- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
Whip of the New Democratic Party
Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- NDP
- Edmonton Strathcona
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $141,604.97
- Government Page
- Jun/6/24 4:30:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing that popped into my mind as my colleague was speaking was that he talked about the fact that only Conservatives would be able to stop the corruption and the secrecy. That did make me laugh a bit because perhaps the member forgets all of the secrecy and corruption under the Harper government. Many of the people who were part of that government are still sitting in this place as part of the Conservatives today.
We talk about the scandal with the Senate. We talk about the 170 times Harper refused to give information to Parliament about budget numbers. We talk about when Bev Oda falsified documents. The scandals that the Conservative Party has actively participated in make me wonder how its members have the audacity to stand in this place to criticize the Liberal Party.
Today, it does feel a bit like the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are both saying that the other party is worse, when Canadians should probably be aware that they are both pretty darn bad.
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- Jun/4/24 4:00:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague is certainly very knowledgeable about what has happened historically in this place. I know he was here for a portion of the Harper decade when the price-fixing scandal cost Canadians hundreds of dollars each. It was scandalous that over a decade, not a single Conservative stood up and said, “Enough. We want to shut this down.” There was not a single one. Many of the same Conservatives who were in government during the Harper decade are still here. In fact, I would point to the leader of the Conservative Party. The way the Conservative Party at that time allowed Canadians to be ripped off for a decade is absolutely shameful.
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- May/22/24 11:06:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague started his speech this evening by talking about how the Liberal budget was a 420-page document that was a bit of an advertisement. That brought to mind something I remembered from when Stephen Harper was the prime minister. I went back and looked, and the 2015 budget was 518 pages long, and it did not address climate change. It did not address many of those issues that are top of mind for so many Canadians now.
My colleague also talked about the idea that dental care was not important. With 60,000 people already registered for the dental care program and hundreds of seniors in his riding who are already benefiting from the NDP dental care program, it seems quite shocking to me that he is using his opportunity to speak in the House of Commons to be, not just dishonest, but not very kind to his—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- May/21/24 8:45:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the things that I find disappointing about the budget is the lack of support for seniors in our communities. I have spent many days speaking to seniors. Recently, during one of our constituency weeks, I met with seniors in 15 different residences to talk about the concerns that they have. My issue is that I do not know how seniors in Alberta could trust the Conservatives, knowing the record that they have, knowing that Stephen Harper was the person who put in place cuts to support for OAS, such as making sure a senior is 67 instead of 65 before they apply for OAS, as well as knowing that the leader of the Conservative Party has very clearly, historically, been against the Canada pension plan.
I wonder if this member could comment on the support that a Conservative government would give to seniors because, historically, Conservatives have been extraordinarily bad for seniors in this country.
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Mr. Speaker, today is the day we were supposed to be talking about the Senate amendments to Bill C-35, and the Conservatives have brought forward a concurrence debate with respect to food security in the north, which of course is an extraordinarily important topic. The issue, though, is that the Conservatives are using this as a tactic to delay a very important debate with respect to child care. The way I know this is that the Conservatives have had 10 opposition days when they could have brought forward the issue of nutrition in the north, and they have never chosen to do that.
In fact, when Stephen Harper was our prime minister, I believe that Pam Palmater, one of the indigenous experts, said that the Conservative government had actually set back indigenous relations 100 years in the 10 years that it had been there.
Why is the Conservative Party of Canada so eager to stop women from coast to coast to coast from being able to access child care, something that we know we need for women, for families and, frankly, for our economy?
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- Dec/11/23 5:14:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do appreciate that some things have been done. Under Stephen Harper, there was an initiative called the Muskoka initiative, which did have some good pieces to it, but it took out any support for reproductive health care anywhere else in the world. It happened at a time when that was also being done in the United States, so all of a sudden there was very little aid being given for women's reproductive health around the world.
I worked in Uganda at one point in a small village. The person I shared lodging with was a doctor who was working with women who had struggled with their pregnancies, were pregnant, were seeking reproductive health care or were seeking abortion. The fact that funding was cut meant tens of thousands of women around the world would have died. They would have died without that support.
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Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on taking a seat in the House.
