- 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
- Apr/10/24 5:49:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I agree completely with the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman that those discussions should be had in advance. The unfortunate reality is that Conservatives never do that. They are the biggest abusers of that rule in the House, so for the member to stand up and say that is quite ironic and demonstrates hypocrisy.
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- Feb/29/24 5:05:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have said many times in my speeches, especially when it relates to progressive issues or the environment, that I am not here to say that Ottawa knows best. As a matter of fact, putting the program together required the minister to go out and have discussions with each jurisdiction, with each province. This is why I got a kick out of hearing the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound talking about it being one system imposed by the federal government. On the contrary, there are a number of systems across the country that have been negotiated with and are being delivered by provinces. I know that the member knows that.
I take great pride in learning from the success of Quebec and seeing how we can put that into the rest of the country. If he ever has opportunity to share with me what we should be doing better in Ontario when it comes to issues like this or the environment, I will happily sit down with him and listen, because we have a lot to learn from what Quebec has done over the years.
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- Jan/29/24 4:01:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion:
That notwithstanding any standing order or usual practice of the House during the debate, pursuant to Standing Order 66 on Motion No. 45 to concur in the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Finance, and Motion No. 46 to concur in the 14th report of the Standing Committee of Public Accounts, no quorum calls, dilatory motions or requests for unanimous consent shall be received by the Chair, and that at the conclusion of the time provided for debate, or when no member rises to speak, whichever is earlier, all questions necessary to dispose of the motions be deemed put and a recorded division be deemed requested and deferred, pursuant to Standing Order 66.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time this evening with the member for Scarborough—Rouge Park.
For those who might be tuning in, we are now on a concurrence motion that falls under Routine Proceedings in the House. Conservatives have chosen to put forward a motion that will basically consume about three hours' worth of the debate time today on this particular committee report.
Normally when these come forward, they are for reports that perhaps were contentious or perhaps had a lot of committee disagreement on how to proceed. Usually those end up on the floor of the House and consume about three hours' worth of debate. Then a question is put on the motion.
However, with this particular motion, I do not think that there will be much debate because my understanding is that everybody within the committee agreed to this motion. It is certainly something that seems extremely reasonable. It is something that has come out of the committee. In the interests of those who might be watching, it is the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, specifically on the study of the Taliban regime and human rights. As it is just one or two sentences, I will read the committee report to the House in its entirety. It reads:
That the committee report to the House that it firmly denounces the Taliban and rejects any recognition or legitimization of their control over Afghan territory. In particular, the committee denounces the Taliban system of gender discrimination, systemic violence targeting minority communities, reprisals against former members of the Afghan National Security and Defence Forces, attacks on freedom of the press, and other violations of fundamental human rights. The committee believes that the Taliban must remain a listed terrorist organization.
As I indicated moments ago, my understanding is that the entire committee voted in favour of this. Now that this has been brought forward as a motion, I anticipate that all members of the House will likely be voting in favour of it. It is even more perplexing, I guess I could say, coming on the heels of the fact that we just voted on Bill C-41, and Bill C-41 is an act to specifically empower the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of International Development to have the ability to allow funds to flow into Afghanistan, in particular those that are aimed at supporting humanitarian needs and the people who really need those funds.
That is something that passed in the House. We heard the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound say a few moments ago that he thought at times it might go too far, whereas others in the House thought that it did not go far enough. However, it sounds like it was a very collegial discussion and debate, and that a genuine consensus was formed at committee where they could adopt the report but still have this important caveat added to it so it came through as a report from a committee to the House.
I genuinely think that the democratic process was served very well in how this report got to the House. I am a little bit more concerned or confused that we have this motion to concur it in right now, given that we know there was very little disagreement over it, notwithstanding the fact that it is a very important issue. It is also an issue that is very well identified within the report that is being concurred in now.
