44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 10, 2024 10:00AM
- May/10/24 10:30:38 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate my colleague's question, because it is important.
Regarding the first example, I can talk a bit about the bilateral health agreements. This is a good example of collaboration where we were able to establish common indicators across the country without imposing any directives. It is not about telling Quebec what to do. No, that is not the case at all. Rather, it is about being able to measure progress in our health care system across the country based on data. Yes, this applies in Quebec, but it also applies across the country. That is important. I hope such a system could be possible one day on a global scale.
The agreement specified that this really was a Quebec jurisdiction. I respect that enormously. That is why it is Quebec's plan. We are here to support the plan and to provide funding. It is important to communicate how federal money will be used, but it is really up to Quebec.
As far as oral health care is concerned, there is tremendous need right now. That is why it is essential to act today to ensure that Quebeckers can receive this care now. Then we can find a common solution.
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- May/10/24 10:32:44 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would first like to congratulate the minister, the member for Ajax. I had the privilege of leading the team that negotiated with him, who led his team, which resulted in this historic agreement on pharmacare. The New Democrats, and, I believe, the minister, believe that every Canadian should have access to the medicine they need regardless of their ability to pay through our public health care system. This would be a historic first step toward that.
I want to ask the minister a question about diabetes, because that is a very important part of the class of drugs that would be covered. He and I both heard stories about parents who have to wake their children up, their five-year-old daughter or their seven-year-old son, every hour and a half at night to test their blood sugar levels because they do not have access to continuous glucose monitors or insulin pumps.
A very important part of the deal that we have negotiated would cover that, making sure that everybody has access to the test strips, monitors, pumps and syringes they need to keep themselves healthy. Could the minister tell us what impact the Conservatives' delaying access to that medication is having on the families across this country that are worried about their family members who require these instruments to stay alive?
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- May/10/24 10:33:58 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was a tough conversation. Virtually every day we were talking about different elements of it.
The member for Vancouver Kingsway was very clear that his heart and his intention were on fixing the very issues he is talking about. I know that he carries heavy in his heart, as I carry heavy in mine, the types of circumstances that he is talking about, where families desperately need these medicines in order to keep their kids safe and healthy.
I remember Sarah from a clinic in Ottawa, and I talk about this often just because of how much it rattled me. She said that people are reusing syringes, increasing the danger of blood-borne disease, and that there are people who wind up having a limb amputated or going blind unnecessarily because they did not have the medication they needed.
We cannot afford to delay; we have to get this done. There is too much need and there are too many people who are suffering.
Again, I get that the Conservative Party is against the plan. Conservatives made that very clear. They do not want it. They do not believe that this is an area in which we should be taking action. However, the collective will of the House is that we do serve and help these people. I would say that blocking the bill under the pretense of wanting more debate is nonsense. The Conservatives are against it and are never going to be for it. There is no amount of debate that will ever get them to a different position. Their sole purpose is obstruction, which would block these essential medicines from getting to the people who need them.
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- May/10/24 10:35:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have sat here and listened to the member, but honestly, so many of the things he is talking about are provincial issues. The member has talked about contraception. In the 1980s, I could walk into any clinic and, for $2.00, get contraceptives. However, he is providing the idea that Canadians cannot get access. I will let him know that when the provinces are providing these programs, they do work. In 1989, for $2.00, one could get a package. That is what we were doing then.
The member talks about all of the great work that the Liberals are doing, but I really think what we see is a lack of consultation. They speak greatly about the dental care program. As a former dental health person, I can tell him that if we do not have antibiotics, a person is not able to have their tooth pulled.
I am just wondering whether the member ever actually studied to find out these things. I am wondering why we are getting into the provinces' territory when they were actually providing many of these services.
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- May/10/24 10:36:32 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be frank: Canadians across the country are just not interested in that argument. They have critical needs that need to be met, and we have to work collaboratively to do it.
Canada has a responsibility to maintain and protect the Canada Health Act. The Canada Health Act is a matter of absolute federal jurisdiction, and the idea that we would abdicate the field and let our health system deteriorate and fall apart makes me wonder what the real argument is.
