- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
Chief opposition whip
Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- South Surrey—White Rock
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $130,172.43
- Government Page
- Oct/16/23 10:12:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I personally and all of my Conservative colleagues have called for the IRGC to be declared a terrorist organization by the government, so that it could not organize here in Canada or raise funds here in Canada. On the Liberal side they have gone so far as to call it a state sponsor of terrorism.
Again, this is not a drill. This is reality. Iran sponsors terror throughout the region and, in fact, probably elsewhere outside the Middle East. We need to see it for what it is, call it out and stop the flow of funds to terrorist organizations like Hamas.
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- Oct/16/23 10:10:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I believe that Israel, many times in the past, has been under violent attack from aggressor states all around it. We must remember that Israel is a very small country with vast aggressor states around it that mean to do it harm, which have vowed to push Israelis and the state of Israel into the sea.
In these circumstances, I think that Israel has always tried to follow international law, absolutely. I believe it will do so again.
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- Oct/16/23 10:09:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree that international law should be observed, but we are talking about extraordinary circumstances. We are talking about a surprise attack on a sovereign nation in the most brutal and horrific manner where innocents were slaughtered. They were not soldiers. They were people in their homes having Shabbat dinner or asleep in their beds. Babies are no threat to anyone.
I understand Israel's right to defend itself, and it must choose how and when to do so. It is making every effort, from what I can see, to warn those who were not involved to go to safety.
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- Oct/16/23 10:08:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the threat level here in Canada and in the United States. We know that we are seen as one North American entity by a lot of the bad actors in the world. We are referred to as the little Satan with the U.S. being the big Satan. We know there are people among us here who would do harm. I think it is essential that the Government of Canada assess the present threat level and inform Canadians.
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- Oct/16/23 10:02:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, October 7, 2023, is a day now permanently pierced into history, when the world witnessed evil in its purest form. Israelis were wrapping up the festival of Sukkot when sirens rang out. Israel was under violent attack. Like many Canadians, I was horrified to wake up to the news, images and videos coming out of Israel. This deliberate, coordinated attack by Hamas terrorists was despicable, unjustified, and I condemn it unequivocally.
Israel has the right to defend itself, just as Canada would if this attack were carried out on our soil. This should not be difficult to say, but some Canadian politicians and some in the media could not find the moral courage to say so. We have seen statements put out by both Liberal and NDP politicians that were so outrageous and morally bankrupt they had to be walked back or deleted.
The CBC instructed its employees to avoid referring to Hamas as terrorists. Our own state broadcaster ignored the fact that Hamas was put on the terrorist entity list by the Government of Canada in 2002, describing Hamas as “a radical Islamist-nationalist terrorist organization”.
We have seen reprehensible celebrations of these terrorist attacks right here in Canada, including, shamefully, in my own community in B.C. On Friday, in my community, a rabbi's home was vandalized with eggs and a swastika was drawn on his window. This is disgusting and unacceptable. This hate should not be tolerated in our country, full stop.
I condemn these celebrations and condemn the ideology of hate that has no place in Canada. There is no moral equivalence between Hamas terrorists who slaughter innocents, savagely rape women and children, behead babies and use their own people as human shields, and Israel exercising their right to defend themselves. This is a time for moral clarity.
I hope the CBC is paying attention when I say that Hamas is not a militant organization, a resistance or an activist group. Hamas is a sadistic, barbaric, terrorist death cult with no respect for human life. There can be no negotiating with Hamas. They must be defeated and destroyed. Their enablers must be exposed for the vile anti-Semites that they are. This includes state sponsors of terrorism, including the dictatorship in Tehran.
I have seen first-hand the strength of the Israeli people and how Israelis live under existential threat from Hamas, funded by Iran and other hostile actors in the region. Now this threat is reality.
My heart breaks for the families who have been destroyed, especially the families of the seven Canadians who were ruthlessly murdered. Last night in South Surrey, I attended a rally in support of the Jewish community and spoke to friends of Ben Mizrachi, a 22-year-old British Columbian murdered at the music festival. He was using his training as a medic with the IDF to help people who were wounded in the attack. He was trying to save lives when he tragically lost his own.
For those still in danger, we must do everything we can to bring them home safe. As we continue to watch the horrific events unfolding in Israel, there are concrete actions that Canada can and must take.
First, Canada must criminalize the IRGC, the terrorist arm of the Iranian government. Today again, the Liberals blocked the passage of a Conservative bill that would have taken this necessary first step.
Second, there are Canadians missing and presumed to be among the hostages. The Government of Canada must demand the immediate release of our citizens and all hostages taken by Hamas.
Third, Conservatives are calling for a full review of all foreign aid programs to ensure that no Canadian tax dollars are going to support terrorism.
