44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 27, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to table three petitions before the House.
The first petition deals with the issue of forced organ harvesting and trafficking. The petitioners have submitted this petition in support of Bill S-223, a bill that would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad to receive an organ taken without consent.
This bill has passed in the Senate three times and has already passed in the House in a previous Parliament in its current form. It is currently stalled before the foreign affairs committee. I know the petitioners are hoping that this is the petition that gets it done.
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- Sep/27/22 10:06:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am tabling deals with the issue of a commitment that was made in the Liberal election platform on page 4. The commitment was to revoke charitable status from organizations that take a particular position on a contentious social issue.
The petitioners are concerned that this proposal would have broad implications, such as removing the charitable status of schools, hospitals, refugee support organizations and many other organizations that play an important role in our communities. The petitioners want to see the determination of charitable status continue to be done on a politically and ideologically neutral basis.
The petitioners call on the government to not proceed with the proposed values test that was contained within its platform. They also want to see the government positively reaffirm its commitment to freedom of speech.
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- Sep/27/22 10:06:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the third petition I am tabling is with respect to the persecution of Falun Gong. The petitioners are highlighting the persecution of Falun Gong in the petition I am tabling. They are deeply concerned about it. They want to see the government take measures on it, which include combatting forced organ harvesting and trafficking and using the Magnitsky act to target individuals who have been involved in this persecution.
I commend these petitions to the consideration of hon. members.
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Madam Speaker, I am rising on a point of order.
I want to, respectfully, just draw your attention to an exchange that I had with the Speaker on June 9 of this year. The context was that the member for Kildonan—St. Paul sought unanimous consent for a motion and was cut off in the middle by the Speaker because of a number of nays.
I asked the Speaker, “Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you could clarify the process. Is it your ruling going forward that if a member is saying 'no', you will stop the reading of the motion? I think we have had cases where some members were saying 'no' and yet the member continued with the unanimous consent motion.”
The Speaker ruled as follows. He said, “In fact, I have been getting this from both sides. Both government and opposition members have been asking for that exact type of behaviour, rather than let it all go through. Sometimes unanimous consent motions are used as a method of getting a message across, but that is what S.O. 31s are for. If we can just shift everything over, we can use it that way. We will do our best to make that happen.”
Given the precedent set and given the cutting off of the member for Kildonan—St. Paul on June 9, I ask that this be taken into consideration in future moments like this.
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- Sep/27/22 6:20:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, today in the House, the Conservatives put forward a motion with a simple ask of the government: to recognize the harm being done to Canadians by the government's high tax, high borrowing, high spending, high inflation agenda, and to stop the damage by committing to reverse planned tax hikes, which are scheduled to take effect automatically next year. We have been very clear. The Conservatives are calling on the government to stop these automatic tax changes.
In particular, tonight I want to focus on the issue of the carbon tax, because there has been so much, dare I say, misinformation from the government around the carbon tax and around the actual record on the environment.
Earlier today, the parliamentary secretary misstated the record by implying that emissions went up under the previous government. Actually, emissions went down under the previous government. In every single jurisdiction across this country, emissions either went down or went up by less than they had in the previous decade.
A carbon tax is not necessary, and what we are seeing with the government is it is not effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the Liberals continue to double down on a failing strategy. They have said that raising taxes is somehow an environmental plan, and when it is shown not to work, when they are missing their environmental targets, their solution is even more taxes.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. On the issue of a so-called environmental plan, the government thinks that if its current taxes have not worked to achieve environmental objectives, it is going to pile more and more taxes on and expect a different result. Projections from various corners are that this carbon tax is going triple under the government, and Canadians simply cannot afford that.
As a basic show of good faith, the government should listen to Canadians. It should listen to premiers, and not only Conservatives premiers. There is even a Liberal premier who is saying that now is not the time for the government's planned carbon tax hikes to go ahead.
I mentioned in my previous questions the way that the carbon tax hike, these scheduled tax increases and the crisis they are causing regarding inflation and affordability are threatening national unity. There are deep divisions in this country, and understandably, because many Canadians have lost their jobs and many Canadians are struggling to pay for basic necessities such as groceries, gas and home heating fuel. Those Canadians are increasingly frustrated by the fact that the government is not listening, does not seem to care and is in fact putting in place automatic tax increases that would make it even harder in the future for them to afford their basic necessities.
This is causing a national unity crisis. This is causing further deepening divisions within our country. The government is simply failing to listen and respond.
The first step the government needs to take is to recognize this reality. We are calling on the government to support our proposal, which is to immediately reverse the planned automatic tax increases, the scheduled tax increases for next year, that the government has said it is going to put forward. We are calling on the government to stop this, to give Canadians the relief they are asking for, to start allowing our country to heal and to start allowing Canadians to see hope and opportunity so they will actually be able to afford their basic necessities.
There is more we need to do, of course, to make life more affordable, but a first step would be for the government to stop the damage and stop increasing taxes.
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- Sep/27/22 6:28:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member has entirely missed the point. Higher taxes are not an environmental plan. They have not worked, and the government members think that even further increasing taxes is going to somehow achieve a different result. It will not.
Let me put to the member something that is very obvious. Even proponents of carbon taxes generally admit it, and that is that the very purpose of a carbon tax is to increase the price of gas. That is why the people who support it, support it. They say it would be better if we had a higher price of gas because it would deter people from driving. That is the argument for it.
The member says that it is totally incidental to the carbon tax policy that there happens to be higher gas prices, but that is the point of the policy. Of course there are other inputs to the price of gas, but the price of gas would be lower if the government were not intentionally increasing it through a carbon tax that has as its very purpose the increase of the price of gas. This is obvious, and when everybody admits—
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- Sep/27/22 5:47:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I would like you to review the fact that previously in this session the Speaker has ruled that if there are noes, there is no right to complete a presumption of unanimous consent when members have already made clear that there is none. The Speaker—
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