If the member was not listening when I was talking about the difference between oral contraceptives' having a 9% failure rate versus an IUD at 0.2%, how could she talk to a woman who does not have the dollars about why she would—
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- May/10/24 10:37:11 a.m.
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Resuming debate, the hon. member for Calgary Shepard.
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Madam Speaker, I listened attentively to what the health minister was saying, so I am glad to be the first person to rise on my side to maybe provide a rebuttal and also to reset the debate, because the debate is not directly about Bill C-64; it is about a programming motion.
When I listened to the minister's speech, I also had the time to compare it to his speech that he gave at second reading. The same three anecdotes he raised today were raised then. Two of the three are completely misleading, and one was a very personal experience of his that he raised, which is his right as a member and a minister.
However, this is about a programming motion that would guillotine debate in the House. It would order a committee of the House to basically consider a bill within 10 hours, a bill that would have profound impact on the structure of Canada's health care systems, plural because they are systems. Quebec has a different system than Alberta, than British Columbia, than Saskatchewan and than other provinces in Canada.
We know from much research that has already been done by CIHI, The Conference Board of Canada, Statistics Canada, and CLHIA, which is the life insurance trade association, that 97.2% of Canadians already have access or are eligible for access to an insurance benefit plan of some sort. I know that in my home province, we have Blue Cross, which is usually the insurer of last resort that provides a lot of the services that the minister talked about.
The worst part of all is that we would be programming a committee of the House to study what essentially amounts to a pamphlet of legislation. The minister talked about finding common ground and solutions. I have also heard other members of Parliament talk about how important committee work is to them. Now we would basically be guillotining and gag ordering a specific committee of the House, the Standing Committee on Health, to do its work in 10 hours.
That is why I asked a question for the health minister on why he felt the need to exclude himself from having to come to testify before the health committee. One would think that he would put himself before the members at committee and answer all of their questions on the reasoning behind C-64 and the wisdom of it, because it is not a national pharmacare plan. That is not what it would do. It would cover two very small areas of medicine.
I will note that in the minister's second reading speech about Bill C-64, he had all of one sentence devoted to rare disease drugs and rare disease patients, typically the source of the most expensive therapies, the most expensive drugs, on an individual basis, not on a broad basis. Typically most drug plans in the provinces, whether private or public, spend the most on things like the very basic medication for infections. Medications like amoxicillin or penicillin and variations thereof are the ones that are quite expensive because people get a lot of infections, so it it just a question of volume in those situations.
There is a lot of medication out there that is expensive because it is brand new; it is coming onto the market for the first time. Recently I learned about a new oncology drug that is going to be made available in the United States, but it is cutting-edge, specialized medicine made for the individual patient. The drug comes with a few tens of thousands of dollars of cost associated with its delivery. There will be some cancer centres in Canada that will not be able to have it available for patients, but it will be available to other patients in other parts of Canada. Oncology drugs would not be covered under the plan.
There would actually be nothing covered in the plan except for those two areas of medications, which are very specific ones as well. Like I said, there would be nothing for rare disease patients. The minister talked, in his original speech at second reading, though not today, about the $1.5 billion being devoted to rare disease drugs. That announcement was made in 2019, yet only now has some of the spending gone out, not to cover drug costs but to cover things like the creation of rare disease registries to get foundations, universities and private organizations to start up a rare disease registry specific to one individual drug.
There is often a problem in how the Liberals propose things. They say something, make claims, and then it takes years before anything actually happens. As an example, in 2019 there was an announcement. In 2024, still not a single rare disease drug has been covered by the $1.5 billion. It took five years of waiting. Rare disease patients cannot wait. In fact it was the Liberal government that cancelled the original rare disease strategy in 2016. At that time, the president of the Canadian Organizations for Rare Disorders, Durhane Wong-Rieger, said that it was the kiss of death for patients with rare diseases.
She is a literal ball of energy and an amazing woman, an amazing advocate for patients with rare diseases. This was in 2016. It took the government three years just to announce funding and five years after that to roll out a single dollar. Now the government wants to convince us that it needs to expedite Bill C-64 by programming and ordering the Standing Committee on Health to consider certain things but not others.
