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Member of Parliament

Pat Kelly

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Calgary Rocky Ridge
  • Alberta
  • Voting Attendance: 64%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $131,868.27

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 265 - Dec/11/23
Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)
  • Dec/11/23 5:15:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of talk about the agenda today. The bill that was to be debated is one that all parties, or at least the Conservatives and the Liberals, already voted in favour of at second reading. It is also time allocated, so this concurrence debate is not slowing down the passage of that bill. However, this concurrence debate does give members, including the member for Edmonton Strathcona, a chance to talk about the horrific circumstances of women and girls in Afghanistan and the government's lack of response, the government's failing of those women and girls in Afghanistan and the specifics of this report, which calls for the continued criminalization of the Taliban and non-recognition of it as a government. I wonder if she could spend some of the time left to talk about those failings of the government to protect women and girls in Afghanistan.
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Context: House Hansard - 157 - Feb/9/23
Mr. Pat Kelly (Calgary Rocky Ridge, CPC)
  • Feb/9/23 4:59:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to join debates in the House of Commons. Here we are today. It is a Bloc opposition day, which is a day when the Bloc can choose anything it would like to put into a motion, and it is a bit of an unusual one today. The Bloc has chosen to spend our day and have a recorded vote on this motion, which purports to simply remind the federal government about the use of the notwithstanding clause. Before I get too deep into this, I want to point out that it is my plan to share my time, so I want to make sure that we are clear about that. The only way that one could really explain this debate to their constituents, or that I could explain it to my constituents, is that the Prime Minister thrives on dividing Canadians. The Prime Minister is always looking for different ways to divide Canadians. One of the tactics that the Prime Minister uses is to invent phony issues or phony responses to issues in order to divide political opposition. In this case, he has created a phony constitutional crisis over the use of the notwithstanding clause, and the Bloc has taken the bait; it has taken it hook, line and sinker. The Prime Minister has divided Canadians throughout his tenure, east against west, Quebec against Alberta, Quebeckers against themselves, and all manner of Canadians over many different issues. The Liberals try to slice up and dice Canadians in enough different ways to squeak through and try to win elections with minimal support. That is something the Prime Minister has succeeded in doing. However, now, instead of using a fairly precious opposition day to hold the government to account for its incredible, in fact spectacular, failures, the Bloc is burning an opposition day by falling right into one of the Prime Minister's traps. The person happiest to be having this debate today is the Prime Minister. While the House is rehashing decades-old long discussion points about the Constitution and reliving the now 40-year history of the charter and the notwithstanding clause, the Prime Minister is avoiding a debate about how his government has made life unaffordable for millions of Canadians. We are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. Inflation is at a 40-year high. People cannot afford groceries. People cannot afford to heat their homes. There are people in remote communities across Canada, including Quebec, who rely on heating oil to keep from freezing in the winter. Some of these remote residents are among the poorest people in Canada and they cannot afford to pay $1,000 or more per month for home heating fuel, but they cannot live in homes without heat in winter. While we are debating this motion, the Prime Minister is avoiding accountability for how he has deliberately made life unaffordable for Canadians with his punitive taxes, in particular the carbon tax. Therefore, although it is always a pleasure to engage in debate in the House, I wish that on an opposition day we could spend the day talking about the failures of the current government, instead of giving the government a day off. It is not quite that bad. I guess it must be conceded that, while we are talking about this motion, the government is not moving its own motions. We are at least going a day when the government does not get any closer to passing terrible bills, like, say, Bill C-11, wherein the government seeks to give itself unprecedented control over what Canadians, including Quebeckers, see, post or find on the Internet. In fact, it is a bit of a bizarre one, in that the Bloc has signalled that it will ultimately help the government pass Bill C-11 and give a federal agency the power to regulate what Quebeckers see and find and post on the Internet. It is a strange one, but at least while we are talking about this motion today, that bill is not advancing. Under the current government, life is increasingly unaffordable for Canadians. Rents have doubled across Canada's 10 largest cities, interest rates are at a 23-year high and consumer debt is at record highs. Nearly half the people who have variable rate mortgages in Canada say they are going to need to sell or walk away from their homes this year because they cannot afford the payments on the homes they already own. There is nothing happening in this debate today that is going to help any of these Canadians struggling with affordability. We are playing the Liberals' game today. We are avoiding these issues through the motion before us and engaging in this manufactured constitutional crisis while the Prime Minister dodges these questions about affordability. He is also dodging questions about the ethics of the government and himself, and about the steady stream of ministers who have broken the law, including himself. Today, while we relive old debates about this issue, the Prime Minister is avoiding accountability for the repeated violations by himself and government members throughout their tenure, their eight years in office, and also the way they hand out billions of dollars in lucrative consulting contracts to their well-connected friends. While this debate rages, no further progress is made in dealing with any of these issues or in the crisis of public safety that has emerged under the government. Violent crime is up 32%, gang homicide is up over 90%, property crime is up and fraud is up. Intellectual property theft is an issue too. We see this in the failures of Bill C-34, which we debated yesterday and which is failing to protect Canadians from the effects of foreign investment by state-owned enterprises. Canada also remains a prime destination for international money laundering. These are real issues that impact Canadians in their neighbourhoods, and this is exactly the kind of debate we should be having. The debate today, where this is avoided, is the kind of debate the Prime Minister wants. The Prime Minister wants a debate where he can avoid talking about how life has become unaffordable under the government and where he avoids accountability for his failure to deliver public services like the ability for the government to issue a passport and the ability of the government to process immigration applications, or any immigration services. Under the government, there is an immigration-file backlog of 2.5 million people. The government is delighted to be talking about anything other than the colossal failures that have taken place under its watch. Its members are avoiding talking about the crisis of public finance that is brewing under the government, the spike in interest rates that is going to increasingly impair the government's ability to deliver basic services without cutting services or raising taxes as debt service costs continue to eat more and more of the federal budget. This motion today is a lost opportunity to compel the government to be better. Oppositions should be about demanding better from the government through the process of debate to ensure the best ideas go forward, and challenging the government and identifying mistakes the government has made so it can correct them. That is how we serve our constituents. That is how we help ensure we have accountability from our governments and how we improve the services to Canadians. I will end it there and let members ask questions, if they have any.
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