Fourth, we must protect Canadian places of worship. Every person of faith has a constitutional right to worship here in Canada. “Never again” is a phrase associated with the atrocities of the Holocaust. Never again is now. Jewish people around the world are remarkably resilient. They choose to believe the promises of scripture that better days and peace lie ahead. However, they should not be continuously forced to prove their resilience by malevolent forces against their very existence.
I am proud to stand with our friend and ally, Israel.
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- Mar/21/22 2:53:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, 11 years after Afghanistan and 158 lives lost, the minister thinks we are convenors, not warriors. I have news for the minister, who should take a look at our Canadian history. The victors at Vimy Ridge, the Hundred Days, Juno Beach, Kapyong and Operation Medusa deserve our admiration and our praise but are forgotten by the government.
Will the minister apologize for her hurtful remarks to the military, to veterans and to the families of our fallen?
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- Mar/21/22 2:51:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Foreign Affairs told CTV that, “Canada is not a nuclear power, it is not a military power. We're a middle-sized power and what we're good at is convening and making sure that diplomacy is happening”, and in so doing, insulted every Canadian who has gone to war for this country or put on its uniform. It is not the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces who are not ready to do their job; it is the minister and the government that are incapable of doing their jobs.
Will the minister apologize to this country's veterans?
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- Jan/31/22 10:07:20 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I absolutely agree that it is essential. You may have noticed that the Russians shut down a lot of Ukraine's cyber abilities before stepping up even further with aggression. This is part of modern warfare: It is something that goes on all the time with aggressor states, and we need to do more to be alive to it, monitor it and prevent it.
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- Jan/31/22 10:06:01 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I believe sanctions do work and diplomacy usually works, but we are dealing with a very aggressive country that has decided that in its interests, whatever it deems them to be, Ukraine is part of them going forward. Diplomacy should always come first, and sanctions along with diplomacy absolutely are a deterrent, but offering Ukraine every support short of assistance, I suggest, is not good enough. We have to stand stronger with Ukraine and democracy.
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- Jan/31/22 10:04:04 p.m.
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Madam Chair, this is a crucial issue within our Canadian Armed Forces right now. Madam Justice Arbour is tasked with looking at further recommendations, because the earlier recommendations were not all put in place. We are looking for further insights there.
We need more personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces and retention and recruitment are huge issues, but we have serving men and women who are trained and we know that they can do even more to help train in Ukraine and in vulnerable democracies such as Ukraine. As I said, Ukraine may not be part of NATO, as least yet, but it is surely a NATO ally.
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- Jan/31/22 9:58:01 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Thornhill.
The Russians are ready for war with Ukraine and have the elements of 10 combined arms and tank armies surrounding Ukraine's borders. The Russians say they are normal troop deployments and that they are not looking to invade Ukraine. They said the same things in 2014 before they seized Crimea and the Donbass. With Georgia in 2008, Russia said its military buildup was a war game, and they took the northern part of the country by storm.
This time we know differently about Russian President Vladimir Putin's claims. Typically, only three Russian armies are stationed opposite Ukraine, and now we are seeing units from six other combined arms armies and the main strike force of the western military district, the 1st Guards Tank Army, move within miles of the Russian-Ukrainian border.
More Russian troops have been sent to Belarus along with fighter aircraft to both deter NATO and to threaten a northern invasion march on Kyiv. Belarus's army is on a heightened state of alert and ready to join Russia in battle. Russian forces in Transnistria have also been built up. Between five and six large Russian amphibious ships are on the way to the Black Sea with naval infantry. Smaller amphibious craft are coming by road. Russian pipeline troops have been deployed forward to establish fuel hubs for their armoured forces. The Russian navy is engaged in war games in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the North, Baltic and Black seas. Russia's strategic rocket forces are in war games, on a heightened state of alert and dispersed, and blood has been sent to Russian field hospitals, the last thing that happens before they become battle-ready. Blood is such a precious commodity that we use coloured water in exercises.
My husband and children are part Ukrainian. My heart is with that vulnerable democracy and its people. My heart is with the men, women and families of Canadian Armed Forces members who may be put in harm's way. The U.S., U.K. and other NATO states are ready to deploy forces to deter the Russian and Belarusian aggressors. What about Canada? In 2019 the Prime Minister announced in London Canada's contribution to NATO's high readiness force. Canada's total commitment to the NATO readiness initiative includes 12 CF-18 fighter jets, an expeditionary air task force, a maritime patrol aircraft, three frigates, a submarine, a mechanized infantry battalion, a mobile hospital and a platoon for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence.