I will go through the programming motion, since the minister did not feel the need to even explain why this was necessary. He repeated, essentially, his second reading speech on why we need to expedite this so quickly. There were three days of debate in the House before there was a vote at the Senate and in the Standing Committee on Health. I looked at the work the Standing Committee on Health had done. It did not even have the chance to consider the bill. That is how quickly the government is now programming what is going on.
The first line of this programming motion is very simple: “the committee shall have the first priority for the use of House resources for the committee meetings”. It seems quite reasonable that it would be given first right to interpretation, rooms and catering services if the committee is expected to sit for hours and hours on end. I guess a programming motion would have to have that in it.
The second part is, “the committee shall meet between 3:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on the two further sitting days following the adoption of this order to gather evidence from witnesses, provided that any meeting on a Friday may start at 12:00 p.m. for a duration of not more than five hours”. Essentially, that is saying there will be two more meetings of the Standing Committee on Health and 10 hours of testimony. There are countless members in the House who will say that, during consideration of a bill, witnesses will testify, explain an idea or perhaps a missing amendment or particular line in a bill between the French and the English, which happens on a fairly regular basis. They either do not match, do not make sense or there could be more added to a bill to clarify or constrain a bill. Ten hours is simply not enough for a bill that would have such a substantive impact.
According to the health minister, the Liberals are going to celebrate a bill with such a substantive and profound impact as some great achievement. I do not believe that. I believe this is a pamphlet. This is not national pharmacare. There is no spending associated with this bill. Every one of my constituents back home knows there is no spending associated with this bill. If the Liberals keep ramming the bill through at this pace and it passes through the Senate at some point in the future, not one single drug will be paid for through this legislation because there are no dollars associated with it. There is no, what we call, ministerial warrant from the Minister of Finance connected to this bill. There will be no medication paid for through this particular bill. That is why I do not understand why this programming motion is of such necessity when the committee has not even had a chance to consider it.
I understand perhaps it would be easier to tell Conservatives, members of the Bloc and independent members that they are slowing down the committee's work, that they are not allowing the committee to proceed with witness testimony or consider the contents of the bill, but that has not even happened yet. We have not even had a chance to invite witnesses to explain to us their views on the contents of the bill.
When the minister talks about finding common ground and solutions, he accuses the Conservatives of being against it. Of course we are against it. We voted against the bill, but that doesn't mean we cannot improve an F product and make it maybe an F+ product. I know that is not a grade in universities or colleges in Canada, but we can always make something terrible a little less terrible. This is essentially, like I said, a pamphlet. For me, it was easier to vote against it because I saw nothing for patients with rare diseases. That is not a surprise to anyone in this place.
I remember the original debate on an NDP private member's bill, which I believe was Bill C-340, if memory serves. It was on national pharmacare. At least the title was on national pharmacare, not the contents. It was put forward by the member for Vancouver Kingsway. He and I debated it for most of the day. I was all about access for patients with rare diseases, and I said that was why I could not vote for that bill at the time.
It is not a big surprise to many members of the House and members of the other place that I would be against a bill that has has a title of national pharmacare, but would not do anything for patients with rare diseases. Members know of a personal anecdote I have mentioned many times in the House. I have three living kids with a rare disease called Alport syndrome. One daughter passed away very young, at 39 days old, with a different rare disease. I always joke with my friends in the rare disease community that I am due. I should probably play the lottery as I would I have a decent chance of winning because both of those conditions are rare.
In the case of my living kids, it is a rare disease of the kidneys, CKD, a chronic kidney condition. In the case of my youngest daughter who passed away, she had Patau syndrome, which is a chromosomal condition and very, very rare.
If one knows a child with Down syndrome, one should hug them. They are very special little kids. My daughter had a condition that is considered much worse than Down's. Down's is survivable. There are a lot of very sweet kids who live with Down syndrome, and their families are made incredibly happy by them because they are sweet into the teen years, into their twenties, thirties and forties. One never has to go through those teenage years, as I am going through right now with one of my kids, where suddenly, as the dad, I know nothing and they know everything, which is okay. I will go through this three times in my life.
I will move on to the next part of the programming motion, which reads, “all amendments be submitted to the clerk of the committee by 4:00 p.m. on the second sitting day following the adoption of this order”.
