44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 7, 2023 02:00PM
- Jun/7/23 8:18:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have been in the House many years and I have always enjoyed the leader of Stornoway's stunts.
Are we actually saying that there is going to be historical precedence and they are upset that nobody bothers to listen to him? Is that literally a point—
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- Jun/7/23 9:43:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we can only, at times like these, quote Ecclesiastes:
What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again;there is nothing new under the sun.
The Prime Minister claims he has invented some marvellous new concept: the government's taking over the economy, taking people's money and supposedly giving it back worth more than when they lost it, and that this is a brand new idea. In fact, all his ideas are very old. They have all been tried before and with exactly the same disastrous results. All we try to do here is to remind them a little of history.
The reason we study history is to avoid repeating its mistakes. Maybe that is why this Prime Minister is so fond of deleting our history. Is that right? If we can forget about the history, if we can wipe away the past, well, then we have unlimited power to control the future. Orwell warned of this, actually, in 1984, which, unfortunately, this Prime Minister thought of as an instruction manual instead of as a cautionary tale.
The Prime Minister wanted to delete some of the most beautiful images of our history from the passport: images of the great Terry Fox, a man who ran across the country on one leg to fight cancer, and images of the great Quebec City, the most spectacular and possibly the most historic city in all of North America, which would be washed away, but “Forget about it; we need not remember the great cities that built our country.” He wanted to erase the RCMP images and the images of the victory at Vimy over tyranny, which was a victory that the French and English both were unable to achieve, but one in which Canadians triumphed the first time. All the divisions of our Canadian Forces fought together as one. It was the first great triumph, one of which we could all be proud. Why delete all those beautiful images of history?
I will posit a few explanations as to why the Prime Minister is so determined to delete our history. Just as this member tries to silence me with his overbearing voice right now, it is this: If the government can delete our heroes, it can make the people feel weak and helpless, and therefore reliant on a powerful state. It can make the people think they cannot achieve great triumphs on their own and that great things can be done only by the government and by the great leader. I note that the Prime Minister deleted all these great images so he could put a childhood picture of himself swimming at Harrington Lake in Quebec, doing a little splash into a pond as though that little trivial moment in his life were more important than all the great historical triumphs of our nation. That is the triumph of egoism. That is what the statist really cares about: the idea of concentrating everything in the state, because “I am the state”, said King Louis, and that is the thinking of the Prime Minister. He wants to control everything, because it is the aggrandizement of the state; it is the aggrandizement of the head of the government. That is exactly what he tries to achieve. By making the people small, he can make himself big.
That is why he is always hectoring and lecturing the people, telling Canadians they are not allowed to use basic common language. One time, I remember, a young lady innocently used the term “mankind”, and he admonished her that it was “peoplekind”. He was trying to make her feel small for using common and well-understood language that he believed was offensive and unacceptable. He is constantly talking down our history and our past, treating Canadians as though they have had nothing but shame that has brought us thus far and treating our country as though it had nothing for which to be proud. He understands that, by making the country ashamed of its past, its history and its people, he can aggrandize the state.
He has recently become very angry that I pointed out that everything feels broken. I am speaking of the airports the federal government manages, the passport system it runs, the inflation it has caused, the housing market it has inflated and the red tape that prevents people from achieving anything in business or even in human mobility.
I point out all those things that are broken. He says I am not allowed to say “Everything is broken”, but the truth is that he believes the country is broken. We both agree things are broken; we just disagree on who and what broke them. I think the government broke these things; he thinks the people and our history broke things. That is what he thinks. He thinks we have a broken people and a broken past; I believe we have a broken government, a government we can fix by electing a new and common-sense government that stands up for the common people.
The great Thomas Sowell pointed out that for those on the hard left, it is not so much a view they have of the world, but a view they have of themselves as higher beings who are capable of deciding for everyone else. That is actually the core ideology to which they adhere, because, when we really look at the inconsistency in application of their woke ideology, we see that there is nothing underneath it other than the concentration of power. For example, the Prime Minister likes to preach about woke identity politics, but that did not stop him from firing the first indigenous attorney general. He had no problem doing that. Why did he fire her, by the way? It was because she refused to interfere to protect a wealthy multinational corporation from prosecution after it had stolen from Africa's poorest people.
Here we have a woke Prime Minister protecting a multinational corporation that stole from the poorest people in Africa, and doing so by firing the first female indigenous attorney general. Did he not violate all the precepts of wokeism in that one act? Of course he did. Why did he? It is because wokeism was never about any of those things; it was only about giving him more control. Wokeism is only about control. It is about dividing people based on their group identity rather than celebrating them for their individual humanity. We believe in judging people based on their personal character, not based on their group identity, and Liberals used to believe in that too. It used to be the basic precept of a liberal ideology, to look past people's race, their sexuality and their gender and just judge them as individual human beings. That is what “liberalism” was; that was the meaning of the word. Now, it means exactly the opposite; it means that there is nothing more important than a person's group or other identity. People should be judged only, according to modern-day woke thinkers, by the group with which Liberals and wokeists identify them.
We believe in the traditional view of individual freedom and responsibility, where we see each individual as a precious and unique creation who can live out their life based on their merits, and be judged for those merits, rather than being wrapped up in divisive ideologies that base their judgments on race, ethnicity and other irrelevant characteristics.
I point out that the reason for dividing people by group is that it allows the woke estate to control people. It is always easier to control groups than it is to control individuals, and we know that the Prime Minister's objective is to control them. It also creates the justification for all the censorship. The government can say that there is new language that is no longer allowed: for example, “mankind” versus “peoplekind”. Now, the Prime Minister has created the justification for censorship, because if people are allowed to freely express themselves, they might violate some of the new woke rules that have been invented. There are rules that are invented every day. The new words that must be stated and cannot be stated can only exist if we have a powerful state to impose those rules. The rules are for the rulers, and that is what the Prime Minister attempts to do through the corrosive ideology of wokeism, which does nothing but divide.
We, as Conservatives, do not believe in divide and conquer. We believe in uniting for freedom. Let us unite for freedom again in this country of ours. Why do we not judge people based on their individual character? We should treat them as people rather than as groups. Why do we not let individuals make their own decisions? Why do we not look past irrelevant characteristics like sexual orientation, gender, race? These characteristics should not define any human because, at the end of the day, we are all the same people. We are all one common people, are we not?
I go across this country and one of my favourite things to do is visit with people of different cultures and different backgrounds. Every time I do, what do I discover? It is how much we have in common. The other side would love to focus and obsess about the differences of the various traditions in our land. I believe that we should celebrate what we share in common, the common people. For example, I am very proud that I had the occasion to spend so much time with the Sikh community in this country, who welcomed me with open arms into their gurdwaras, to learn of their legends and their stories, and I found that they are the same stories that I grew up with, just different names, different characters, but all leading to the same human outcome.
I have learned from my shadow minister of finance the story of the khalsa. The story of the khalsa is that the 10th guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, abolished the caste system. He said there should no longer be different castes in society, but that all should be equal. Everyone should eat from the same bowl, he said, and he got rid of all of the caste-based names, so everyone became known as Singh. They had different first names, but they had the same last name of Singh, and “Singh” means “lion”. No longer would there be little people, everyone would be a lion. That, to me, is an incredibly inspiring story.
That was what I meant when I ran for prime minister. I said I was running for prime minister to put people back in charge of their lives by making this the freest nation on earth, so everyone can decide—
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