One of the things that the member spoke about today was the idea that over the last eight years, Canada has become diminished on the world stage. I would say that while it is true that Canada is diminished on the world stage, it is not something that happened just in the last eight years. In fact, the cuts that we saw to official development assistance under the Harper government were directly responsible for Canada's not being able to get a security seat when we tried for that seat. The cuts by the Harper government and the failure of the Liberal government to reverse those cuts were a huge part of that, as the continent of Africa saw that we had stepped back from participating in a meaningful way with it.
The member also spoke about the need to not invest in China because of the human rights abuses that we are seeing in China and with China being a belligerent on the world stage. I wonder whether the member has any comments to make about the fact that we have a new Indo-Pacific strategy and that India, under the Modi government, has shown itself to be belligerent and not to be following human rights as well. Therefore, are we not taking our eggs from one basket that is not adhering to our beliefs as Canadians for human rights, and putting them into another basket where human rights are also not being protected?
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Mr. Speaker, 1994 was significantly before my time, so I will focus a little bit more on the more recent 2014 free trade agreement that Harper and the Conservatives signed with China.
I do not think many Canadians know that it was signed and that we gave up so much of our rights and that we, in fact, made it so much harder for workers in our country because of that. There are still clauses within that fair trade agreement that are making it very difficult for us to even have legislation put in place for forced labour. It already handicaps what we can do to protect workers in Canada and to protect workers in China.
I do not know about 1994. I am not going to answer that one because, like I said, I think I was in elementary school at the time.
Certainly, the one in 2014 that I have looked at quite a lot is one that I am disappointed in, and I certainly hope that the Conservatives do not get another opportunity to negotiate another free trade agreement with China.
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- Sep/19/23 7:47:20 p.m.
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Honestly, Mr. Chair, I wish I could answer that question. The people of Edmonton, the people of Calgary, the people of Alberta deserve to have their representatives engage in this debate, and that is not happening. I expect that it has to do with the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, Stephen Harper has said that Modi is a great leader. He is a good friend of Stephen Harper, and he was the prime minister who was in power when the current leader of the official opposition was part of his cabinet.
The leader of the official opposition has said publicly that we should not be critical of India. I am sorry, but when we hear what is happening in India, there is no other option but to criticize those attacks on human rights by the Modi government.
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- Sep/19/23 7:33:29 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, this is an incredibly serious issue we are discussing tonight in the House of Commons. My colleague has brought forward some very compelling arguments and some very compelling facts.
One of the things I find interesting is that the official opposition is not participating in the debate today. I have to ask why that is the case. I wonder whether it is because Stephen Harper in fact called Modi a great leader and a good friend. I am wondering whether the member could talk about why he thinks the official opposition is not in fact participating adequately in this debate.
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Mr. Speaker, we hear from the Liberals that they think they are back. I was not a member of Parliament or a politician in 2015 when the Prime Minister stood up and said that Canada was back. He tapped his chest and did that little thing he does when he is trying to make people think he really means it.
We all thought he did. The Prime Minister said all of the right words, all the right things that we wanted to hear. He said that Canada was back. We were going to be back on the world stage, and we were going to back with peacekeepers. He promised over 600 peacekeepers. He told us we were going to be back on international development and diplomacy, that we were going to be in those conversations.
No one is more disappointed that that never happened than I am. We went through the Harper decade. I was with civil society groups that were working on foreign affairs, international development and sustainable development in the Harper years. I saw what happened under the Harper decade.
We were so looking forward to a shining example of what this country could be. Unfortunately, eight years in, the Liberals have failed to deliver that for us. We have a 15% cut to international development assistance in the budget at a time when we know the world needs Canada to step up more than ever. We have 60 peacekeepers in the field when the government promised 600. We have failures on our diplomatic fronts. Every decision the Liberal government makes puts trade ahead of human rights, ahead of people and ahead of women, every single decision.
However, that is not why I am here today. I just could not let it pass, to have the government tell us parliamentarians that Canada is back. Canada is not back.
We are here to talk about Bill C-41. I will repeat what I just mentioned. I have worked in international development, foreign affairs and sustainable development around the world. I did it for my entire career prior to being a politician, in countries all throughout the world. I have represented organizations. I have done an awful lot of this work.
It is very important work. I sometimes think that, in the House of Commons, we forget that. We forget that our foreign policy is a stool. That stool requires trade, one hundred per cent, and it requires diplomatic relationships with other countries. It also requires development, and we know what happens when we step back from that piece of the stool.