We are quite fortunate there was unlimited time provided, I believe, for the first two speakers on a programming motion. Perhaps members are surprised I would rise on this, but I intend to use this time to explain why I do not like the programming motion and the defects with Bill C-64, and to remind the minister about what the summary of his own legislation says that it does, because it is the complete opposite of what the minister just explained to the House. It is the complete opposite from his second reading speech as well, so members can stay tuned for that part.
On these amendments, we are fortunate because we have a constituency week coming up. I can guarantee many of us will be sitting down and working with patient advocacy groups. We will be going to our stakeholder groups and meeting with our constituents. I have a few who have emailed me on this subject. I will be finding useful amendments to this bill that would improve it in my eyes and in the eyes of my constituents. We have the time.
Had we had a sitting week coming up, had there not been unlimited time for the first speaker on the official opposition side, we could have been rushed to provide amendments by 4 p.m. after the first day. That is an incredibly low amount of time considering this first came to the House February 29 and then the last vote was on April 16 before it was sent to the committee.
Doing a programming motion like this, or a gag order to the committee, is wrong. I do not agree with programming motions. I believe I voted against nearly all of them that ever came through the House. I believe the health minister was also the House leader at one point when Motion No. 16 was being moved through the House. There was also a previous one, and I believe it was a member for Waterloo who moved Motion No. 6, which would have programmed how committees work in the Standing Orders forevermore for the Houses.
I cannot base our opposition or our support for any particular motions and programming motions on good faith coming from that side because I simply do not believe the cabinet, the front-benchers. I do not believe them. There are many good-hearted backbenchers in the Liberal benches. They are easier to work with, I find, than those on the front bench. The front bench I just do not trust. I do not trust the front-benchers to do the right thing for Canadians. In fact, Canadians do not trust them. If we look at the polls, there is about a 20-point disparity, depending on which poll we consider, between what the government is polling at and what the official opposition is polling at.
I will move on to the next point, which reads, “amendments filed by independent members shall be deemed to have been proposed during the clause-by clause consideration of the bill”. I actually do not have a problem with that. Independent members should be treated like every other member of the House, especially during considerations of bills.
Now comes the next one, which gets gets quite technical:
the committee shall meet at 3:30 p.m., on the third sitting day following the adoption of this order to consider the bill at clause-by-clause, or 12:00 p.m. if on a Friday, and if the committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by 8:30 p.m., or 5:00 p.m. if on a Friday, all remaining amendments submitted to the committee shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question, forthwith and successively without further debate on all remaining clauses, amendments submitted to the committee as well as each and every question necessary to dispose of the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, and the committee shall not adjourn the meeting until it has disposed of the bill...
This means that, once the 10 hours of testimony are done, once that particular portion of the committee's work is done, every single amendment has to be voted on immediately, with no debate for amendments. In those 10 hours, if witness testimony takes five or six or seven hours, we then have a few hours left over to consider and debate amendments. We could not even persuade the other side of the wisdom of the amendment. This is so profoundly wrong. I see this programming motion all the time when it comes to omnibus budget bills.
I will remind the House that the Liberal platforms in 2015 and 2019 promised not to do omnibus budget bills, yet they have done them repeatedly, over and over again. In fact, in Liberal budget 2023, they had section changes to clauses 500 to 504 on natural health products. That has nothing to do with the budget. There are no spending items related to it, but it was a regulatory expansion to apply rules for pharmaceuticals directly onto natural health products.
It caught a lot of people by surprise, including myself, that in a budget bill, which sometimes has hundreds of pages, one would do such a thing. They basically clip what they usually do at the finance committee, and now they have dropped it and ordered the Standing Committee on Health to do it in one particular way, in their way, their preferred way, with no debate on any amendments.
Why should one allow backbenchers from any of our political parties to freely consider the judgment and the argument being made by another member of another political party, individually or on behalf of their political movement, on the wisdom of a particular amendment to a government bill? I know, it would be shocking to even have that consideration.
