- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton Manning
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $109,026.29
- Government Page
- Jun/6/24 8:02:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with the bill before us, the Liberals would lower the threshold for a review. Does the member agree that this would increase the risk to an overburdened and understaffed justice system that is under extreme strain right now and facing unacceptable delays, yes or no?
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- Jun/6/24 7:45:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that my friend on the other side is an expert in the legal system. The government amended the bill to allow convicts to apply for conviction review, without having first exhausted all appeals. This will undoubtedly lead to individuals applying for a conviction review shortly after being sentenced.
Does the hon. member not believe that this will not strengthen the justice system but, instead, will weaken it?
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- Jun/6/24 7:36:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, at committee, Conservatives suggested common-sense amendments to restore crucial checks and balances to the process based on the U.K.'s long-standing Criminal Cases Review Commission, and the government voted against that.
Why did the government vote against it and is this not lowering the threshold needed to make sure that the integrity of the process is in place?
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- Jun/4/24 3:42:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP criticizes the government, but he keeps supporting the same government's policies. Those policies are hurting Canadians every single day. Why would the leader of the NDP not do the right thing and stop supporting the government so that Canadians can choose another government that would do the right job for them?
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- Jun/4/24 1:22:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about government policies and how these policies are not serving the average Canadians. In the meantime, he and his party keep supporting the same government. Canadians are listening and wondering what is going on here. Why would the NDP members blame the government and complain about the government while they keep supporting the same government?
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- May/30/24 9:03:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the NDP is gathering, as a price for this, a one-week extension of the election so its leader can collect his full pension. That is what they are getting in return, and it does not matter what Canadians get, as long as the NDP leader—
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- May/30/24 9:01:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with the thinking mode the NDP member is in this evening, there is no way we can have a reasonable conversation. As well, his suggestion about the 18,000 people in my riding is as if I do not know my riding or the people who live in Edmonton Manning. The member chose to be fooled by the Liberals, but we are not fooled, and Canadians will not be.
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- May/30/24 8:59:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with respect to the hon. member, who I do respect a lot, I did not suggest what he just said.
What I was saying is, if there is a gap in the system, the gaps can be filled in many different ways, and we need to solve the problem rather than giving a big promise that we know is not going to be delivered upon. That is the fundamental issue. There is no way I can speak in the House and not mention the difficulties Canadians are going through these days. There are the increased use of food banks, higher mortgage payments, high taxes and all the inflation issues Canadians have to deal with. It is a stop at the perfect time and position to be able to address that and remind ourselves about the disaster the Liberal government and the Liberal-NDP coalition have put Canadians through.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand on behalf of the people of Edmonton Manning tonight.
When a bill is brought before Committee, I expect that during the study done there that committee members would be able to make amendments that would improve the legislation. Sadly, that has not happened with Bill C-64, the pharmacare act, which is probably because the legislation is so flawed that nothing can fix it. The only proper fix is to bury it.
I wish that tonight we were debating the merits of a proposed national pharmacare program. Many Canadians would like to see such a thing, although they might not be so enthusiastic once they saw the price tag. The only resemblance the bill before us has to pharmacare is in the name. If we had asked Canadians what they expected to receive from the NDP-Liberal coalition besides ever-increasing taxes, high inflation, sky-high crime rates and housing shortages, they would probably have said, “Well, at least they have promised pharmacare.”
If we had asked what that meant, they would have said, “free prescription drugs for everyone: drugs to treat heart disease or cancer, life-saving drugs and maybe penicillin to treat any number of less serious illnesses”. Instead, what the government is offering is a pledge to consider funding contraceptives and diabetes drugs. It is not a pharmacare plan; it is an empty promise. It is not what anyone was expecting, but it is no surprise. It is not as if the Liberals really want a national pharmacare program. If they did, they would not have needed the NDP to push them into creating the bill before us.
The Liberals' plan is empty and it is pretty simple. They want to delay as much as possible to convince the NDP that a plan is coming and that therefore the incompetent government must be propped up. I have to give the Liberals credit for their political skill in this matter. They have the NDP so completely fooled that the government faces no chance of defeat no matter the scandals and no matter how much Liberal polices are hurting Canadians. The NDP is blindly accepting a Liberal promise, apparently unwilling to admit that they have been fooled.
I think it is safe to predict that when Canadians go to the polls, whether it is in October 2025 or earlier, the NDP will not be able to point to a functioning pharmacare program, not even the limited one that the bill calls for. However, the promise will have accomplished its purpose: keeping an undeserving government in power. It is the Canadian electorate that will hold both the NDP and the Liberals accountable for their actions. It is the Canadian people who will elect a Conservative government that actually cares about serving them and does not just care about political power.
