SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

May/22/24 2:36:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, normally the NDP leader is well worth ignoring, but I just cannot help myself. He says that the Prime Minister acts like he has no power to stop all these greedy CEOs from ripping off consumers. Who else has the power? Well, it is the guy who joined the government two years ago. He has been in power during the worst food price inflation in over four decades. Will the Prime Minister agree with me that his carbon tax coalition is nothing more than an anti-competitive price-fixing scheme that is costing Canadians at the grocery store?

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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

May/22/24 3:02:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Bloc is a beautiful coalition. The Prime Minister, supposedly a federalist, is saying that the Bloc Québécois stands up for Quebeckers. Then we have the Bloc Québécois voting for centralist spending here in Ottawa. What is going on? Everything is backwards. Is it not time to forget about this senseless coalition and replace it with a common-sense Conservative government?

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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Mr. Stephen Ellis (Cumberland—Colchester, CPC)

May/22/24 5:13:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I think part of the difficulty is that the costly coalition fails to recognize that their continued spending on behalf of Canadians is costing Canadian lives. We know that, under the health care system that exists under the government's watch, between 17,000 and 30,000 Canadians die every year because of a procedure or a consultation they cannot get. The government still continues to spend money in a hand-over-fist fashion. With the support of the costly coalition partners behind me, what we are seeing is another bill being rushed through, much like the botched dental care plan, which we know should have taken several years and is now failing Canadians. The other misconception that the government wants to peddle to Canadians is that this is a free plan that already exists. We already know there is no plan. This is a simple pamphlet or idea, again for photo ops, that is going to cost Canadians money. The minister spoke already about how the government is going to set up a specialist committee to talk about it a bit more. After that, it is going to create another Canadian drug agency, which is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. What we need is a responsible government. Whenever the Liberals are ready to allow us to take over, we are more than happy to.

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Context: House Hansard - 315 - May/22/24

Mr. Blaine Calkins (Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC)

May/22/24 6:32:28 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-69 Bill C-47 Bill C-368

Madam Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues for their support and for speaking to Bill C-368, but I want to remind people how we arrived here. There seem to be some forgetful folks. Even though I am thanking the NDP for its position, I would like to remind people how we arrived at this place. We are at this point with natural health products because of a budget implementation act, Bill C-47, which was passed for budget 2023. The authority for that came from a promise made by the leader of the NDP in March 2022 to form a coalition, a supply and confidence agreement, with the Liberal government, which meant carte blanche. It was going to support every budget and every budget implementation act that it had not even seen, discussed nor been party to. It gave that power to the Liberal government, and that is why we are here today. While I appreciate the NDP's revisionist history on this, it is the reason this change happened in the first place. I am glad it is supporting this bill, which would take the legislative framework back where it was with the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper and where we had the best natural health product regulations, framework and industry in the world. There is no need to tamper any further with the natural health product industry. I want to talk about freedom of choice in health care, as this is a huge issue. Over 80% of Canadians, and I suspect it is even more, are using natural health products. This is about that freedom of choice and losing that choice. I believe the Canadian Health Food Association, the Natural Health Product Protection Association, the Direct Sellers Association of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business when they say that the changes being proposed by the Liberal government, through Health Canada's changes to the definition of therapeutic products to include natural health products, is going to kill and stifle business. I believe them when they say that because we have a nine-year track record of the government doing nothing but harm to the economy of this country. The government is going to continue to do it to this beautiful, wonderful industry that gives Canadians the choice they need to look after their own personal health. Finally, I want to thank all the Canadians who have reached out to members of Parliament in a very active campaign to let MPs know how important this is to them. I want to thank the mothers out there who look after their families. I know my wife is the same way. She had a full-time job on top of her full-time job of raising the family while I was here in Ottawa. She wanted to help our kids, to help our family and to keep us healthy. She wanted to make sure we had the best possible health outcomes that we could have. I want to thank all the women who make up the largest part of the workforce and the entrepreneurship in this beautiful industry. The fact that there was not a gender-based analysis on this is striking. I want to thank the seniors and those with chronic conditions who are scared about losing their access to these health products. When these organizations I mentioned before said that they are going to lose these products, I believe them. These seniors believe them, and these people with chronic conditions believe them. This is how they manage. This is how they cope with their ailments, and we should be enabling and empowering that, not scaring away investments, businesses and opportunities. I want to thank the wonderful people in the industry. I want to thank the beautiful people I have met from coast to coast who are part of this industry. I have never met a group of people who are more conscientious, more thoughtful, and more creative and innovative. I want them to know that I am very thankful for the work they do. For those who are going to be voting in favour of this, we are going to be voting on this next Wednesday night in a recorded division. I want to thank my colleagues for sending this to committee so that we can hear from the experts and from Canadians about this because this was snuck through in Bill C-47. The Liberal government is doing it again, right now, with Bill C-69 in this place. It is making even more changes to Health Canada and giving it more powers. Why are we not talking about this in a separate piece of legislation so that we can actually have a proper debate about it? Now we are, with Bill C-368. It is time to pass Bill C-368. It is time to get back to basics. It is time to get back to making sure that Canadians have access to the health products they deserve. I want to thank my colleagues who are brave enough and who have the courage to do what their constituents want them to do, and vote for Bill C-368.

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