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Hon. Mike Lake

Member of Parliament
Conservative

Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
Alberta
Voting Attendance: 65%
Expenses Last Quarter: $178,671.82

Government Page

Context: House Hansard - 176 - Mar/30/23

Mar/30/23 7:56:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is actually the flip side of that argument. I think the government's response to the Senate amendments, by way of completely ignoring them and then taking to the Internet to actually attack people who criticize the government's approach, is what erodes Canadians' confidence and trust in their government, more than anything else.

57 words

Context: House Hansard - 79 - Jun/1/22

Hon. Mike Lake (Edmonton—Wetaskiwin, CPC)

Jun/1/22 10:47:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here tonight to follow up on a question I asked the Prime Minister on May 18. I think it is important in these late shows to give a little context for people who might be seeing this live, but more likely on social media after we post the clips from this. The late show is our opportunity to have a conversation in which we follow up on something where we feel like we did not get an adequate response from the government during question period. That is usually the case. We get this opportunity to choose which questions we are going to follow up on. The parliamentary secretary who will answer my question today, and who has four minutes to respond, knows the question I am going to refer to, and has the full power of the minister's office and the Prime Minister's Office to prepare the response. We would expect a fulsome response tonight, hopefully. The very specific question that was asked of the Prime Minister on May 18 was: Mr. Speaker, four times in the past two weeks I have asked questions about the Canada mental health transfer: an election commitment quite obviously broken by the Liberal government. The minister never even pretended to attempt an answer. Page 75 of the Liberal platform clearly promises immediate funding of $250 million and then another $625 million in this year's budget. There has to be an explanation as to why the Liberals broke this significant promise to vulnerable Canadians. Could the Prime Minister simply tell us what that explanation is? Of course, the Prime Minister did not tell us what the explanation was, so I am going to elaborate a little on this. On page 5 of the Liberal platform, the document the party used to get elected about seven or eight months ago, the Liberals said that they would: Commit to permanent, ongoing funding for mental health services under the Canada Mental Health Transfer, with an initial investment of $4.5 billion over five years. In the costing of the Liberals' platform, the timeline that they were promising was very clear, because on page 75 of the platform, under “New investments” and “Canada Mental Health Transfer” for 2021-22, they committed $250 million, and then for 2022-23 it was $625 million with ongoing funding for the next three years. It was very clear that the commitment was to begin immediately, yet in the budget and in any fiscal planning document that we have seen from the government since then, nowhere to be found is anything related to the Canada mental health transfer. We had the opportunity to ask officials at committee, and they had no answers for us. On May 5, we asked the minister the question. I asked her, and she called my questions “annoying” and “despicable”, and did not give an answer. I had the chance to ask the parliamentary secretary a week later, on May 12, and she clearly did not understand the question, because she talked about the suicide prevention hotline and did not talk about the Canada mental health transfer at all. By the way, the response to the question that I did not ask about the suicide prevention hotline was not an answer at all, even in relation to that thing. I then had the chance to ask the Prime Minister. For the parliamentary secretary, what I hope today is for her to simply point us to a financial document of the government: a budget, budget implementation bill or some other document where it is clear that the government is spending the money that it promised during the election campaign for the Canada mental health transfer.

633 words

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Member of Parliament

Hon. Mike Lake