44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 7, 2024 10:00AM
- May/7/24 2:01:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a joy for me to be able to celebrate the great career and send best wishes on the upcoming retirement of a renowned educator from my community, Principal Francis Poole. Mr. Poole was actually my principal when I was in elementary school, and it will not surprise members to hear that I spent a lot of time in the principal's office. However, in those days, going to the principal's office was always a pleasure. Mr. Poole's warm and gregarious personality lit up the whole school environment.
When running for office and since being elected, I have had occasion to return to the principal's office, and I have always appreciated Mr. Poole's warmth and his sharp, candid advice. Thousands of families in my community have been positively impacted by Mr. Poole's career. As the principal of Strathcona Christian Academy, Mr. Poole's life and career are defined by his faith in Jesus Christ and the joyful way that he shares that faith with everyone he meets. As Mr. Poole would say it, “Blessings on you, my friend.” May he enjoy retirement.
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- May/7/24 3:11:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, behold, the ghost of Paul Martin is back. When a government is drowning, it will grasp onto anything, but it continues to sink nonetheless.
Six years ago, the House and the government voted to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and, therefore, prevent it from fundraising, converting or operating in Canada. Six years later, this terrorist group continues to operate here with impunity. Tomorrow, the House will vote again.
Will this NDP-Liberal government finally do what it failed to do six years ago and vote to shut down IRGC operations in Canada?
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words in support of Bill C-270, which is an excellent bill from my colleague from Peace River—Westlock, who has been working so hard over his nine years in Parliament to defend the interests of his constituents on important issues like firearms, forestry and fracking, but also to stand up for justice and the recognition of the universal human dignity of all people, including and especially the most vulnerable.
Bill C-270 seeks to create mechanisms for the effective enforcement of substantively already existing legal provisions that prohibit non-consensual distribution of intimate images and child pornography. Right now, as the law stands, it is a criminal offence to produce this type of horrific material, but there are not the appropriate legal mechanisms to prevent the distribution of this material by, for instance, large pornography websites.
It has come to light that Pornhub, which is headquartered in Canada, has completely failed to prevent the presence on its platform of non-consensual and child-depicting pornographic images. This has been a matter that has been studied in great detail at parliamentary committees. My colleague for Peace River—Westlock has played a central role, but other members from other parties have as well, in identifying the fact that Pornhub and other websites have not only failed but have shown no interest in meaningfully protecting potential victims of non-consensual and child pornographic images.
It is already illegal to produce these images. Why, therefore, should it not also be clearly illegal to distribute those images without having the necessary proof of consent? This bill would require that there be verification of age and consent associated with images that are distributed. It is a common-sense legal change that would require and affect greater compliance with existing criminal prohibitions on the creation of these images. It is based on the evidence heard at committee and based on the reality that major pornography websites, many of which are headquartered in Canada, are continuing to allow this material to exist. To clarify, the fact that those images are on those websites means that we desperately need stronger legal tools to protect children and stronger legal tools to protect people who are victims of the non-consensual sharing of their images.
Further, in response to the recognition of the potential harms on children associated with exposure to pornography or associated with having images taken of them and published online, there has been discussion in Parliament and a number of different bills put forward designed to protect children in vulnerable situations. These bills are, most notably, Bill C-270 and Bill S-210.
Bill S-210 would protect children by requiring meaningful age verification for those who are viewing pornography. It is recognized that exposing children to sexual images is a form of child abuse. If an adult were to show videos or pictures to a child of a sexual nature, that would be considered child abuse. However, when websites fail to have meaningful age verification and, therefore, very young children are accessing pornography, there are not currently the legal tools to hold them accountable for that. We need to recognize that exposing young children to sexual images is a form of child abuse, and therefore it is an urgent matter that we pass legislation requiring meaningful age verification. That is Bill S-210.
Then we have Bill C-270, which would protect children in a different context. It would protect children from having their images depicted as part of child pornography. Bill C-270 takes those existing prohibitions further by requiring that those distributing images also have proof of age and consent.
This is common sense; the use of criminal law is appropriate here because we are talking about instances of child sexual abuse. Both Bill S-210 and Bill C-270 deal with child sexual abuse. It should be clear that the criminal law, not some complicated nebulous regulatory regime, is the appropriate mechanism for dealing with child abuse.