The bill is being shoved through in haste by a government that is so desperate for approval. The Minister of Health is assuring Canadians that the pharmacare plan should not jeopardize the drug coverage that millions of Canadians have through private insurers. I am sure he is well-intentioned when he makes that statement; he may even believe his words, but good intentions are not reality.
The CEO of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association says that the bill could indeed cause disruption for those who have existing drug plans. Either he is right or the minister is right; it cannot be both. Given the Liberal track record, I suspect the minister is indulging in some wishful thinking, which is not surprising from a government that thinks budgets magically balance themselves, something that has not happened under the current Prime Minister.
By using time allocation, the government is rushing the bill through the House without opportunity for proper scrutiny, which is no surprise. Despite having had two years to figure out how they were going to implement their deal with the NDP, the Liberals put together the legislation at the last minute.
It is window dressing, designed not to define pharmacare, but to keep the government in office for a few more months to deny Canadians what they want most, which is an end to Liberal overspending and incompetence.
The proposed bill is a promise, and Canadians know what happens when Liberals make promises. They have made promises in the past nine years. The reality is that, when the Liberals make a promise, things always seem to get worse. They promised affordable housing, and housing costs have doubled under their watch. They promised that the carbon tax would not cost us anything, and we find now that 60% of families are paying more than they collect. The Liberals promised that taxes would go down, and taxes have gone up. They promised safe streets, and then delivered crime, chaos, drugs and disorder. It is no wonder Canadians are afraid things will get worse when the Liberals promise pharmacare.
If the government were serious about helping Canadians, it would have gone about things differently. It would have consulted with the insurance industry, found out what the private insurance sector was offering and what the non-profit sector was providing, examined existing provincial coverage, and discovered if there were gaps that needed to be addressed. Instead, the Liberals decided to rush blindly ahead.
Canadians know the government is not worth the cost. That has been proven time and time again over the past nine years. Is this pharmacare program worth the cost? An honest answer is that nobody knows because the minister cannot tell us how much it will cost. Any numbers he tosses around are more wishful thinking than reality.
Canadians are struggling and looking to the federal government for help. Inflation eats away at their paycheques. Every trip to the grocery store, it seems the prices are going up. Liberals' catch-and-release bail policies are turning violent offenders loose to commit yet more crimes. Despite an ever-increasing carbon tax, the government has no plan to balance its books.
The Liberals apparently have no desire to fix the problems created by their wasteful spending. They believe that water runs downhill but never reaches the bottom. They know they will not be in government when the bill for this mismanagement comes due. Food Banks Canada's 2024 poverty report card shows that almost 50% of Canadians feel financially worse off compared to last year, while 25% of Canadians are experiencing food insecurity.
The cost of living has become so high that food banks have seen a 50% increase in visits since 2021. As a direct consequence of the government's inflationary spending and taxes, millions of Canadians are struggling to keep their heads above water, yet the Liberals ask us to take on faith that they know how to set up and run a pharmacare program without turning it into a disaster.
This is the government that spent more than $50 million on an app that was supposed to cost $80,000, and it cannot tell us how or when that cost overrun happened, or who is responsible. Why should Canadians trust it to run anything?
The good news is that this is not a serious piece of legislation. As I said, the Liberals have no idea what they are doing and no real intention to institute a pharmacare program. Bill C-64 is a public relations exercise with which they hope to fool the NDP and Canadians into thinking they are doing something to help people. Given the Liberals track record, I doubt many Canadians will be fooled.
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- May/8/24 11:00:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for a wonderful speech about a very important issue. When the government gave all these excuses, I do not know how Canadians felt, but we definitely know how we felt as parliamentarians sitting in the House. We got those threats from around the world, and the government did not move on it or take the issue seriously.
What message is the government sending to parliamentarians, to politicians and to Canadians?
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- May/8/24 10:22:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government sat on the information without even bothering to inform the very people who were affected by such an atrocity and such a danger and threat.
What does that tell Canadians, parliamentarians and people who want to be involved in politics? Could the hon. member comment on the message the government is sending?
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- May/7/24 12:47:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my question for the member from the Bloc Québécois is this: How much extra hydro energy does Quebec have, and what does it do with the product?