Right now in the face of unprecedented Russian aggression against Ukraine and hybrid warfare directed at Poland and the Baltic states through its proxy Belarus, we have a 550-person force in Estonia helping to train and protect that vulnerable NATO state. We have 200 trainers in Ukraine with a couple hundred more maybe on their way, and a small special forces detachment, and the minister just announced that they are moving out of harm's way west of the Dnieper River. We have one warship, HMCS Montréal, in transit to the Black Sea, and one being made ready in Halifax.
The government has watched the Russian military build up in real terms since Zapad 2021 in September. We have had months to put together a robust list of both non-lethal and lethal aid to support Ukraine. It may not be a NATO member state, but it is surely a NATO ally. At this stage we should be supplying lethal defensive aid to help this fledgling democracy stand up to the bully of central and eastern Europe in Vladimir Putin.
As well, the cyberdefensive capabilities in our Communications Security Establishment should be leveraged to help Ukraine. As well, Canadian signals intelligence could be invaluable to monitoring Russian interactions. The satellite intelligence from RADARSAT would be most helpful in tracking troop movements. The Canadian Armed Forces can provide training in a much wider range of lethal combat skills than they are doing now, and Canada should start as quickly as Ukraine can accommodate extra help. Even a maritime patrol aircraft to monitor Russian actions in the Black Sea and Baltic would be helpful at this point.
If Canadians care at all about democracy, if we care about freedom and sovereignty, we must care about it everywhere.
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- Jan/31/22 2:39:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Ukraine will likely be the scene of a large conventional ground war. We have watched the Russian military buildup in Belarus, Russia, the Donbass and Crimea since the Russian Zapad exercises last September. The government had months to prepare a robust military aid package to Ukraine.
When will the Minister of National Defence provide the lethal weapons that Ukraine needs now?
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- Jan/31/22 2:38:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Russians are ready for war with Ukraine. They have moved over 100,000 troops surrounding Ukraine's borders. The Russians have moved blood supplies to their field hospitals. The Liberals have pulled back our Operation Unifier trainers west of the Dnipro River.
Could the minister tell Parliament if that means the government considers a diplomatic solution unlikely, and a Russian invasion of Ukraine is now imminent?
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- Dec/7/21 12:35:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is with a sense of duty and honour that I stand here today in the House to support this motion to set up a committee to review Canada's actions during the evacuation of Canadian personnel and civilians and our Afghan friends and allies from Kabul; those who got out.
As a former associate minister of national defence, I want to say that my heart goes out to those 40,000 Canadians and their families who served in Afghanistan, and to our ill, our injured and, most importantly, our fallen. They made the ultimate sacrifice for Canadians so that among other victories, little girls could go to school in peace in Afghanistan and not fear having acid thrown in their faces or being married off at the age of nine. Have we forgotten the attempted murder of Malala by the Taliban in Pakistan, when she spoke up for the education of girls?
Like Canadians who served during the Afghan mission, the Afghan war, I want to say how profoundly saddened I was to watch Canada strike her colours and run from Kabul, leaving many Afghan friends and allies behind, along with their families, for the Taliban to decide their fate. The victors of Vimy, the Hundred Days, D-Day and Kapyong, had they been able, would have cried out in rightful indignation at the scenes at the airport and at Canada's final retreat. For me and many friends and colleagues, it was a week of feeling frustrated, weak and sickened by the government's half-hearted approach, which can be summed up by “last in and first out”.
To be clear, I have nothing but praise for the professionalism of the Canadian embassy staff and our Canadian Armed Forces personnel, particularly our special forces, who were left to hold the bag for the Liberal government. I only wish they would get the love and support they need from the government in terms of modern equipment, but that is not the Liberal way. It apparently is not the Liberal government's way.
As a former minister, I get to see how decisions are made behind closed doors; I have an idea of the “battle rhythm” of a crisis and the response to it. Canada's response has been slow, overly bureaucratic, risk averse and without any real political leadership to get things done. We could see the dithering at the highest levels of the Liberal government, because we were in the lead-up to an election and then into an election that the Liberals thought they had in the bag. To put it simply, the government shamefully had its eyes on a majority government at a pivotal time and could not have cared less about the national interest or the human tragedy unfolding thousands of kilometres away in Afghanistan.
Canadians have the right to know what the government did in the run-up to the fall of Kabul and what it did afterward. The peace treaty with the Taliban was signed on February 29, 2020, and later, on April 14, 2021, the Biden administration announced its intention to withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021.
I will be splitting my time with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.
If February 29 did not ring any bells in Ottawa at the Prime Minister's Office or the Privy Council Office or Global Affairs or National Defence or Citizenship and Immigration, there can be no question that alarm bells should have been ringing on April 14, with the clear end date set for September 11.