What we are talking about today is basically a humanitarian carve-out so that we would be able to get urgent help to people in Afghanistan, except that is not what this bill is. That is not how legislation works. This would impact the international development and humanitarian sectors for decades because it is law. It is not contextual for the Afghan crisis. I will say, I have stood in the House time and time again demanding that the government do more for the people of Afghanistan. My heart breaks for the women and girls in Afghanistan who cannot go to school, who cannot leave their homes, whose lives are in danger.
The worst day I have had as a parliamentarian was finding out that one of their members of Parliament was murdered because we did not get her out fast enough. What is happening in Afghanistan is horrendous, and we need to do what we can, but this bill is going to have implications longer than just what is happening in Afghanistan. This would have implications around the world, and I do not think the people in the House are treating it with the severity that they need to.
It has been over two years since I asked the government to work with civil society, the non-profit sector and experts in the field to come up with a plan. It has been over two years. It was in May 2021. In February 2021, I wrote to then minister Garneau and said that this is what is going to happen. The U.S. has indicated that they are leaving, and this is what is going to happen. What is the plan?
There was never a plan put in place. There was never a plan to help those people who had worked so hard for Canadians. There was never a plan put in place to make sure that Canadian organizations doing the incredible work on the ground were able to work in Afghanistan.
For two years, we have been asking for this legislation. We asked for the government to work with the sector. I understand that none of us in this place are experts in everything. We cannot be. We have to depend on experts. We have to depend on experts to give us the best advice, but the government did not get the best advice.
The sector clearly asked for a humanitarian carve-out. What it got, in the first iteration of Bill C-41, was a messy, overly bureaucratic, overly complicated criminalization of humanitarian aid and international development. It got a bill that was created by three ministries. Do members know who led that? The Minister of Public Safety. I am sorry, but the Minister of Public Safety does not work in international development.
I do not know where the Minister of International Development was or why he was not part of these conversations. I do not know why we did not hear enough from Global Affairs Canada, but we did not. That is the reality. Therefore, we had a messy and broken piece of legislation come forward because the government refused to listen to the experts. The experts knew what was needed and what would make the lives of those in the sector easier so they could go into Afghanistan and provide life-saving aid and support to its people.
I want to take a moment here because I agree with my colleague from the Bloc, the member of Parliament for Lac-Saint-Jean. I worked very well with him. I also want to give a shout-out to the member for Oakville North—Burlington because she was basically given a terrible piece of legislation and told to shine it. When I say a terrible piece of legislation, I think members know exactly what I think of it.
She was told to make it better, so instead of bringing us a law that we could improve slightly, she brought us a dumpster fire that we then had to try to do what we could with, so I want to give her a shout-out. She worked very hard, very collaboratively and very well with me. I worked very well with the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. We all, every one of us, wanted to make sure this bill got help to people in Afghanistan as fast as it could.
When the Minister of Public Safety came to committee, he talked to us about balance. He said that we have to have a balance between protecting against terrorist and protecting international development groups. What I said to him then, and I will say to every member in the House right now, is that the balance is wrong. He got the balance wrong. The balance we have right now criminalizes international development organizations. It is only because we were able to get an NDP amendment through for a carve-out that humanitarian organizations are not in there.
The folks who work within public safety do great work, but they do not understand international human rights law. They do not understand international development rights. They just do not have that line. Therefore, we worked with other parties to try to get this fixed because one of the key things, and I think perhaps something that members do not understand, is ensuring that organizations can maintain their neutrality. It is vital. It is a cornerstone of humanitarian and international development work because we are asking these organizations to go into sectors, regions and areas that are under fire and are very dangerous.
We are asking them to go into some of the worst places on the planet, and often those places are rife with conflict. There are often groups working there who are bad actors, and terrorists who are doing terrible things, so the only way organizations can do that work is if they are seen as neutral, independent and impartial. This legislation makes organizations go to the government to get permission to work in certain areas, which takes away their ability to be impartial and independent.
I raised this when the Minister of International Development was first appointed. As members know, he is the former minister of defence. No offence to the minister, but that was a terrible idea because we spend our entire careers trying to ensure that folks understand we are not the military and we are not the government. We are independent. We are here to help. We are here to provide life-saving supports. That is what the sector does, what it tries to do.
When we put in a minister who is a former minister of defence, how does that look? It endangers the organizations working on the ground. It is an indication that the government does not understand, that it does not care and that it does not get it.
