SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 293 - Mar/21/24

Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

Mar/21/24 10:12:08 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand and present a petition on behalf of Canadians who have signed it, across partisan lines, to bring awareness to the fact that 71% of firefighters in Canada are volunteers, many of which are in Battle River—Crowfoot. These petitioners, in particular, highlight a number of aspects of the great work that our volunteer departments do in keeping our communities safe. These folks are calling on the Government of Canada to increase the tax credit amount for volunteer firefighting and search and rescue volunteer services from $3,000 to $10,000, acknowledging the hard work that so many of these women and men do across our country, specifically in rural and remote areas. It is an honour to table this petition today.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/21/24 10:13:08 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand at this time. The Speaker: Is that agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

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Stand

The Speaker

Mar/21/24 10:13:08 a.m.
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The hon. member for La Prairie is rising on a point of order.

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Mr. Alain Therrien (La Prairie, BQ)

Mar/21/24 10:13:26 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my comments to the question of privilege that the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier raised yesterday. Monday, at the very end of the debate on the NDP opposition motion, the government introduced an amendment in English only, and the House had to debate it without any French translation for the francophone members. The Bloc Québécois acted responsibly just after the government introduced the amendment and had the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert inform the Speaker that it was impossible for the Bloc Québécois to continue the debate or to take a stance because the government's amendment was not available in French. In the end, members got access to the French version about 40 minutes later. We are of the opinion that there is a prima facie breach of parliamentary privilege, and I am asking you to rule accordingly and send the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

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The Speaker

Mar/21/24 10:14:19 a.m.
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I thank the member for La Prairie for his comments. The hon. Leader of the Opposition on the same question of privilege.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Mar/21/24 10:14:29 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I find it very interesting that the Bloc Québécois is complaining now, because they allowed the vote to happen and voted in favour of a unilingual English motion. If the Bloc Québécois is actually serious about its desire to protect the French language, then it should have said—

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The Speaker

Mar/21/24 10:14:45 a.m.
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I think this is a matter of debate, not a matter of privilege. However, I greatly appreciate the interventions. As I was saying to the member for La Prairie, I appreciate these comments, and the Chair will take them into consideration when looking into the matter. I hope to make a ruling as soon as possible.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

Mar/21/24 10:15:24 a.m.
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moved: That the House declare non-confidence in the Prime Minister and his costly government for increasing the carbon tax 23 % on April 1, as part of his plan to quadruple the tax while Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat and house themselves, and call for the House to be dissolved so Canadians can vote in a carbon tax election.

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The Speaker

Mar/21/24 10:15:24 a.m.
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Today being the last allotted day for the supply period ending March 26, the House will proceed as usual to the consideration and passage of the appropriation bills. In view of recent practices, do hon. members agree that the bills be distributed now? Some hon. members: Agreed. The Speaker: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