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- May/6/24 10:09:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it has been long overdue for the government to act on some serious issues such as this one. There is enough indication by CSIS, by Finance Canada and by our security forces that this is very serious, and it must be dealt with at the highest level of responsibility by the government. We will be waiting, after the vote, for the government to tell us the plan for how it can do this, how it will list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and what the mechanism is to be able to free up Canadians and to protect Canadians on this soil.
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- May/6/24 10:06:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have had experience here with Montrealer Zahra Kazemi, the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari and the example of lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. There are so many examples of how far this regime is willing to go in order to punish the people who say no, those who are looking for freedom, for a better life for their own peers, inside and outside Iran. We know about the suffering and the fear; many do not even want to go back to visit with their parents or their families back home, and they fear that the regime has agents on Canadian soil and other international grounds to go after their own citizens who speak of freedom. The regime has no limits whatsoever regarding who they want to reach and how far they are willing to go. That is why the problem is at our doorstep right now; we must, for once, protect Canadians on Canadian soil. We need to protect our own people, our own house, because that is the minimum the government and all of us can do.
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- May/6/24 10:04:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the real expectation of the government is to do what governments do. Therefore, the government is going to have to put forward and implement the proper mechanism to make sure the will of the House and the will of Canadians are followed and listened to. It is only in the government's hands, because it is the government; it should be able to use the proper tools to make sure that things fall into place so Canadians are protected and the IRGC is listed as a terrorist organization. Then the rest of the work can be done.
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- May/6/24 10:02:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for the excellent question and his work on these issues and many other issues of human rights and security for all communities in Canada.
Based on the record of the government, I will not hold my breath. I cannot be optimistic about what it is going to do, because it has not been respecting the will of the House in terms of what it should act on. The other motion has been here for almost two years, and it still has not acted on it.
There is hope and a call for the government to act, to hear the will of Canadians through the House on what we know of the suffering and the complaints, as well as the will of the communities in Canada that are calling on the government to act on this issue to list IRGC as a terrorist organization and to make sure it follows the talk. That way, we will not end up with the same situation we have right now.
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Madam Speaker, the question before us is not just whether the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist entity. Its actions over the past four decades are such that such a designation is logical. It is also long overdue, and that may be why the government has so far refused to act. Having ignored past pleas from Iranian experts and from other Canadians, the Liberals are too embarrassed to admit their mistake and do the right thing.
Following the protest in Iran, since the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, Conservatives have been calling on the Liberal government to support the Iranian people's fight for a free and democratic Iran by listing the IRGC as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code of Canada. The Liberals refused.
The murder of Jina Mahsa Amini was just one on the long list of violations of human rights committed by the Iranian regime. The torture and death of Montrealer Zahra Kazemi, the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari, the imprisonment of lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and the shooting down of Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752, which killed dozens of Canadians, are examples of a regime that has no respect for its own citizens or for those of other countries.
The IRGC is a part of this regime and is instrumental to its continued existence. The IRGC has terrorized the people of Iran for decades and has openly declared support for other terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, both listed in Canada as terrorist entities.
In June 2018, the government, including the Prime Minister, voted to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity. Despite the motion being approved by the House of Commons, and despite the IRGC downing flight 752 and killing Canadians, the government has yet to list this organization as a terrorist entity. To me, this is shameful. Does the government not understand that Canada needs to take a stand for what is right?
This government's level of hypocrisy has been so big that it does not walk its talk. It does not do what it needs to do. It makes promises, and it breaks them. This is how hypocritical the government has been on this very important issue of protecting Canadians and on making sure that Canada stands where it is right to be.
It was a little more than four years ago when the IRGC shot down flight 752, killing 176 people, including 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents. This was a mass murder of Canadians. Countries have gone to war over less than that.
The families of those killed in that attack received sympathy from the Liberal government but nothing was done to bring the perpetrators to judgment. Nothing was done to stop them from operating in Canada however they see fit.
There is no doubt that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. There is no doubt that the IRGC is one of the prime movers of Iranian terrorist policy and action. There is no reason for Canada to sit by and do nothing. There are an estimated 700 Iranian Agents operating in Canada. If one asks Iranian Canadians whether they feel comfortable speaking up against the regime, they will tell one stories of harassment for their extended families, not only back in Iran, but also here on Canadian soil.
Two years ago, CSIS confirmed that it was investigating what it saw as credible death threats against Canadians coming from inside Iran. In failing to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization, the government could be seen as not caring about the safety and security of Canadian citizens faced with this foreign threat. Certainly, the Liberal government has not sunk so low as to put the protection of terrorist organizations ahead of the safety of Canadians, has it?