We did vote for the bill to go to committee, because, as I said, we all wanted to make sure that this aid got out to the people in Afghanistan who needed it. When the bill came to committee, we brought forward 12 amendments, and all of those amendments came from the sector. However, only six of those amendments were adopted.
As I mentioned, the key amendment for us was making sure that the humanitarian exemption was finally agreed to by the other parties. It was ruled out of scope, but we were able to bring it forward within the House. However, that was only one fix. That was only one of the things we wanted to ensure were fixed that the sector had asked us to fix.
One of the other things was a list. In this legislation, the government refuses to tell organizations which regions, which areas, they would need to ask for an exemption for, which puts all the onus on the organization. When we stand in this very sterile environment, it seems to make sense that an organization that is going to work in Sudan should ask if Sudan is one of the countries it would need an exemption for. However, that is not how international development works. Some of the Canadian organizations that I have worked with have 40-year relationships in some of the countries they work in. Change for Children in my riding has a 40-year relationship working in Nicaragua, and I can tell members that what is happening in Nicaragua has changed over 40 years.
We are not just asking organizations to check whether or not they can get into a country and do work. We are asking them to check, almost daily, to see if anything has changed, and the world changes. It is not the House of Commons where these organizations are working. They are working in mayhem. They are working in places that are in crisis. They are working in places that are in conflict. It is absurd to ask them to do that, to put that onus on them, because the government does not want to prepare a list of countries, and it is a list that it has to have. If the government does not have a list, it is almost negligence. However, to not be able to share that list with the organizations is shocking to me. It is absurd.
Another thing, which we tried to fix, is that in the legislation there is the term “links to a terrorist group”, which is not defined anywhere. There is nothing in this legislation that would define “links to a terrorist group”. What does that mean? Does it mean a person who rode on the same bus as someone, or who is talking to someone whose sister-in-law is implicated? Nobody knows what it means. It has no legal definition. In fact, I will read from the brief from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, which said:
This is much too discretionary; for example, would distant family ties, former work or school associates, or membership in the same religious community or congregation be considered links? In our work, we have seen how each of these types of “links” have been identified by security agencies as being grounds for suspicion based solely on guilt by association. The example of Afghanistan, a Muslim majority country, is apt in this assistance, as we have particularly observed how Muslims in Canada are subject to this exact kind of guilt by association, leading to increased surveillance, loss of security clearances and employment [and] even includes the sharing of information which has led to rendition, arbitrary detention and torture
This is not good legislation when we have organizations like this one telling us that this does not make sense and that it is not clear.
The other piece I have with this legislation is that, right now, I have been told by the government that it is going to put policies in place to make sure that this all works just fine. However, the problem with policies are that other governments can come forward, and other governments can use the legislation differently. I have a very deep concern that, if we were to get a Conservative government, Conservatives could weaponize international development, and I will tell members why I think that is a concern. It is because they have done it before.
I was in the sector when the Harper government weaponized and refused funding to Oxfam. I was in the sector when the government weaponized it when Bev Oda wrote the infamous “not” on the application for funding so that Kairos, who had been critical of the government, could not get funding. The Conservative government has done this before. They could do it again, and there is no protection in this legislation to make sure that does not happen.
What happens if, all of a sudden, organizations are not allowed to work in Gaza? What happens if, all of a sudden, the government decides to delay providing the exemption? Right now, there are three ministries involved: public safety, justice and international development. I have spent most of my career trying to get funding through Global Affairs Canada and I can tell everyone that it is almost never able to deliver on the timelines it puts forward, through no fault of its own. Some of the best, most devoted public servants in our country are at Global Affairs Canada, but they are under-resourced, understaffed and under-empowered to make the decisions.
Let us add in two more ministries and see how that goes, and let us think about that in context as well. A humanitarian crisis is an emergency. That means that things have to happen in hours, not days. Action has to be taken to save lives in hours. We heard from one of the witnesses that they think they would be able to get a decision back to organizations well within six months. Within six months, people are dying. People need the support, they are dying and hours make all the difference, but we are being told months, and that is from a government that has not been able to deliver on its promises to date. I am deeply concerned about that.
There is another thing I want to bring up very quickly. One of the amendments we were able to get through and that I am very happy about is that there will be a one-year review, so we will be reviewing this legislation in one year. It is part of the reason I think it is very important for the House to look at this seriously and keeps a very close eye on it.
I cannot support this legislation. This legislation goes against all of the principles of international development and international humanitarian law. It does not listen to the sector and to the supports that the sector has asked for.