Mar/21/24 10:16:28 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Thornhill. Today, as members, we will decide whether we will stand with Canadians, including Quebeckers, or with the Prime Minister, who punishes people with taxes, debts and inflation. Today is a big moment. The Bloc Québécois will decide which team they are on. Do they stand with the workers and families of Quebec or with the Prime Minister? The Bloc Québécois has already supported all of this Prime Minister’s discretionary spending by voting for the estimates. These are not expenditures for health, transfers to the provinces or seniors. These are expenditures for bureaucracy and all the subcontractors, including the arrive scammers. The Bloc Québécois voted for all expenditures, for the $21 billion paid to subcontractors. The Bloc voted for all the offender release policies. They supported the Prime Minister’s attempt to ban hunting rifles for people in the regions. They supported all the centralizing housing policies, which doubled the cost of housing, including rents in Quebec. Now, after getting all worked up time and time again complaining about Liberal government policies, they will be able to decide whether they will fire this government. This is a government that has destroyed our immigration system, doubled the cost of housing and released criminals, which led to an increase in auto thefts, among other things. This government caused a drug and homelessness crisis that has forced tens of thousands of Quebeckers to use food banks. We will see if the Bloc Québécois will support this government. I think they will. I think that, when the Bloc Québécois is here, in Ottawa, it supports the centralizers. The Bloc always votes with the Liberals. However, when Bloc members are in their riding, they say exactly the opposite. This is because there is a symbiotic relationship between the Bloc Québécois and the centralist Liberals. The two agree on all ideological issues. Both are led by the woke lefties of the Plateau Mont-Royal, who want to tax Canadians, put them in debt and free criminals while banning hunting rifles. Now the Bloc Québécois says it wants to support a tax hike of 17¢ a litre on gas and diesel. In addition, it supports the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, who wants to shut down the forestry sector and kill the jobs of all the workers who depend on wood to put food on the table. Fortunately, we Conservatives are going to hold the government of this Prime Minister, who is not worth the cost, to account. This government is not worth the cost, the corruption or the crime. It is a government that must be defeated. That is why we are bringing a motion of non-confidence to the House of Commons. We need a common-sense Conservative government that will reduce taxes and stop crime. Only the Conservative Party will do that. Quebeckers who want to defeat this costly and extremist government have only one choice, and that is the Conservative Party. It is important to know that voting for the Bloc Québécois means voting for the Liberals, because they are much the same. They agree on all issues, except the location of the country’s capital. Aside from that, they agree on all issues. If people really want change, change based on common sense that will allow them to keep more of their paycheques, that will make work pay again, that will lead to safer streets and that will respect the regions, including places where people hunt and drive trucks, they should keep in mind that only the common-sense Conservative Party can achieve that. After eight years, it is clear that the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption, but never would we have imagined how bad things would get. Today, I look at the newspaper headlines. Even the media is noticing how bad things are. A headline in the National Post: “Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are”. The RCMP has produced a report saying that Canadians are so poor, desperate and miserable that it may lead to political instability and other turbulence that one could not even have imagined would occur in a first world country eight years ago. I now turn my attention to The Globe and Mail. Remember, this is the same Globe and Mail that criticized me for using the term “gatekeeper” to describe how homes could not get build. Here is its headline today: “Home ownership is turning into a gated community that renters cannot join”. Years after saying that it was very dangerous for us to talk about gatekeepers, The Globe and Mail has now awakened to the fact that the Prime Minister, in eight years, has turned home ownership into a gated community, shutting people outside of the gates. A small, privileged group gets richer and richer as a growing mass of working-class youth and seniors renting apartments can no longer afford any place to live. I used to warn that there were 35-year-olds living in their parents' basements. That is now the least of our concerns. We are now worried that those 35-year-olds and their parents might not be able to make their mortgage payments at all. Defaults are rising rapidly. We have 35 homeless encampments in Halifax and have similar encampments now in every major centre in Canada. We have two million people lined up at food banks in scenes that are reminiscent of the Great Depression, and 35% of charities now say that they are turning people away because they no longer have the resources. Food bank shelves are emptying out. Then, there are people who are eating out of garbage cans, with 8,000 people now having joined something called a “dumpster diving network”, a Facebook group where they share tips on how they can climb into a garbage can and can pull a meal out because there is nothing they can afford at the grocery store and nothing left at the food banks. This year, groceries are going to cost $700 more than they did last year for the average family. In the middle of all this, what do the NDP and the Prime Minister choose? They choose to raise taxes on food and fuel, on heat and homes, and to raise taxes on all the materials to build homes, which will raise taxes on all those who buy the homes. They choose to raise taxes on heating those homes, to raise taxes on the gas and diesel needed to get to work to earn paycheques to make payments on those homes and to raise taxes on the farmers who make the food, on the truckers who ship the food, on the grocers who sell the food and, therefore, on all those who buy the food, as if the desperation was not bad enough. This is in light of all the evidence that has come out that, now, 60% of Canadians are paying more in carbon tax than they are getting back in rebates, a fact that I have read into the record time and time again, a fact that the Prime Minister continues to attempt to hide from, a fact that the Parliamentary Budget Officer just testified to and a fact that we did not need all those accurate calculations to know because every single person who is opening their empty fridge and is wondering how they are going to feed their kids already knew that fact was real. We cannot, in good conscience, stand by while the Prime Minister imposes more misery and suffering on the Canadian people. Canadians are good. They are decent. They are hard-working. They do not have to give up on things they used to take for granted, like affordable food and homes, just for the incompetence and the ego of one man. He is not worth the cost, not worth the crime, not worth the corruption, and he is not worth giving up the country that we knew and that we still love. We, as common-sense Conservatives, are ready to restore hope in this country, but it starts with change. We rise today to vote non-confidence in the NDP-Liberal government and to restore the great country that we love based on the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.)