Finance Canada officials testified in committee that more than $100 billion is illegally laundered in Canada each year. A leading report recognizes that Canada has become known for snow-washing, given the prominence of money laundering here. I should not need to remind the Liberals that combatting money laundering is a federal responsibility.
With his lackadaisical attitude, the Prime Minister has allowed criminal organizations, including the IRGC terrorist organization, to take advantage of soft-on-crime Liberal policies. Because of the Liberals' refusal to list the IRGC as a terrorist entity, we have no way of knowing how much of the Iranian regime's illegal money laundering in Canada goes undetected. Finance Canada officials have admitted that the government does not know whether the IRGC is fundraising for terrorist activities through the Canadian charitable sector. Simply put, the government is not doing its job.
Common-sense Conservatives have put forward real solutions to mitigate money laundering in Canada. Conservative Bill C-289 proposes changes to the Criminal Code to make it easier to catch and convict criminals laundering money in Canada. That would include IRGC agents. However, the NDP-Liberal coalition voted against the bill. The failure of the government to take terrorism and money laundering seriously allows for murderous entities like the IRGC to operate freely in Canada.
The government needs to wake up and finally list the IRGC as a terrorist organization. To do so would bring us in line with our allies, countries such as the United States, that understand the seriousness of this situation, even if Canada's government does not. Other countries understand that an organization that has involved itself in conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria, should not be allowed to freely export violence and chaos.
The IRGC is open in its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, two organizations that have been recognized as terrorist entities. It does not make sense that the organization that funds the activities of Hamas and Hezbollah should not be called to account for its terrorist actions. What we are discussing here is an organization with a history of exporting violence and mayhem as it seeks to destabilize other countries in the region. Not only that, but this is an organization that is used as a tool of state-sponsored torture and oppression against its own citizens.
We have talked about this in the House before. The will of the House is to have the IRGC listed as a terrorist organization here in Canada. Apparently, though, despite the overwhelming evidence, that is not the will of the Liberal government. I do not understand the reasons for its inaction. It is not as if it believes that it should sponsor terrorism and terrorist organizations. If it does not believe the reports from CSIS or Finance Canada, it should say so. Canadians deserve an explanation for years of Liberal inaction.
The time for empty words and hollow announcements is over. It is time for the government to take action, support the Iranian people's struggles for freedom, do the right thing, and list the IRGC as a terrorist entity in Canada.
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Madam Speaker, Bill C-64 is a classic example of the legislation the Liberal government has brought before this Parliament. Once again, it has over-promised and under-delivered.
When the leader of the NDP sold his party's soul and coincidentally guaranteed that he would receive a pension for his efforts, many people thought he got too little for it. New Democrats did not even get 30 pieces of silver, as they betrayed their ideal and the Canadian people.
What has this betrayal cost Canadians? Inflation continues at record levels, fuelled by the carbon tax. Housing costs have doubled. Health care has vanished. Food bank use is at record levels. The immigration system is broken. Our military suffers from neglect, and foreign governments try to influence our elections. The Liberal response is to shrug. Canada has become a joke on the world stage.
What does the NDP receive for this blind support of the Prime Minister and his disastrous policies? It receives a promise to look at what it would take to establish a national pharmacare program. It is not even that, really.
Canadians thought a pharmacare plan would cover their drug costs. For the majority of the country, this was not a pressing issue. According to The Conference Board of Canada, 97% of Canadians are already eligible for some form of drug coverage, although the final report of the advisory council on the implementation of national pharmacare indicated that 20% of Canadians receive what could be termed inadequate coverage. In December of last year, a Leger poll indicated that only 18% of Canadians thought the establishment of a national pharmacare program was a health care priority.
It may come as a surprise to the Liberals and the NDP, but Canadians are worried about rising prices on everything, due in large part to the carbon tax. When people are worried about being able to feed their family, pay the rent or mortgage and put gas in their car so they can get to work, they do not spend much time thinking about a drug plan that does not cover the medications they need.
Canadians were hoping the Liberals could get it right. That turns out to have been a false hope. On this issue, as on many others, the Liberals are proving once again to have no idea what they are doing. The Liberal idea of pharmacare is restricted to just two types of medication. If one suffers from heart disease, one is out of luck. Heart disease is the second-leading cause of death in Canada, but medication for it would not be covered.