There is one other thing. We are also the only country in this situation. The U.S. has a humanitarian exemption. The U.K., the EU and other countries were able to do what the Liberal government could not do. They were able to do what the government, with the support of every party in this House, was unable to manage to get done.
I know the bill will pass. It will not pass with my support. I do not believe that this legislation is worthy of being passed. The fact that other parties are voting for it indicates that they have a smaller understanding of international development and humanitarian law. I am glad that the help will get to the people of Afghanistan as soon as possible. I am appalled that it has taken us two years to get to this point, but the international development sector offering people in crisis around the world crumbs and telling them they have to take it because that is all there is on offer is un-Canadian.
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- Jun/8/23 7:44:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for highlighting the changing reality of the working lives of women in this country.
One thing I do want to point out to the member, gently if I could, is that she brought up the idea that we had used closure or that closure had been used to shut down debate on the bill. However, I am sure she knows the difference between closure and time allocation. The reason I am sure she knows the difference between them is that, of course, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in power in 2015, the Conservatives actually hit 100 times that they used time allocation. In fact, a minister at the time, Peter Van Loan, had a cake in the lobby to celebrate the 100th time that the Harper Conservatives used time allocation. So, I am sure the member knows what time allocation is.
One thing I want to ask the member about her speech is with regard to private versus not-for-profit child care. Many experts have told us that not-for-profit, publicly delivered child care is, in fact, higher-quality child care. Would she agree that this is, in fact, the case, that when it is not for profit, when we are not trying to make money off child care, it is a higher-quality child care and it is, in fact, better for children?
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- Jun/5/23 9:22:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to say I would be hesitant to accept that the Conservative Party would support that carve-out, only because of the shenanigans that the Conservatives have gotten up to in the last two days, during which they have not let anything be passed. They have not even let us have a debate on wildfires, which is so urgently needed.
However, I want to agree with my colleague on one thing in his speech. I will give Stephen Harper credit for one thing when he was the prime minister of this country: He did tell us who he was, when he was going to cut things and how he was going to decimate the charitable sector, the foreign aid and all of those things. He made it very clear he was going to do those things, and then he did them. However, the current Conservative opposition party refuses to tell us what the Conservatives would cut. The member refuses to tell us which things in this budget he would cut. Is it dental care? Is it housing? Is it health care? Is it a futures economy? Which one of those things would the member cut?
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- Jun/5/23 8:48:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it felt like there was some dishonesty in the member's speech. He started out speaking about the dishonesty of the Liberal government, but then he spoke about how this was almost an omnibus bill at the end, as if the Harper government was not renowned for its omnibus bills. He spoke about how we should have learned from history, but in World War II, one of the things that we saw was the massive investment in our communities and in our infrastructure, so I want to ask him about what he would cut.
However, what actually caught my ear the most was when he was talking about pensions, about Canadian pensions. I am sure he knows where I am going with this. We just finished an election in Alberta, and the United Conservative Party, the UCP, in Alberta, was running on the idea of taking Albertans out of the Canadian pension plan and using that money for its own means.
Since the member does not agree with the Canadian pension plan being used by the government, would he say that what Danielle Smith is proposing in Alberta would be equally wrong?
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- Jun/5/23 8:21:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always so enlightening for me to listen to this member speak. He wanted to speak a bit more. He asked for unanimous consent and, of course, that was not possible. However, I wanted the member to talk a bit more. We know that this bill does not go far enough with regard to indigenous housing. It does not go far enough with regard to the support for the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls national action plan. It is a start, but it has not gone far enough.
The member spoke about the Harper years. I was in the non-profit sector at the time and I know how horrendous those years were for those of us in the charitable sector. Perhaps the member could talk about the impacts of the Stephen Harper years on indigenous people in this country.
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- May/8/23 10:43:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member, which again, does not happen very often. I am also very concerned about some of the levels of diplomatic corps we have within this country.
I will say that our diplomatic corps was absolutely decimated under the Harper Conservatives. We never built back after the number of embassies that were closed under the Harper Conservatives and the selling of our embassy in the U.K. People wonder why we do not have the same number of diplomatic staff in the U.K., but we sold the building. The fact that it was decimated under Harper, and the Conservatives are standing up to say that they wish we had more diplomatic corps for some of these countries, is a little rich.
That said, I do agree with the member. I do not understand the numbers that we see for China, Russia and some of these countries. Really, we should have serious concerns about their interference in our democratic institutions.