Mar/21/24 10:26:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I noticed that the Leader of the Opposition was bringing up headlines from The Globe and Mail, so I would like to bring up another headline that was in The Globe and Mail today. It states that the Leader of the Opposition's campaign manager “established second lobbying firm, working with the same office. The article goes on to say, “Clients who booked meetings on [this new company's] website were redirected to the booking system [of] Jenni Byrne + Associates. That function was removed, as was Ms. Byrne's headshot...[from] the website, after The Globe's inquiries about the connection [of] the two firms.” Now that we see that the Leader of the Opposition's campaign manager has tried to hide behind a second company in order to continue her lobbying practices, when will the Leader of the Opposition tell his campaign manager to stop lobbying and to start actually working for him?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Mar/21/24 10:27:47 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, everything the member across the way said is completely, 100% false. This is coming from a government, by the way, that has presided over a 100% increase in lobbying activities. That is because lobbyists have come to know that in business today, someone does not get rich by having the best product; they get rich by having the best lobbyist. Someone does not get ahead by pleasing customers, but by pleasing politicians. The big government has left poor people. What we want is precisely the opposite. We will slash the consultants and the lobbying sector, and we will unleash the productive forces of our working-class people in our factories, our farms, our forestry and our fishery sectors, and of the people who do the real work in this country. It starts by axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime.

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Mr. Charlie Angus (Timmins—James Bay, NDP)

Mar/21/24 10:28:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have another event of I am going to huff and to puff, and then, I am going to go off and have a fundraiser and some mojitos at Stornoway, while the poor backbenchers dutifully follow through. Do members remember when he said he was going to speak until the budget fell? That was for about three hours, and then he left. Do members remember when we had to vote all the way until Christmas? The only time we ever saw him in the House was to vote against Ukraine. We had nine confidence votes on Monday, and he was hiding behind the screen. Tonight, we will have votes. Here is the question: At Dairy Queen, I do not know why he was fired, but if someone works for a living, they have to show up. Will he show up tonight, or will he be off fundraising with his lobbyist friends, leaving his poor schleps on the backbench to do the heavy lifting of bringing down the government and forcing an election? Show up for work.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/21/24 10:29:47 a.m.
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This happened in the previous question and answer. I just want to remind members that if they are not recognized, they should not be speaking. It is very disrespectful to do so. I know that a while ago, there was a question asked, and the person who asked the question was trying to intervene again, even though he had not been recognized. Others were trying to answer questions when someone else was trying to pose a question. I would just remind members to please be respectful in the House.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Mar/21/24 10:30:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, showing up for work means showing up for the people we work for. I have to say, I have been in his riding in the last two years more than he has. I have been on the ground in Timmins, and people there say that he should be in the witness protection program. He does not live in his riding. He is never in his riding. He has forgotten about the miners, the forestry workers and the farmers. He has voted to raise taxes on their home heating so that the people in cold, northern Ontario have to suffer in the cold and have to pay higher taxes. Now, he is going to vote for his master, the Prime Minister of Canada, rather than the people in Timmins. I will fight for the people of Timmins here, everywhere and always.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/21/24 10:31:15 a.m.
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Order. I want to remind members again that if they have had an opportunity to ask a question, they should take the opportunity to listen to the answer. If they have other questions and comments, they need to wait until the appropriate time. There is still some disrespect not only to the members who are speaking but also to the Chair. I just want to remind members to please be respectful.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen

Mar/21/24 10:32:03 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Leader of the Opposition said that everything I had said was not true. I wonder whether he would step outside, where he does not have parliamentary privilege, and—

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Rise

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/21/24 10:32:13 a.m.
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I am sorry, but that is a point of debate. Some hon. members: Oh, oh! Order. There are members of Parliament here who are very experienced and know the rules of the House. I just wish they would be respectful and follow those rules. The hon. member for Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix.

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Respectful

Mrs. Caroline Desbiens (Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d'Orléans—Charlevoix, BQ)

Mar/21/24 10:32:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to know how the Leader of the Opposition plans to appeal to Quebeckers. We have heard him say outrageously incorrect things about mayors of our cities. Twelve mayors from my riding came to Parliament Hill yesterday. At some point, will the Leader of the Opposition come up with something different to say about Quebec mayors if he wants to appeal to people in Bloc Québécois ridings?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Mar/21/24 10:33:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I work for the people, not for politicians. When mayors are incompetent, whether they are from Toronto, Vancouver, Quebec City, Montreal or any other city in the country, I will say they are incompetent. Incompetent Bloc Québécois and Liberal politicians have doubled the cost of housing. That is not good for people. I work for those who can no longer pay their bills. If that hurts politicians, too bad. They are not my priority. Common-sense people are my priority.

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