- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
Deputy House leader of the government
- Liberal
- Kingston and the Islands
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $112,228.33
- Government Page
- May/30/24 3:20:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I do agree with the member and what he said.
In particular, I would bring to the attention of the Chair that there is still a member of Parliament on this side of the House who has not spoken in about a month and a half because he accused Conservatives of being pro-Russia.
As a result, your deputy asked him to withdraw his comment. He did not want to withdraw because he believed what he was saying was correct. As a result, he has not been able to speak for about six weeks.
In your consideration about this issue, I would ask that you also consider whether or not it is appropriate to make a statement like that, because I would agree with the member for Edmonton—Wetaskiwin that this would be limiting the words we can use in this House.
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- Mar/21/24 10:47:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, a fundamental principle of this chamber is that every member is treated with honour and is considered to be honourable. To say that the member is not even capable of having any respect completely goes against that tradition and that rule we have. I would ask, through the Speaker, for the deputy leader of the opposition to apologize and retract that comment.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/5/23 6:57:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, finally, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.
The Deputy Speaker: Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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Madam Speaker, I have heard the hon. member repeat what I have heard a number of Conservatives repeat, which is, apparently, that they had three demands of things to be seen in the budget before they would agree to vote in favour of the budget. This member mentioned it. A number of Conservative members prior have mentioned it.
The only problem with that is that, the day before the budget was introduced, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, the member for Thornhill, during question period, said that Conservatives would not be supporting the budget. Nobody knew what was in the budget at that point. As a matter of fact, it is against the rules of the House for anybody to have known that, yet, somehow, the member for Thornhill, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, knew enough to know that those three items would not be in the budget.
This just leads me to assume that, really, Conservatives are just playing games with words here. They never intended to support the budget, regardless of their demands. I am wondering if the member can provide some insight into that.
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- Mar/29/23 4:52:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is great to see that the Conservatives know how to jump up and clap. After they were heckled by the President of the United States last week, I was starting to get worried they did not know how to stand up for anything.
In any event, it should not be a surprise to anybody that the Conservatives are against this budget. Yesterday during question period, the Leader of the Opposition's deputy told us she was not voting for it even before she had seen anything in it.
I want to talk about two specific items in the budget that the Conservatives are choosing to vote against.
The Leader of the Opposition spoke at great length about his lack of interest in green technology and green programs in the budget to help grow an electrical grid that is completely green. I hope he knows that the one riding represented in this room, out of the 338 of them, to benefit most from that is my neighbouring riding and that of his seatmate, Hastings—Lennox and Addington. That riding would benefit the most from this program given the announcement of a $1.5-billion investment by Umicore to set up the largest battery manufacturing plant in North America in that riding.
In addition to that, there are the endless continued supports in the budget for Ukraine. It is the prerogative of the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, who stands up for Ukrainians repeatedly, to vote against it, but those are two incredibly good measures that would benefit Canadians and our allies around the world.
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- Oct/6/22 4:03:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will start by saying that I am sharing my time with the deputy House leader to the government.
I have had an opportunity to read this motion and I think there is a lot of good in it. Quite frankly, I am inclined to support it and most likely will, to be completely honest.
It reminds me that just a few days ago, during a question and answer on a different issue, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie asked me specifically about this issue in the context of another bill that we were discussing. I can recall replying to him that I thought it was a very important issue to discuss. I did not realize that this exchange would lead to the NDP, just a couple of days later, introducing a motion to that effect, but I am absolutely delighted to see it. I think it will give an opportunity, if passed, for the necessary studies to be done.
I think there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence out there to suggest that there are large corporations profiting off of inflation and the fear of inflation, and it is something we need to address. I look forward to, hopefully, this passing with the support of the House and to the opportunity to ensure that these practices are dealt with in a swift fashion.
I want to compliment the NDP on bringing forward a very reasonable motion, quite frankly, unlike my colleagues from across the way, the Conservatives. They bring in motions that are pretty much predicated on slogans like “triple, triple, triple” whatever.