It would be even more shocking for some members of the government benches to know that I have voted for government amendments at committee. I know. I hear “shame” from my side of the benches, but it happens. Sometimes they have a good idea. I am willing to consider good ideas. I am willing to. I have been on several committees over my time, from foreign affairs to finance to the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations. I am on the immigration committee and the Canada-China committee now, the select committee. I will vote for reasonable amendments. I will even talk to my own side to try to convince them if there is a reasonable, logical amendment that makes sense. Sometimes there is an argument made by a member of another party that actually makes sense. This section prevents that. There will be no debate on amendments. One is just supposed to vote on them.
Of course, what will happen is that there will be a question of having a recorded division on every single one of those votes. This means the committee will continue, likely, late into an evening, because it is basically programmed. To demonstrate that this is wrong and should not be done, I am fairly sure that there will be members of the committee who will want a recorded division on every single item so that we can go back to it later with our errors and mistakes and illogical situations that arise because two sections perhaps conflict with each other. This type of amendment process, clause by clause, is incredibly important, and we now will not be allowed to be given this opportunity.
The sixth portion of this guillotine gag order on the Standing Committee on Health says:
a member of the committee may report the bill to the House by depositing it with the Clerk of the House, who shall notify the House leaders of the recognized parties and independent members, and if the House stands adjourned, the report shall be deemed to have been duly presented to the House during the previous sitting for the purpose of Standing Order 76.1(1)
This is a fairly reasonable amendment that is often provided by members in other committees to make sure that, when reporting on a bill, the House leaders are informed, typically to go on the Notice Paper. I do not have a direct issue with this particular portion, apart from the fact that this is a programming motion, a gag order, that is going to guillotine a committee of the House without that committee even having had the chance to consider a bill.
The next section is section (b). It says:
not more than five hours shall be allotted to the consideration of the bill at report stage, and at the expiry of the time provided for the consideration of the said stage of the bill, or when no member rises to speak, whichever is earlier, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, and in turn every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, and, if a recorded division is requested, the vote shall not be deferred...
It continues. There is another one, but I am going to stop right here. This essentially means that, when amendments come back from committee, they are sometimes ruled out of order. They cannot be considered at committee but they can be considered by the House because the House has control of its committees, and the House can decide whether certain amendments can be voted on. Those are typically then submitted to the Speaker.
This essentially says that this process will also be guillotined after five hours. I know they love gag orders. I know they love to guillotine debate. My hope is, too, that during this debate on the programming motion, they do not gag order the gag order. I would hate to see that. It would be like a double gagging of the orders of the House and really limiting debate.
They have done it before. They have done it on Bill C-7 and Bill C-14, the two medical assistance in dying bills. At different stages of those bill, they both programmed and then shut down debate on them. I have seen, plenty of times, allocation motions being moved by cabinet to force bills through the process on matters of conscience.
It is not as if they are technical bills where perhaps there is timeline the Liberals need to reach and where, for the proper administration of government, they can perhaps make an argument they can stand on, but for matters of conscience, to guillotine debate is wrong. In this particular case, I would say that this is not a matter of conscience. I think this is about administration of government services and what the contents of the bill are actually about versus what they are not about. When the Liberals impose a guillotine with time allocation and force the closure of debate, the major disadvantage to Canadians is that they cannot prepare themselves. They cannot organize themselves when they are opposed to particular ideas and when they want to ask questions like, “Why is my rare disease, my health condition or MS not covered in this bill? Why is diabetes covered?”
I know a lot of diabetics, and I am not picking on them directly. I am just asking a simple question. The most common rare disease is multiple sclerosis, or MS. A lot of people in my family have it, as well as friends, colleagues and co-workers. There are spouses of members on this side who have it. Therefore, why is that particular condition, and its medication, which is expensive medication, not in this particular piece of legislation?
It is a choice the government made, so why can we not debate that choice the government has made for those two particular conditions and the medications associated with them? If they are being covered, why not others? There are so many other types of medications, such as the most common ones: penicillin, amoxicillin and all the variations of the “-cillins”, because there are so many of them. Why are they not covered in this particular piece of legislation?
On this programming motion, should we put forward such an amendment to be considered at committee? If it is deemed non-votable at committee, why can it not be considered at report stage?
I guess I will only get through the programming motions, and I will have to come back later to finish talking about Bill C-64 and some of the things the minister said, as well as my concerns with the PMPRB, CADTH, pCPA and the entire architecture of drug approval in Canada.