The Liberals' approach to pharmacare reminds me of their approach to Canadian liquid natural gas, or LNG. When the chancellor of Germany came to Canada looking to buy Canadian LNG, the Prime Minister told him there was no business case for such exports. That was a huge surprise to those companies looking to expand their markets.
Not only is there a business case for Canadian LNG, but there is a moral one as well. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, countries are looking to replace Russian LNG and have turned to Canada, only to be told by the Canadian government that it does not want to sell Canadian LNG. The Prime Minister needs to learn that when there is a customer willing to buy the product, there is indeed a business case to support it. If Germany and Japan and Greece want to buy Canadian LNG, why would we not want to sell it to them?
A previous prime minister asked farmers, “Why should I sell your wheat?” This tells buyers there is not a business case to sell them the product they are asking for, while at the same time offering Canadians a pharmacare program they did not ask for, a plan so flawed it is unlikely to work.
This is the government that promised a firearms buyback program four years ago. So far, it has not managed to launch it, yet it wants Canadians to believe it has the skills necessary to design and implement a pharmacare program. Put simply, what is being offered is not pharmacare.
It is just another Liberal election gimmick, a promise they will campaign on in 2025, hoping that voters will not look at how many promises they have already broken. Anyone who has looked at the current state of drug coverage in Canada is concerned by this attempt to create additional bureaucracy. We already have some public drug plans; they do not seem to be as good as the private ones. Private drug insurance plans cover many more different medications than public plans do. The difference varies by province, but, on average, private coverage is 51% more extensive than its public counterpart is. In Quebec, the figure is 59.6%. Then there are the delays. Once a drug is approved by Health Canada, it takes an average of 226 days for a private insurer to approve the coverage. By contrast, it takes 732 days for approval by Health Canada, or a little over three times as long, for a public plan to add a drug to its list of covered treatments. These figures do not paint a rosy picture of the ability of public insurance to meet the Canadians' needs.
The marriage contract between the Liberals and the NDP required that the bill come before us last year. It did not. It took the Liberals two years to come up with the legislation, a bill that seems to have been put together without much thought, just to meet a deadline. Given how weak the bill is, I can only imagine what the first draft looked like. Maybe it was just one line, such as “We promise to look at establishing a pharmacare program in the hopes people will vote for us before we have to deliver.” Wait, is that not what Bill C-64 is?
After almost nine years of misgovernment, incompetence and mismanagement from the Liberal-NDP coalition, Canadians have lost all faith in the government's ability to discharge its responsibilities. What is the cost of this national pharmacare program? With two years to look into it, the Liberals either did not think to ask or are afraid to tell Canadians just how much more they want to raise taxes to pay for a plan that would benefit almost no one.
The bill is a public relations exercise by an utterly desperate government that is disliked by more and more Canadians every day. The inability of the Liberals to deliver on their promises is well known. Already, two provinces have opted out of this program. There is no indication that other provinces are interested. One would have thought that, in attempting to create a national program in an area of provincial jurisdiction, the Liberals would have consulted with the provinces. One might have expected that they would have hearings and consultations with stakeholders to see what exists now, what needs to be improved and the best way to do that. As far as I can tell, all they did was ask the NDP the minimum they could promise to keep the NDP's support.
Can the Minister of Health tell us what impact the bill will have on the 27 million Canadians who rely on privately administered workplace plans? If he is an honest man, he cannot, because he does not know. There was no consultation with the insurance industries when the bill was being drafted. Maybe he felt there was no need to check the facts. A promise had been made by the NDP, and the Liberals had to deliver. The needs and wishes for the Canadian people were not worthy of consideration. What is not worthy of consideration is this sad attempt at legislation; Canadians deserve much better than that.
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- May/3/24 11:12:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, shady business has become the government's status quo.
It has recently been revealed that the Prime Minister's only Alberta minister was sneakily cashing cheques from a lobbyist who secured $110 million in contracts from his own government, even from his own ministry. Not only that, but until two weeks ago, he was listed as a director of Global Health Imports, a company winning over $8 million in government contracts. The smell of a looming scandal is undeniably pungent.
Despite that, time and time again, the minister has sat quietly in this House and hidden behind his government House leader, claiming he did nothing wrong. If he is so innocent, why does the Minister of Employment not stand up in this House today and tell us how much money he got from his lobbying side hustle?
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- Apr/30/24 11:47:46 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is no fairness in making people's lives miserable. There is no fairness in making people's lives unaffordable. There is no fairness when people cannot buy food to feed their kids. There is no fairness in what the government is doing, and they must stop. This is what Canadians are asking us for. This is what my constituents are asking me for.
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