What did the Liberal government do when the United States administration announced its planned withdrawal? Did it strike an interdepartmental committee of deputies? Did it lay out plans for an all-of-government response? Did it send a reconnaissance team to Kabul to look at the logistics of getting thousands of Canadians and their Afghan allies out of the country? Did it lean ahead and start evacuations of, say, our Afghan embassy staff and interpreters, likely the easiest to clear, and get them and their families out?
It looks like the government was like a deer caught in the headlights and did nothing. Had there been any action, the government would no doubt have stood on soapboxes across the nation to announce the news. Instead, it chose to do nothing, and this is the point. It was a choice.
The government had months to plan, marshal its resources, lean forward and carry out evacuations with the Afghan government and U.S. military still in control of the country. It did not do it. Then between May and July 2021, the Taliban started to make predictable gains on the ground in Afghanistan. As U.S. forces started to withdraw, as money dried up for pay of the Afghan army, as America withdrew the logistics consultants that kept the Afghan air force flying and the Afghan army vehicle fleets moving, the Canadian government had access to the same intelligence as our allies and could have sped up its evacuation operations then.
Did we reach out to the Pakistani government or the military and ask them for assistance? Knowing that the tide was turning on the ground, what did the Liberal government do to get our people, our friends and our allies out? Where was our logistics hub? Why was there not a search capacity in place to process visa applications? Almost a month after, on July 23, the government announced its so-called path to protection; path to protection, indeed. Almost as soon as the path to protection was announced, the government was running in the opposite direction and jettisoned the 72-hour application deadline.
Let us look at timelines. Four months after President Biden announced the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the first evacuation flight out of Kabul landed in Canada. By August 10, the Taliban controlled 65% of Afghanistan and the second and third largest cities, Kandahar and Herat, had fallen. On August 13, Canadian officials announced a plan to resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees, including interpreters, activists, women leaders and members of the LGBTQ community. Two days later, Kabul fell to the Taliban and the Haqqani network. The death squads started to prowl the streets, going house to house to kill people who put their and their families' safety aside to work with Canadian diplomats, aid workers and soldiers. On August 17, two more flights got out with embassy staff and Afghan interpreters. While death squads were roaming the streets looking for our people, the Prime Minister said he would not give the Taliban diplomatic recognition. By August 20, Canadian officials managed to stop COVID testing and waive passports for refugees. On August 26, we witnessed two bomb blasts by suicide bombers at the airport and the Liberal government, in an election morass, pulled the plug; the evacuation ended. Our ambassador had gotten out 11 days previous.
Would it not be interesting to see the correspondence between Privy Council, Global Affairs and National Defence? Imagine what the Prime Minister's Office was saying to people about taking no unnecessary risks. All this time, innocent Afghans who took us at our word were seen falling from the landing gear of transport aircraft in desperation to leave and find safety. All the while, the Liberal government was playing for time with the media and the electorate.
Liberals said that we could stay after the Americans left, that we would get them out by land, that we would evacuate them from regional partner countries like China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan. It was all smoke and mirrors, all a great game to protect the Liberal Party of Canada and its interests over the national interests and, literally, human life.
Where are the Liberals' priorities? How many refugees did the Liberal government rescue? It was 3,600 with another 1,200 in transit. First, the target was 20,000 refugees, now it is 40,000. These are targets, not reality.
In 2006, during conflict in Lebanon, the Conservative government, with less time and warning, evacuated 15,000 Canadian citizens from that war-torn country. It acted with leadership, alacrity and dispatch; quite a contrast to the Liberal government.
As a former associate minister of national defence, I want to say that we simply cannot forget our allies in times of need. Words with no plan are useless and are costing lives. A special committee and its recommendations are absolutely necessary to streamline bureaucracy and show both compassion and agility.
Mr. Speaker, priorities.
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- Dec/3/21 11:48:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Russia's foreign minister has just told our foreign affairs minister that the nightmare of military confrontation is returning. The Prime Minister has reportedly told Ukraine's president that Canada will use every single tool possible to deter Russia. With 115,000 soldiers and thousands of tanks and armoured vehicles at Ukraine's border, CDS Eyre said Canada would offer no CAF support.
I ask the minister again, as I did yesterday, who is in charge and how will Canada defend democratic Ukraine?
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- Dec/2/21 2:47:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Russia has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border, and 32,000 in Russian-occupied Crimea. One-third of Russia's ground combat power is on the move. RT News reports that Russia is warning Ukraine that military action is highly possible.
Canada has a small training contingent in Ukraine of 200 troops. Last week, it was reported that the minister was considering additional troops and equipment. Today, CDS Eyre said no.
To the minister: What force options will be deployed to aid Ukraine, and who is in charge—
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