The motion reads, “not more than one sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration of the bill at the third reading stage, and 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders”, and it goes on like that, which basically means that there will be one day for final speeches, and then it will be done and sent to the other place. It is wrong to ram through a bill in this method, with bad faith being shown by the health minister, claiming that we were opposing it and not willing to consider things, when he has never bothered to listen.
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- May/10/24 11:00:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, during the last about 200 days, Israel has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, including about 14,000 children. In Gaza, Israel has displaced 90% of the population, destroyed 70% of the infrastructure, destroyed all universities and demolished all hospitals. Not satisfied with this, Israel has now initiated a ground invasion of Rafah.
The reign of Israeli terror must come to an end. Innocent Palestinians, including children, held in Israel must be released, and the terrorist organization Hamas must unconditionally release all the hostages immediately. The United States has admitted that its bombs have been used to kill Palestinians.
I call on Canada to immediately implement an official arms embargo using Canada's Special Economic Measures Act and pressure Israel to end its invasion. This is the issue that defines who we are as Canadians.
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- May/10/24 11:01:24 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know the Prime Minister is not worth the cost, but here is something that is: the 104th annual Falkland Stampede. North Okanagan—Shuswap is an amazing place with beautiful people and spectacular events.
One of the longest-running events in the area, and one of Canada's longest-running rodeo stampedes, is coming up on the May long weekend. If anyone is looking for affordable family entertainment, this is the place to be. With three days of rodeo fun, food trucks, beer gardens, cowboy church, dances, and pancake breakfasts, there really is something for everyone. There is even a parade, which is free, because even the Prime Minister cannot carbon-tax free.
We will be there on Sunday for the parade and the rodeo, and we hope to see wagonloads of families out enjoying Falkland showing off its best, including one of the largest Canada flags. The louder the crowds cheer, the harder the broncs buck at the Falkland Stampede. Yee-haw.
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- May/10/24 11:02:26 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this Saturday, the Dashmesh Culture Centre will host Calgary's annual Nagar Kirtan, commemorating Vaisakhi, the birth of the Khalsa. The Nagar Kirtan embodies a vibrant procession filled with sacred hymns and traditional martial arts, guiding the Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji through our community streets. I am especially honoured that the parade will travel to Prairie Winds Park, right in front of my constituency office in the heart of northeast Calgary.
This event stands as Calgary's second-largest gathering, following the Calgary Stampede. It serves as a testament to our city's rich cultural tapestry and spirit of unity. All attendees, regardless of religion, caste, gender, economic status or ethnicity, are warmly welcomed to enjoy complimentary vegetarian meals, symbolizing inclusivity and compassion.
I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the Dashmesh Culture Centre, dedicated—
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- May/10/24 11:03:26 a.m.
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The hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.
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- May/10/24 11:03:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to take a moment to highlight an incredible team in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith: the John Barsby Secondary School football team, or what locals know as the Barsby Bulldogs.
The Barsby Bulldogs is a team full of dedicated and skilled players, winning multiple provincial titles in British Columbia. The success of this team is the result of the collective strength of all those who continue to lift them up. Generation after generation, the high school football team has been surrounded by many who make the Bulldogs the strong community it is, including coaches, parents, community members, alumni, teachers and administrators.
One particular individual I want to give a special shout-out to is Coach Stevenson. The positive impact Coach Stevenson has made on the lives of many over the years is undeniable, so much so that the team sees time and again previous high school players coming back as adults to take on coaching youth football themselves.
Coach Stevenson may be humble, but he deserves to be acknowledged for his important mentorship and thanked for his dedication to the team. Congratulations to the—
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- May/10/24 11:04:34 a.m.
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The hon. member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell.
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- May/10/24 11:04:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am rising to recognize an individual in my riding who passed away earlier this year. He was a friend. Next week, we will be celebrating his life.
Dr. Lennox Hinds was an outstanding public servant who served Canada for 35 years. He believed in political engagement. He was a Liberal. I knew him for over 25 years. I was just a young adolescent when I met Dr. Len Hinds. He always proved to be a friend who provided sound advice. Sometimes I would have to keep his door for last during elections because he would always want to have a drink and chat about politics.
