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House Hansard - 256

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 27, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 256 - Nov/27/23
Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.)
  • Nov/27/23 7:06:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to a concurrence motion. For those who are just tuning in, to understand the context of what we are doing right now, back on November 3, the government had on the Order Paper that we would continue to debate the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. However, as was becoming very consistent around that time, every time we brought forward that particular bill to be debated, Conservatives would put forward concurrence motions to basically prevent us from discussing the bill. The reason I am willing to go out on a limb to say that they were intentionally preventing us from debating that bill is not only that they had done it a number of times already, but also, and more importantly, that they were continually doing it with reports from committees that were unanimous. This was another unanimous report that came from committee. Just so the public knows, when a report is tabled in the House by the chair of the committee, there is no obligation to debate it as it is considered received. As a matter of fact, the government responded to this particular report from the committee, so there was really no need to have a debate on it. The committee report was unanimous. The government, in its introductory reply, thanked the committee, said that the majority of the committee's recommendations were in line with work already being undertaken by the government, and went on to address each and every specific recommendation in the report. On Friday, November 3, Conservatives put forward a motion to concur in this unanimous report from the committee, which had already been responded to by the government. It was just to delay and prevent us from talking about the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. Of course, at the time, none of us really understood why. We could not fathom that Conservatives would be against that piece of legislation, which was the result of a trade agreement that had been signed by President Zelenskyy and the Prime Minister. It also has the endorsement of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and had all of the important elements built within it to help Ukraine rebuild. This side of the House, and probably all parties but the Conservative Party, were under the impression that it was going to be a pretty easy debate. We thought that everybody would agree and then we would pass it. However, very early on in the debate process, the member for Cumberland—Colchester rose and referred to the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement as being woke. That was the first sign for us on this side of the House. At that point, we started asking what was going on and if it were possible that the Conservative Party of Canada does not support this very important piece of legislation.
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Context: House Hansard - 256 - Nov/27/23
Mr. Mark Gerretsen
  • Nov/27/23 7:11:00 p.m.
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It is relevant, Madam Speaker, and I should remind the member across the way what we are actually debating is not the report. We are debating a motion to concur in the report. The report has already been established, the report has already been unanimously supported by committee and the motion was to concur in it. My analysis and my reflections on why Conservatives chose to put forward that motion is extremely germane to the debate and specifically speaks to why I think they did this, which is very important. The member can get up and call a point of order as often as he wants. He probably does not want to hear the truth from me, and that is fine. He does not have to accept what I say and I am happy to answer his questions on the subject matter afterward. However, I would remind him we just spent the whole afternoon talking about a bill on scab labour that the Conservatives never even mentioned in any of their speeches. They just talked about everything other than the bill, and would not even say whether they thought the bill was good or not. They were asked the question probably about half a dozen times and never even indicated whether they support the bill. It is very rich coming from a Conservative member right now, who is trying to call me out on relevance, when I have established how the relevance of my speech is related to this concurrence motion. What we saw is Conservatives eventually vote against the Canada-Ukraine free trade bill, after continually putting up concurrence motion after concurrence motion on various different issues. The reality is we started to hear them talk about it being woke. I know there has been a lot of buyer's remorse since we had that vote, and a lot of Conservatives have stood up in the House and talked about how much they supported Ukraine. I know four, five or six of them stood up right after question period today and said that. My sense is they are probably feeling regretful for their decision. They are probably feeling a bit upset with their leader for forcing them to do that and now are trying to justify to their communities why they voted that same way. However, it does not end there. I say this to my Conservative colleagues who are in the House and who stand up and say that they unequivocally support Ukraine at any cost, no matter what. The member for Provencher, in the remaining few speeches we had before we voted on this, actually said: That said, the Prime Minister and the government have been consistent and unequivocal in saying, “We will...support Ukraine with whatever it takes, for as long as it takes.” Then he went on to say, “That concerns me a bit”. That is in Hansard; one can go find that. That does not sound like somebody who is unequivocal and stands with Ukraine right until the very end. When we talk about this report and we talk about Arctic sovereignty and who we are really concerned about maintaining our sovereignty from, it can only be our neighbours that share the Arctic region with us or that impede upon the Arctic region. I know this because I was on the Standing Committee for National Defence for three years, where at the time we studied Arctic sovereignty, and there were some real concerns over it. Of course, one of those is Russia. I have a problem with listening to my Conservative colleagues talk about Russia, because we know Conservatives are also getting very close right now to Prime Minister Orban, who is the Prime Minister of Hungary, who is very close to Vladimir Putin. Recently, there is a story titled “Putin and Orban reaffirm Russian-Hungarian ties amid international strains.”
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