44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 3, 2023 02:00PM
- May/3/23 2:58:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Whitby is correct. It is very concerning that Conservative members are filibustering at finance committee to avoid Jenni Byrne's testimony.
It is essential that Canadians be able to have confidence in our democratic institutions, and that is why all parties agreed to prioritize the study on foreign election interference. Canadians now know that the previous Conservative government knew of foreign interference in our elections. Jenni Byrne served in senior roles to both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party. She was to appear yesterday evening, yet the Conservatives chose, using dirty tricks, to avoid accountability.
They say this is a serious matter, but they sure—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- May/3/23 7:25:03 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, I think the hilarious thing about being a Conservative is that they get a slogan, and they get use it again and again.
There is this whole thing about gatekeepers. Everybody is a gatekeeper now. The leader of the Conservative Party has never had a job and he lives in a 19-room mansion, so the only thing he has ever come up with are groundskeepers who are paid for by the taxpayers.
I listened to my hon. colleague, and she is upset that firearms legislation may be dealt with by order in council, when it should be dealt with by legislation. That is based on political amnesia. The Harper government used an order in council to stop the gatekeepers, the RCMP, from designating what were dangerous weapons.
The Harper government brought in the use of the order in council on firearms. The Harper government did not want it to go through legislation, and it did not want police involvement. Now we are in a situation where the Conservatives are crying and outraged. Now they are defending trying to stop changes to the legislation that would stop ghost guns. I do not know what they figure in terms of gatekeepers who are running around with ghost guns, but we have to deal with these issues, and it was the Harper government that used an order in council to exploit the ability of the gun lobby and to circumvent legislation for the Canadian people.
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- May/3/23 11:48:36 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, I am curious to know how many of those liquified natural gas plants the former Conservative Harper government was able to build. Just one?
More importantly, is the member sure that the future of our country is so dependent on liquified natural gas? There is no doubt that to some degree it will be used. However, what we are seeing, at least what I am seeing in my own riding, is people who are literally cutting their gas line off at the street because they are converting their heat sources to heat pumps. Heat pumps are the newest thing. They do not require natural gas. There is actually a shift, at least from a home heating perspective, away from natural gas.
I am curious why Conservatives continually put so much of their political capital into fossil fuels.
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- May/3/23 11:50:33 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, the member speaks about cuts, and of course the Conservatives are absolutely great at cutting essential services for Canadians.
We saw that in the dismal decade when the Harper regime was in power. We saw them slashing health care. We saw them forcing seniors to work more years before they could ever get to their pension. They slashed services for veterans. Unbelievable. Imagine, veterans who have given their lives to Canada, who laid their lives on the line, and the Conservative response was to slash all of those services that were provided to veterans.
Of course, the Conservatives did not cut for everybody. They gave unbelievable amounts of money to Canada's big banks for profits. They put in place the Harper network of tax evasion countries so that we ended up losing $30 billion a year.
The question I would like to ask my colleague is, what are the Conservatives going to cut this time?
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- May/3/23 11:51:40 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, I feel sorry the member. He has been here an awfully long time, and maybe the length of time is shading some of his memories.
The Harper Conservative government increased health transfers every year by 6%. What the member just shared could be viewed as incorrect, but I would not use unparliamentary language to describe the misleading statistics that he put forward because he knows that is wrong.
I would like to add that the member is a coalition partner with the Liberals. The last time the Liberals were in government, before this time, they slashed the transfers to the provincial governments. In my province, what that meant was 52 rural hospitals were closed, because the Liberals cut the health transfers to Saskatchewan. It is on them as a partner in this costly coalition.
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- May/4/23 12:13:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I find it incredibly rich that the member would take the time to requote his question and then gloss over the answer he received, not bothering to even read it into the record, so I will do that for him now. The response given was, “Madam Speaker, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs recused himself from all deliberations and decisions related to the appointment of the interim Ethics Commissioner.”
The member suggested that this was just dancing around answering the question. To me, that sounds like a pretty direct answer to the question. However, what is even more important is to reflect on the fact that the individual who was appointed had a 10-year record in senior roles within the Ethics Commissioner's office, which began when Stephen Harper was the prime minister.
The truth is that the characterization being sought by the member and the Conservatives on this issue, like on so many other issues related to it, undermines the office and undermines the integrity of the work it does. Quite frankly, I find it very concerning that time after time, the Conservatives get up and do the exact same thing. However, it is exactly on brand for what they do.
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