In that context, we also have a government bill that has been put forward, Bill C-63, which it calls the online harms act. The proposed bill is kind of a bizarre combination of talking about issues of radically different natures; there are some issues around speech, changes to human rights law and, potentially, attempts to protect children, as we have talked about.
The freedom of speech issues raised by the bill have been well discussed. The government has been denounced from a broad range of quarters, including some of their traditional supporters, for the failures of Bill C-63 on speech.
However, Bill C-63 also profoundly fails to be effective when it comes to child protection and the removal of non-consensual images. It would create a new bureaucratic structure, and it is based on a 24-hour takedown model; it says that if something is identified, it should be taken down within 24 hours. Anybody involved in this area will tell us that 24-hour takedown is totally ineffective, because once something is on the Internet, it is likely to be downloaded and reshared over and over again. The traumatization, the revictimization that happens, continues to happen in the face of a 24-hour takedown model.
This is why we need strong Criminal Code measures to protect children. The Conservative bills, Bill S-210 and Bill C-270, would provide the strong criminal tools to protect children without all the additional problems associated with Bill C-63. I encourage the House to pass these proposed strong child protection Criminal Code-amending bills, Bill S-210 and Bill C-270. They would protect children from child abuse, and given the legal vacuums that exist in this area, there can be no greater, more important objective than protecting children from the kind of violence and sexualization they are currently exposed to.
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- May/7/24 7:02:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it being May 7, I want to start by wishing my dear wife back home a happy anniversary. With five kids and one more on the way and through four election campaigns, it has been a wild 13 years. I am so grateful to her and to my whole family for supporting me in this important vocation. It involves far more sacrifice for them than it does for me.
The process was rigged. The arrive scam process was rigged in favour of well-connected insider companies. We know this because the procurement ombud's report identified the well-connected insiders at GC Strategies, the small two-person company that the government loved giving deals to, over and over again. GC Strategies, the small two-person company, was actually founded in the same year that the Prime Minister took office. Fancy that.
The company was founded the same year the Prime Minister took office, and it became a favoured go-to supplier for the government. A supplier of what? A supplier of nothing. This company did no work. It simply received contracts and subcontracted all of the work. If the government needed to pay someone to do nothing, GC Strategies was its go-to.
The process was rigged because GC Strategies sat down with folks inside of the government who were deciding the terms of critical contracts. GC Strategies said what the specifications of the contract and the terms of the contract should look like, and that advice was taken. GC Strategies then bid on the contract, which it had informed the development of, and, surprise, it got it. GC Strategies was able to sit down with those developing the contracting process, fix the process by saying exactly what the specifications of the contract could be and then, surprise, it got the deal.
I have continually asked the government why. Why did sketchy companies like GC Strategies develop this favoured stature within the NDP-Liberal government? Why did it continue to go to the same shady characters over and over again to give them these incredibly generous contracts?
On arrive scam alone, this glitchy app that did not work, that sent over 10,000 people into quarantine on an error, that had real horrifying impacts on the lives of Canadians, this company got, according to the Auditor General, almost $20 million for nothing. It simply got the work and then subcontracted all of it to other people. Now that is a glorious gig. It got millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, from the NDP-Liberal government to do nothing. It had the process rigged in its favour when it was a two-person company working out of a basement.
I am trying to understand. There is this systematic rot in the procurement process. This arrive scam issue is just the tip of the iceberg. We keep hearing new reports about broken contracting, contracting across various departments that clearly did not follow the rules.
I want to ask the parliamentary secretary a question. Why did the government rig the process in favour of the shady characters at GC Strategies? Why did the government do it?
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- May/7/24 7:10:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the fact is that my hon. friend has read his pre-prepared statement about government procurement policy, but he has not answered the basic question. The question is why the government rigged the process in favour of this shady two-person company that was working out of somebody's basement. How did this company, which was just founded in the same year the Prime Minister took office, manage to get so much money from the government?
If I started a company in my basement tomorrow with one other person, I suspect we would not be turning over tens of millions of dollars in government contracts, within a short space of time, for doing no work. It is pretty clear that there is some reason the government was constantly funnelling money to and through GC Strategies, and the process was, in fact, as we know, rigged in their favour.
As such, why did the government continuously funnel money to and through GC Strategies? Why did it do that?
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