- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Red Deer—Lacombe
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,499.79
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues for their support and for speaking to Bill C-368, but I want to remind people how we arrived here.
There seem to be some forgetful folks. Even though I am thanking the NDP for its position, I would like to remind people how we arrived at this place. We are at this point with natural health products because of a budget implementation act, Bill C-47, which was passed for budget 2023. The authority for that came from a promise made by the leader of the NDP in March 2022 to form a coalition, a supply and confidence agreement, with the Liberal government, which meant carte blanche. It was going to support every budget and every budget implementation act that it had not even seen, discussed nor been party to. It gave that power to the Liberal government, and that is why we are here today.
While I appreciate the NDP's revisionist history on this, it is the reason this change happened in the first place. I am glad it is supporting this bill, which would take the legislative framework back where it was with the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper and where we had the best natural health product regulations, framework and industry in the world. There is no need to tamper any further with the natural health product industry.
I want to talk about freedom of choice in health care, as this is a huge issue. Over 80% of Canadians, and I suspect it is even more, are using natural health products. This is about that freedom of choice and losing that choice. I believe the Canadian Health Food Association, the Natural Health Product Protection Association, the Direct Sellers Association of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business when they say that the changes being proposed by the Liberal government, through Health Canada's changes to the definition of therapeutic products to include natural health products, is going to kill and stifle business. I believe them when they say that because we have a nine-year track record of the government doing nothing but harm to the economy of this country. The government is going to continue to do it to this beautiful, wonderful industry that gives Canadians the choice they need to look after their own personal health.
Finally, I want to thank all the Canadians who have reached out to members of Parliament in a very active campaign to let MPs know how important this is to them. I want to thank the mothers out there who look after their families. I know my wife is the same way. She had a full-time job on top of her full-time job of raising the family while I was here in Ottawa. She wanted to help our kids, to help our family and to keep us healthy. She wanted to make sure we had the best possible health outcomes that we could have. I want to thank all the women who make up the largest part of the workforce and the entrepreneurship in this beautiful industry. The fact that there was not a gender-based analysis on this is striking.
I want to thank the seniors and those with chronic conditions who are scared about losing their access to these health products. When these organizations I mentioned before said that they are going to lose these products, I believe them. These seniors believe them, and these people with chronic conditions believe them. This is how they manage. This is how they cope with their ailments, and we should be enabling and empowering that, not scaring away investments, businesses and opportunities.
I want to thank the wonderful people in the industry. I want to thank the beautiful people I have met from coast to coast who are part of this industry. I have never met a group of people who are more conscientious, more thoughtful, and more creative and innovative. I want them to know that I am very thankful for the work they do.
For those who are going to be voting in favour of this, we are going to be voting on this next Wednesday night in a recorded division. I want to thank my colleagues for sending this to committee so that we can hear from the experts and from Canadians about this because this was snuck through in Bill C-47. The Liberal government is doing it again, right now, with Bill C-69 in this place. It is making even more changes to Health Canada and giving it more powers. Why are we not talking about this in a separate piece of legislation so that we can actually have a proper debate about it? Now we are, with Bill C-368.
It is time to pass Bill C-368. It is time to get back to basics. It is time to get back to making sure that Canadians have access to the health products they deserve. I want to thank my colleagues who are brave enough and who have the courage to do what their constituents want them to do, and vote for Bill C-368.
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- Feb/27/24 2:14:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. After eight years, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost, corruption, cover-ups or crime.
Only the Prime Minister can turn an $80,000 app budget into a $60-million boondoggle. When tasked with holding the government to account, the NDP voted not once, not twice and not three times to keep funding arrive scam; it was eight times that the NDP voted to give tens of millions of tax dollars to two guys in a basement for money-for-nothing contracts.
Common-sense Conservatives voted no. Had the NDP and Bloc done the same, arrive scam funding would never have happened. Conservatives know how hard Canadians work for their money, and we will not award contracts to Liberal insiders so they can hold whisky tastings and private dinners with government officials.
After eight years, it is time to fix what the Liberal-NDP coalition has broken. It is time for a common-sense Conservative government.
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- Jun/13/23 10:04:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is on the procedure and House affairs committee with me.
I would like to thank the Bloc Québécois, although it is funny for me as an Albertan to be saying this, considering what I usually hear from the Bloc Québécois. However, in the matter of foreign interference, which we are studying at the procedure and House affairs committee, I would like to thank the Bloc Québécois for doing more to defend Canada than the current Liberal-NDP coalition has been doing.
Notwithstanding that issue, the issue before the House right now is hybrid Parliament. Just as a note, we have had to struggle to get resources because the procedure and House affairs committee is so busy. We have now learned that we actually have resources for next Tuesday night's meeting, but it has come at the expense of the declaration of emergencies committee because of the lack of resources.
We have seen the complete and utter catastrophe, as the procedure and House affairs committee has gone through the study on foreign interference in our elections, because a small group of people in the House, a small majority, the Liberals supported by the NDP—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Blaine Calkins: Madam Speaker, notwithstanding the heckling from the member, we have seen the disaster that came from a unilateral decision of members of the House in the appointment of David Johnston as a special rapporteur. Had the Liberals consulted and gotten agreement from all parties, perhaps we would not have the calamity the government now has at its feet.
Does my colleague think that, when it comes to hybrid, we should have agreement amongst all parties in the House, rather than just a couple of parties?
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- Apr/26/22 1:56:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a proud Albertan. I am an MP who used to work in the patch. I was a roughneck. I worked on directional drilling rigs as an MWD hand. I am very familiar with the oil and gas sector, so I am able to explain it. I apologize if it offends some people that I actually have that experience.
Nobody in Alberta and nobody in the energy sector is accusing the Liberal government and the NDP coalition partners of being beneficial in any way, shape or form. I do not even understand the context of the member's question, because not a single oil and gas company in Alberta or anywhere in this country is actually applauding, other than under duress or just trying to keep the government of the day at least reasonably happy, to do as little damage as possible.
The reality is that this government oversaw the loss of well over 200,000 jobs in the western Canadian energy sector economy. That is what it has done. If it had done that to any other part of the economy, killed 200,000 jobs in the auto sector, killed several hundred thousand jobs in the aerospace sector, killed several hundred thousand jobs off the coast in the fishing industry, this country would have been in an uproar. However, because it is just Alberta, and Alberta-bashing is popular with the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals, it seems to somehow be okay. It is not.
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- Mar/2/22 7:42:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what do we have here? We have a Liberal government that through its members' rhetoric and tone and the way they talk to Canadians, does an amazing job of sticking up for, and rightly so, the rights and freedoms and the jobs of the people here in Ottawa who were impacted, but with no consideration for the jobs that were lost by everybody who came here to protest.
The situation we end up with is that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, according to the Liberals, are going to co-chair this committee. The Liberals would not even have been able to do this if it were not for the support of the NDP. Now the Liberals and their NDP coalition partners, who have been propping them up all along, are going to basically decide who gets called as witnesses, who gets to speak at the committee and whose testimony they are going to adopt at the committee as the basis of the report.
Any other political entity in this Parliament that supports this motion will be complicit in that. It is a dangerous precedent, because bypassing the official opposition and the role that it has here in Parliament is a dangerous precedent to set.
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