By the way, I do not understand this “triple, triple, triple” thing. It does not make any sense to me. When I hear them say “triple, triple, triple”, all I think of is that there have been three times in the last eight years that the population has rejected them. Maybe they are referencing “triple, triple, triple” because they have been rejected at the polls three times in a row. I am not sure. That is all I can really put together based on it, because otherwise it does not make sense. It does not even deliver well. In any event, that is what I assumed.
The Conservatives have policies that are completely out there, as opposed to coming forward with stuff like what we are seeing today, which is very reasonable, in my opinion. We obviously know their position on cryptocurrency. That is becoming very well known in the House. The Leader of the Opposition is a big fan of cryptocurrency.
As a matter of fact, and I am not sure if the public knows this, there is a private member's bill in the name of the member for Calgary Nose Hill on cryptocurrency. We were actually supposed to debate that private member's bill during the first sitting of the House, when we resumed in September, but guess what. The Conservatives punted it forward. Do members know when it was punted forward to? It was today. We were actually supposed to discuss that bill today at 5:30 p.m., but guess what the Conservatives did. They punted it forward.
The Conservatives seem to be very scared about the issue of cryptocurrency. If they are not, why will they not let the member for Calgary Nose Hill bring forward her bill? Free the bill. Free her bill. Allow it to come to the floor.
The Conservative leadership, run by the member for Carleton, the Carleton crypto king, is purposefully preventing this bill from moving forward in the House. Let us have a discussion on cryptocurrency. Allow the member for Calgary Nose Hill to bring her bill before the House. The Conservatives need to stop holding it back, because, quite frankly, it is unfair to Canadians to not let us have the opportunity to discuss this very important matter.
That is the contrast I am trying to show here with the reasonable motion we see today to look into a very important matter. The NDP clearly accepts the global reasoning that has been supported by economists throughout the globe as to why we have inflation. No, it is not the Prime Minister of Canada who caused inflation. It is a global issue. The NDP knows that and I am fairly certain the Bloc knows that too.
The Conservatives are set on trying to convince the Canadian population that it is actually the Prime Minister who caused global inflation. If he had the ability to do that, I would be really impressed, quite frankly, especially considering that the Conservatives routinely accuse the Prime Minister of being incapable of doing just about anything. Now suddenly they are willing to give him credit for being able to control global inflation.
Nonetheless, those are the kinds of issues the NDP is trying to look at in a realistic way, rather than saying that we do not want to spend money giving GST rebates because that is going to cause inflation. Members might note that this is one of the original arguments that came from the Conservatives before they flip-flopped on it. They have now decided that it is maybe not in their best interests to vote against that, so maybe they should support it. Rather than taking the approach of the Conservatives and saying we are not interested in inflation because we know where it comes from, the New Democrats are actually trying to get to the root cause of it, and I think their main complaint here has a lot of merit to it.
We have seen a lot happen today. It has been a pretty revealing day for the Leader of the Opposition. We have learned this morning that he was actively using misogynistic tags on YouTube to get users to go to his YouTube page. For people who do not understand how this works, there is a particular hashtag, #mgtow, which is “men going their own way”, from a group that is specifically based around anti-feminism and misogyny. There are primarily and pretty much only men in this group. What the Leader of the Opposition was doing was using that hashtag—
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- Sep/29/22 3:48:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will ask the deputy leader of the Conservative Party the same question I have repeatedly asked the leader of the Conservative Party. What is the Conservative Party's position on cryptocurrency?
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- May/13/22 12:27:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.
The Deputy Speaker: Is it agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Apr/25/22 3:42:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, perhaps we will give the member the benefit of the doubt that he might be new, but we cannot do indirectly what we cannot do directly. It is very clear that he is indirectly trying to do that.
If the member disagrees with the ruling of the Chair, he has an option to challenge that ruling, and he should perhaps exercise that, but in the meantime, if he is not going to do that, he should accept that ruling, a ruling that was made by our Deputy Speaker, a member from his party, and a ruling that you just reinforced.
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- Mar/4/22 12:25:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
The Deputy Speaker: Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Feb/20/22 7:12:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I again have a point of order.
The member has not taken the Deputy Speaker's advice on two occasions now. Rather than answer the question, he is now attempting to engage in debate. The Deputy Speaker has an obligation to enforce the rules of this House, and I would encourage him to do so.
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