- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- Timmins—James Bay
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $134,227.44
- Government Page
- Apr/11/24 1:51:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a very unfair question because if the member asks me what I think of having to bring in artificial intelligence to deal with the Conservatives, they might light their hair on fire even more.
The fact is that the Conservatives can only get away with the kind of junk talk that they get away with if they shut down people who actually have facts. That is why they intimidate, shout, have the hate machine, and get up and scream every time I speak. That is why they tried to shut down all the proper witnesses at committee, and then screamed and shouted in the most deplorable, ignorant manner I had ever seen during votes. While the democratic work of Parliament was attempting to go ahead, they were trying to stop Parliament from doing its job.
They are trying to stop it today. I will be here until midnight. I hope the member who lives in Stornoway will be here to represent his people.
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- Apr/8/24 12:25:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been around the House for a number of scandals. I remember Jean Chrétien's golf balls. I remember Brian Mulroney's bag of money in a brown paper bag in a motel room. I remember Nigel Wright's $90,000 secret cheque to Mike Duffy to help pay off whatever.
The issue about what we do at committee is vitally important. We do not have the power to find guilt, but we do have the obligation to get evidence and to present it to the House to make a finding.
I have sat on committees where we have talked about issuing subpoenas and summons, and while these are tools we do not often use, the government does not like us using these tools. They should only be used very rarely, but if we were to not use them ever, we would lose those tools.
Given what we have seen of the refusal of these witnesses to present and respond to fair questions, this would seem, to New Democrats, to be a good time to use this tool. Does my hon. colleague agree?
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- Mar/20/24 7:00:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will keep my remarks short.
I want to bring to light that I have been involved in a number of committees where we were at the line of an issue of contempt. It is important to put on the record what was explained to us in committee, that we are not a court of law. We may be really angry at government. We may be demanding witnesses. However, we have to do it in a judicious manner, and if there is an issue of contempt, it has to come to the House.
We have been in situations in which we knew we were not getting truthful answers from witnesses. My colleague and I were involved with one, with a certain group of brothers and their chief financial officer. We decided at that moment to actually not go that way, because we had gotten as far as we could as a parliamentary committee, and we felt the evidence stood.
However, the principle of parliamentarians being able to take this to the House has to be protected and preserved. It does not matter when the last time it happened was. What matters is that we have the obligation and the right and the power, when people are being dishonest and not telling the truth to committees, to bring it to the House, whether or not the government at the time likes it. These are tools that parliamentarians have.
Again, we are not a court of law, but we get evidence that we present to Parliament so that Parliament can make decisions and, if something is wrong, it will not happen again.
I trust that the Speaker is going to be very careful and judicious here with respect to the importance of preserving that right of parliamentarians to do their job and not be inhibited just because someone does not believe they are obligated to answer questions. They are obligated to answer questions when it is in the interests of the Canadian public.
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- Feb/15/24 12:14:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if people are not elected and cannot be fired, it does not just give them a sense of infallibility; it gives them a sense of absolute arrogance, because they can do whatever they want, for better or worse for Canadians.
I was certainly appalled. I had the honour to sit in for my colleague for Nanaimo—Ladysmith for one of the meetings, and I was super careful asking questions, even for the people with whom I did not agree. I wanted to get this right. However, I felt this sense of lazy arrogance. Senator Kutcher so much as said that they had already agreed they would not hear all the witnesses, that they had already agreed they would just push ahead. The Senate blew this. It did not do the due diligence. Senators were not even interested in hearing the witnesses. We should never have been put in a situation to let that lot make a decision as profound as this.
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- Dec/4/23 5:54:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, certainly over the last six weeks, we watched a toxic gong show from the Conservatives, who did not allow witnesses to come forward. The minister was going to come, but they did not want him. Instead, it was like watching European soccer players rolling around on the pitch. I mean no offence to European soccer players; at least they get a goal in once in a while.
I would ask the member about the way she has misrepresented all of these issues. Last year, there were 133 witnesses and 120 hours of hearings on clean energy. At no point did any of those witnesses allege some kind of conspiracy, yet the member is going public and using very loaded language about a globalist agenda. I would like to know whether the language for a “globalist agenda” came from her or whether it came from her leader's office? That needs to be explained—
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- Feb/2/23 1:48:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the issue of dealing with crime is that we actually need to take the evidence, we need to have the witnesses and we need to put them together in a way that makes sure we actually get the results the public trusts us to get. This is our job as legislators, so I am very pleased that the justice committee agreed to look at bail reform and the serious issues that have arisen from the examples of violence.
The horrific killing of that young police officer in Ontario shocked us all; it should never have been allowed to happen. However, this issue is very different from what the Conservatives are doing, which is having a motion, throwing everything but the kitchen sink into it and demanding that we stand up in the House today and rewrite the whole law without the evidence and without doing the work. I have been here long enough to remember the Harper government days when every one of the Conservatives' crime bills got tossed, with more recalls than the Ford Pinto, because they were not doing the job right.
I would like to ask my hon. colleague about doing this right on bail reform.
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