is committed to lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. Canada is prepared to recognize a Palestinian state at the right time, conducive to a lasting peace and not necessarily as the last step along the path.
Let me assure the hon. member that we remain fixated on this conflict. Just yesterday, my colleague, the member for Don Valley West and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, delivered Canada's national address to the Cairo Ministerial Conference to Enhance the Humanitarian Response in Gaza. The needs of civilians in Gaza are dire. That is why, on Friday, the government announced an additional $50 million in humanitarian assistance, raising the total to $215 million. Canada will continue to be there. We will work with our partners and allies. The violence must stop.
Madam Speaker, a CBC story last week listed the 10 top U.S. imports from Canada in 2023. It totalled $340 billion. Oil, gas and petroleum products made up $160 billion of that, which is 48%. Agricultural products made up $30 billion, which is 10%. Agricultural products depend a lot on oil, gas and petroleum products when we are talking about fertilizer and machinery. Transportation equipment made up $74 billion, which is 25%. Transportation equipment is steel, metal and all sorts of things made from the resource sector.
This is a tremendous amount of export to a country that is looking for self-sufficiency in North America, and it comes from Canada. A lot of it comes from Canadian exports. We are over 50%. Does the U.S. have a cap on emissions and a cap on oil and gas production now? No, it does not. Has the President-elect indicated he would put an emissions cap on oil and gas production? No. He is looking to expand their oil and gas production, and he is looking for more from his biggest trading partner in oil and gas: Canada. That is why we need North American energy security.
However, the cap would cause a reduction in oil of one million barrels per day by 2030, with an additional cut of one million barrels per day by 2035. This cap on oil emissions is a cap on responsible Canadian oil production, jobs and paycheques. In Alberta, we are talking about a reduction of 92,000 jobs. We are talking about $12 billion in government revenues lost.
The Conference Board of Canada think tank estimates the cap would reduce Canada's GDP by $1 trillion by 2030. That is a loss of 151,000 jobs across Canada by 2030, slowing the GDP by 2030 from 15.3% to 14.3%. Deloitte estimates Alberta will see 3.6% less investment, which is a 4.5% decrease in the province's economic output. Also, Ontario would lose 15,000 jobs and $2.3 billion from its economy. Quebec would even lose thousands of jobs.
I know my colleagues across the way have often talked about other forms of energy production. There are solar and wind. I have the largest ones in Canada in my riding for solar and wind energy production. The Liberals were complaining about the premier putting in a moratorium. They did a six-month review and in one of the reviews, it said not to build them on irrigated land, which there is a lot of in my riding because that is for crops, yet I still have the largest ones in Canada in my riding. The other day at seven o'clock in the morning, there were no sunlight rays hitting solar panels, no wind moving and not one iota of power was coming out of solar or wind that morning. At seven o'clock in the morning, there was nothing. What supplied it? Natural gas was supplying the energy we needed in Alberta.
With respect to the products it takes to make solar and wind energy, we are talking about steel, we are talking about aluminum and we are talking about plastics. All those things to make solar and wind energy come from the resource industry, other than glass. Now here is an interesting thing about glass: It takes sand. It takes a specific kind of sand. National Geographic reports that China is destroying estuaries all over the world as mining companies get that best small, round sand to make glass. It is not the stuff in the deserts, which is rough. From the National Geographic research—
Madam Speaker, I believe the question originated as talking about carbon pricing, but I am really happy if we are going to talk about the cap on emissions from oil and gas instead.
I would like to begin with the point that emissions in Canada are on their way down. That is a good thing. When the Liberals first formed government, emissions were tracking upward and there was no path to bring them down. Today, our emissions are lower than they have been in almost three decades.
That is real progress and that is what our young people want to see from us, as do our next generations. They know if we do not take action on climate change, we are going to see more and more natural disasters and we are also going to lose the economic opportunities we have here in our country to provide energy, know-how and innovation that we are creating right here. In fact, we see time and time again that we are developing that important know-how.
If we want to look at examples of how we are supporting great energy projects right here in our country, we do not have to look any further than the Oneida battery project with Six Nations not far from Toronto. It is kind of in southern Ontario. It will be one of the largest battery projects in all of North America.
It was created with the help of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the federal government. It ensures we are working as a partnership. It is a question of reconciliation but it is also about how we create that battery storage for the days the member opposite was bringing up, where maybe there is less sun and less wind. We do have those other solutions and the world is looking for those other energy solutions.
That is why we have worked with Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia to develop an offshore wind industry. We have created changes in the Atlantic accords to make that happen. That is what they were looking for from us. Time and time again, we are working to make sure that Canada is at the forefront of fighting climate change and that we are on track to meet our targets. We are, by the way, on track to meet our interim targets for 2026. The oil and gas emissions cap will help us to be on track to meet our further targets.
We need to take these actions. We need to do it for our economy. We need to do it for our planet.
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague who I have worked with before and I appreciate what she has stated.
I will talk specifically about the carbon tax and the sugar beet industry in Canada. We now have one place left in Canada that refines sugar. We need sugar. It is a growing industry in our country. In Ontario, we grow about 10,000 tonnes of sugar beet. It is trucked to Michigan. Where is the carbon tax sense in that? It is an industry we have in southern Alberta, but with the carbon tax, it is getting so expensive to grow, to truck and to have it done as it should be so we retain this part of our industry in Canada. It is important, but the carbon tax makes it so difficult for us to compete in the world market.
That is an industry we need in southern Alberta. This is an industry we need for Canada. The carbon tax threatens it.