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- May/8/23 10:10:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but this is difficult for me, so I will speak in English tonight.
My struggle tonight is that I am trying to figure out that balance between holding the government accountable and finding a solution so that our democracy is protected going forward. One of the things I am very concerned about is that the Conservatives are very partisan on this issue, and I do not see a way forward when they keep this very partisan. I understand why that is the case. Like the member who just spoke, I have high regard for the member for Wellington—Halton Hills. I think everyone in this place should, but I look at the Conservative Party, and I recognize that in 2014, under Stephen Harper, they put some very secretive trade deals in place with the Government of China, trade deals that implicated Canada for 31 years.
I am wondering what pieces were in place when Stephen Harper and the Conservatives were in power that actually protected our democracy, because I know of some examples where the Conservatives, in fact, gave away our sovereignty and our rights to the Chinese government. Granted, I understand it is a different Chinese government than what we are seeing now, but they locked us in for 31 years. I am wondering how the member can stand there, and perhaps he can tell me exactly what pieces were in play so that our democracy was protected under Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.
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- Apr/25/23 11:41:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the biggest challenges I have is that in 2015, when the government was elected, we had a Prime Minister who said very clearly that Canada is back; it was sunny ways, with the whole tapping of the chest thing. I believed him because I was not a member of Parliament. I was a member of civil society, and all the things the Prime Minister said I wanted to believe.
I wanted to believe the cuts and damage that had been done during the Harper decade were over, that Canada was back and that Canada was going to re-engage in the world and take back our place. I prefer the Conservatives because, frankly, they tell us they are not going to do anything. They tell us they are going to be useless, and that is better than a government that tells us it is going to do something and then does not.
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- Apr/25/23 11:12:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague's comments on the sanctions are important for us to keep in mind today, because it would be very difficult for Canada to find an adequate way to sanction in this particular situation.
The question I have for him is about one of the things I am quite seized with. In 2014, under Stephen Harper, a law was repealed and took away the duty to protect local embassy staff. What happened in Ukraine and Afghanistan is that the staff who supported the Canadian embassy were left behind, and we are seeing that again. That has not been changed. I have raised this with the minister multiple times. This has not been changed.
I wonder if the member could talk about the fact that right now while we have been able to evacuate the Canadians from the Canadian embassy we have not been able to help our local staff.
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- Apr/5/22 12:13:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would point out to my colleague that the Speaker has outlined why I am allowed to use the name of Stephen Harper.
We would like to see an improvement in government procurement. As my colleague from London—Fanshawe pointed out, we have not been able to spend the money we have allocated to the armed forces. In fact, we heard Andrew Leslie, a former Liberal MP and retired general, say, “You can promise the moon and the stars. If you can't get the money out the door [and if that is the reality] then it's of no value”.
I also want to highlight something else that my colleague from London—Fanshawe said. She spoke about what 2% means. The PBO has said meeting that 2% budget would mean $54 billion to $56 billion a year being spent on defence. It would be a doubling of our military spending, which would be over our current $24.29 billion per year. This would make military spending the largest expenditure of the Government of Canada. It would be more than we spend on the health care transfer, which is $45 billion a year.
We all need to think about that. We all need to think about where Canadians would like to see those investments. I hope I have an opportunity during questions to ask my colleagues within the Conservative Party how they would pay for this. As party members who constantly stand in this place and say taxes and revenue is not something they are interested in, what things would they cut? What things are they interested in cutting away from Canadians for this?
I would like to talk about humanitarian spending. When we look at defence spending, we must tie it to humanitarian spending. We must look at the fact that in Canada right now, we are spending approximately 0.3% of our gross national income on humanitarian support. We all know that war is a failure. No one wants to go to war. Nobody wants to see what is happening in Ukraine. We need to commit to that humanitarian support, the diplomatic and multilateralism, and the efforts we can do so that we are not required to go to war.
Yesterday, David Beasley from the World Food Programme came to the international human rights subcommittee. He said that, if we do not invest in food security, humanitarian aid, diplomacy, multilateralism and all of these things, then we will pay 1000 fold in conflict and impacts on populations.
I will end by thanking every woman and man in our military. I am so proud of all of our people in the Canadian Armed Forces. They punch above their weight. They defend the world's longest coastline covering three oceans. They are experts in all of the work they do, and they are world-renowned. I want to say thank—
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