As we heard a number of discussions about the supports going to the Afghan people, we did just pass Bill C-41. This report basically came to the House at the same time. Bill C-41 is a bill that:
amends the Criminal Code in order to create a regime under which the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness may authorize an eligible person to carry out, in a geographic area that is controlled by a terrorist group and for certain purposes, activities that otherwise would be prohibited under paragraph 83.03(b) of that Act (which becomes subsection 83.03(2)). It also makes consequential amendments
To put it in context, there is, for obvious good reasons, limits to where public money can flow. In particular, we have very stringent rules around it getting into the hands of those terrorist organizations. We certainly do not ever want to see that happen, but we also respect the fact that there are a number of organizations that are providing humanitarian needs in certain parts of the world that might need to have access to money to support the work they are doing, which genuinely drives that humanitarian effort. This is what Bill C-41 would do, and it was the genesis behind Bill C-41.
I am very pleased to see that the bill passed through the House earlier today. I think it gives us an opportunity to reflect, perhaps, but I hope this does not have to go on for the entire three hours. I will keep my comments short, but I genuinely do believe that we need to move forward with some of the other very important pieces of legislation that we have before the House today. Therefore, I hope that we can come to a conclusion on this particular concurrence motion relatively quickly so that we can move along.
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Madam Speaker, one thing I know is that firefighters have a much higher approval rating than politicians, so I would always be very careful about what I say as it relates to firefighters. The reality of the situation is that if there is a missed opportunity, if it is something we did not talk about or is something we did and it needs to be resurfaced, I am certainly always interested in having those discussions. What we do know, and we can see it from the historical trends, is that the number of fires is increasing, and it has been over the last number of decades, as I indicated in my speech. We are going to need to make sure we have the resources and supports there for firefighters, moving forward, if we are going to expect them to do these jobs.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know what the particular discussions were at committee. I am not on that committee. I do not know how exactly every amendment was debated and voted upon, how they ended up in the final production of the piece of legislation or which amendments to the legislation ended up before this House, but I will say that I have great confidence in the work the committee did. I feel as though the committee has properly represented to make sure that Canadian content will be preserved, and I have even more confidence, knowing that both the Bloc and the NDP are supportive of this too, because that shows that there is multi-party support around this, and that gives me confidence.
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Mr. Speaker, I think that, if this government has proven one thing when it comes to that very important relationship, it is that we do want to see indigenous communities have the autonomy to make the decisions that are required to properly care for, in this case, children.
I strongly believe that, even though the member might find the timelines to be tight, it is important for this to be discussed at committee. I think that this speaks to why this needs to get to committee, so that the discussions can be had. Questions that he has can be posed to the department officials and those responsible to get to the bottom of it, so we can deliver on this very important part of the agreement.
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- Nov/3/22 11:37:51 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the passion of the member. There are not a lot of people in this room who can get more vocal than I can at times, but he is certainly one of those members.
He brought up a lot of interesting and I think debatable points about affordable housing. This government has done a lot, and even though he says that nothing has been done and nothing has been built, that is simply not the case. I can reference my riding, where a number of projects that have been funded by the federal government are now open and housing individuals who are in need of affordable housing. I will say that unfortunately, and I was listening closely, I did not once hear the member talk about the actual issue, which is affordable housing for veterans.
There has been a lot of good discussion today from all sides of the House. I have heard the Conservatives talk about Homes for Heroes, and I have heard many other discussions about housing veterans. I wonder if the member would like to reflect specifically on housing the veterans who are in need right now and to depart from the more general topic of homelessness and focus on veterans.
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- May/20/22 1:47:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have another one.
There have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I think you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following: That in relation to the—
Some hon. members: No.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent. I have certainly always enjoyed our discussions.
I just spoke for 15 minutes on this bill. The first question I got was not even about the bill, but about what another member of Parliament said, who is completely entitled to his opinion. It differs from mine, but it is what it is.
The point is that this bill today is about rapid tests, and whether or not we should expend the money in order to buy rapid tests so we can use them throughout the country. Just as with every speech before this, it is regrettable that the first question to come from the Conservatives to me is again about an issue that has nothing to do with the bill.
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