Madam Speaker, how sweet that I get to talk about sugar for a second, because right in downtown Toronto, we have Redpath Sugar. I got to go to Redpath Sugar and look at the improvements that are being made with federal support from Agriculture Canada to help it reduce its energy costs and energy needs so it is more efficient. It actually is helping its bottom line. It was also helping make a safer environment for its workers.
Yes, even with sugar, we are making improvements while actually fighting climate change.
Madam Speaker, I rise today to have a chance to address, once again, the government's emissions cap, which is better known as its production cap, because we know that, by implementing the emissions cap, we are going to see a reduction of about a million barrels of oil in production in Canada by 2030. There have been various reports that have been done on this that show this is going to happen.
One of the strategic advantages that Canada has enjoyed for the last number of decades has been our reliable, affordable and efficient energy production. That has been done largely through the oil and gas sector that we have here in Canada. Let us also talk about some of the benefits that our communities receive from the oil and gas sector.
When we look at communities around southwest Saskatchewan, for example, the town of Shaunavon has the Crescent Point Wickenheiser Centre, which has a community skating rink, the curling rink, meeting rooms and event spaces. In Kindersley, Inter Pipeline just entered into a 10-year partnership to be the naming rights sponsor for the event centre arena, which supports the minor hockey program there, as well as the Kindersley Klippers in the SJHL.
Just last month, in my hometown of Swift Current, Whitecap Resources made a $100,000 commitment toward the Southwest Facility Foundation, which is going to be a new multi-purpose facility that we are looking to build in Swift Current. Beyond that, we can look at the Dr. Noble Irwin Regional Healthcare Foundation with the various donors who are on the list and the various businesses that are donating to the success of health care all across southwest Saskatchewan. Particularly in Swift Current, we see people who are entrepreneurs in the oil and gas sector. We see the small businesses that are operating in the service industry. They are the ones who are donating to these causes.
When we look at our minor sports teams, when we look at the boards of people who have donated, who are either platinum, gold or silver sponsors of minor sports, whether it is hockey or baseball, again, it is energy companies that are the ones leading the charge on making donations to minor sports, to minor hockey.
For senior centres, schools and education, it is these companies that are the ones putting their dollars into these facilities and into the various courses and classes that are available. These are the companies that need to be supported, but these are the companies that the Liberal government is deliberately attacking and is trying to wipe out with its draconian policies, such as the emissions cap, which, as I said, is a production cap.
Let us look further at what is going to happen here. In these reports, which I referenced earlier, 150,000 jobs are expected to be lost because of the emissions cap. When we look at the average salary in the oil and gas sector, it is over $151,000, which is 2.4 times greater than the average salary across the Canadian economy.
In 2030, when this emissions cap is fully implemented, we are going to see a drop of $34.5 billion in economic potential in Canada. When we game that out, that averages out to a drop of $420 per month for the average family across the country in disposable income. That is going to be the result and the track record of the government.
I do not know why Liberals are so committed to trying to devastate the Canadian economy. They know that the natural resource sector, particularly the oil and gas sector, is the driver of the Canadian economy. It is what produces good jobs. It is the industry that is the single largest investor in renewable energy in this country. That is who they are directly assaulting.
Madam Speaker, I am not even sure how to fully respond to the speech I just heard, which was a list of the donations made by the oil and gas industry to the member's community. That is great. I just do not really know how to respond to that, except to say that in my community, local sports are supported by many different community organizations and businesses, and I thank them very much for their support.
I do not think that this is actually what we are supposed to be debating today. I do not think that this is necessarily the most important issue that we have to talk about. I think the most important issue that we have to talk about, and the member opposite did touch on this as well, is the future for our economy, our environment and our planet, here in this country and around the world. I think that one of the things that frustrates me sometimes is that there is not enough focus, as well, on all of the opportunities.
It is so frustrating to always be talking in the negative. There are opportunities and the world is looking to us for those opportunities. In fact, Romania, wanting to make sure that it can stay away from Russian oil, turned to Canada. We are providing expertise in providing more nuclear support and building out nuclear energy more. That is something that we can provide. When we look at other places where we are working with our allies, we have the know-how and the go-to. That is something that we need to be continuing to bring forward.
Just recently, I got to go to the graduation of the first all-female class of new millwrights, who will be working at the Darlington refurbishment. There is a great opportunity there for good-paying union jobs for these women coming out of the program. There are opportunities, and we need to be seizing them. At the same time, we need to be fighting climate change because that is the most existential threat for our planet. Let us do both. Let us stop focusing on the negative. Let us look at all that we can achieve. That is, in fact, what we are doing.
Madam Speaker, I am not sure why she says we should not focus on the negative. She says we should not focus on the loss of $35 billion from the Canadian economy, the drop in GDP that is going to happen on this or the 150,000 job losses that are going to come about because of the emissions cap. That is what she does not want to focus on. She does not want people to know about these kinds of things. She is going to talk about the environment, saying that we have to do so much for the environment. Oil and gas companies have been leading the charge in investments in trying to reduce their methane emissions. They have been working on efficiencies. Over the years, they have actually decreased emissions in their sector on their own, without government mandates. They have been the single biggest driver in making sure that the most ethical, highest standards are met in Canadian oil and energy but that this is also done in a way that it is still affordable for Canadians to have reliable energy. This is the strategic advantage that Canada has, but the Liberal government wants to make it go away. It is a shame.
Madam Speaker, I am trying not to talk down our economy, because I know we can accomplish so much more. What we should also know is that the oil and gas sector is Canada's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and that the emissions from that part of the sector continue to grow. I do not even understand what the confusion is about why we should have a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector. Pathways originally said that they were on track, that they wanted to do the very same thing, so where is the argument? We need to do this for our economy and for the environment.
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