My sincere condolences go to his wife, Marjorie, and his family. He will be missed.
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- May/10/24 11:05:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, on April 22, John Adams, the President of Valour Canada, presented the annual General Sir Arthur Currie Award to one of Calgary's finest, George Brookman, often referred to as Mr. Calgary.
There is much I can say about George and his contributions to Calgary and to Canada, but I would be here for quite a while. His recognition for this award is due to his role in steering events that contribute to our understanding and support of our military. Like the general honoured in the award he received, George Brookman is a true leader. We thank George for all he does for Canada's military heritage and so much more.
Valour Canada is an organization that educates young Canadians about our shared military heritage by developing learning opportunities to foster a deeper understanding of who we are as individuals, as citizens, and as a nation. We thank John Adams and his team at Valour Canada. We are indebted to them for their work.
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- May/10/24 11:06:38 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, Surrey is a young city. With over 35,000 individuals aged between 19 and 25, Surrey is home to the largest number of youths in all of B.C. It is no surprise that our youth are at the forefront of Surrey's growth and innovation.
Every year, the Surrey Board of Trade recognizes 25 outstanding youth with its Surrey's Top 25 Under 25 award. This award pays homage to business and community-minded youth and recognizes their position as a role model for their community. From focusing on drug and opioid abuse prevention to advocating for increased senior support and the promotion of arts and culture in youth, Surrey's Top 25 Under 25 are represented in every corner of the city.
I want to give a special shout-out to my former staffer Harjot Kular and volunteer Suhana Gill, who have both been recognized for their community service with this award.
Congratulations to all the recipients of this amazing award—
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- May/10/24 11:07:37 a.m.
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The hon. member for Orléans.
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- May/10/24 11:07:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, today we are welcoming the Canadian Remembrance Torch to Parliament Hill. The Canadian Remembrance Torch was created by accomplished McMaster students and now serves as an important symbol for the contribution of Canadian veterans.
The founder of this torch, Karen Hunter, whose family has a long tradition of serving in our armed forces, was the visionary behind the symbol. It is a symbol of gratitude for peace and freedom, and it serves to bring awareness of Canada's military contribution in the liberation of the Netherlands during the Second World War.
This summer, it will continue its journey by travelling to France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day at Juno Beach. I want to say thanks to Karen and her students for undertaking this project, dedicated to remembering those who have fought for the freedoms that we so much cherish.
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- May/10/24 11:08:36 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of this Liberal government and nine inflationary deficit budgets, this Liberal government is not worth the cost.
This is especially true considering that, unfortunately, it can rely on the Bloc Québécois's support. Yes, the Bloc Québécois voted in favour of $500 billion in budget appropriations. That means $500 billion in centralizing spending, and the Bloc Québécois said yes. It also means $500 billion in inflationary spending, and the Bloc Québécois said yes.
As a result, Quebeckers and Canadians are paying more for everything.
Yesterday, in the Quebec National Assembly, the leader of the Parti Québécois condemned the Liberal government's mismanagement of public funds. The Liberal Party's governance is so inept that it has become an argument in support of Quebec's independence. Things are not going well. I would like to remind the leader of the Parti Québécois, who forgot to mention it yesterday, that the Bloc Québécois voted for $500 billion in budgetary appropriations.
When will this Prime Minister, who is being propped up by the Bloc Québécois, stop wasting money? When will this government finally govern responsibly?
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- May/10/24 11:09:42 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we speak, Rafah, the last place where Netanyahu's regime told Palestinians to evacuate, is being invaded and innocents suffer.
Our allies have warned Netanyahu not to proceed with this invasion or they will pause military exports. My constituents have been clear that they want us to do the same. The people of Israel have the support of Canada, but that does not mean supporting Netanyahu and his regime's indiscriminate war against the people of Palestine.
Canada has continued calling for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and sustained humanitarian aid, but we can be that stronger force to build a better long-term solution so that Palestinian people can live in peace, security and dignity, co-existing with Israelis and all in the Middle East. The ongoing violence has defined generations of lives over the last 75 years. Do they not all deserve to live in peace?
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