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Context: House Hansard - 168 - Mar/10/23

Mar/10/23 1:30:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, members of the official opposition look forward to speaking to this important report further and have more to say.

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Speaking

Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/10/23 11:30:28 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are looking for answers for Canadians, and the Liberals are engaged in a multi-day cover-up filibuster. Our ask is very simple. The most senior person working for the Prime Minister, his chief of staff, Katie Telford, was briefed by CSIS on the interference attempts by the Communist regime in Beijing to interfere and to change the outcomes of our elections. We want the Prime Minister's chief of staff to testify at committee, and we want to know when she is going to testify. Otherwise, we need to know: What are they trying to hide?

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Context: House Hansard - 168 - Mar/10/23

Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/10/23 11:29:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have seen the reports in Global News and The Globe and Mail about the coordinated campaign by the Communist dictatorship in Beijing to influence our elections. It is doing that with money and resources to try to get preferred outcomes for parties and candidates sympathetic to it. We know that our security services briefed the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Katie Telford. Now the procedure and House affairs committee has been filibustered for three days as part of the Liberal cover-up to prevent her from coming. Will the Prime Minister announce today that he will allow his chief of staff to testify and tell Canadians what she knew?

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Mar/9/23 6:44:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, no government has ever spent so much to achieve so little. What did the Liberals get for the piles of money they threw on the inflationary fire? What is the result for Canadians? The cost to rent an apartment has doubled. The cost of a mortgage payment has doubled. The dream of home ownership has evaporated. That is the legacy of the government. It literally took the Prime Minister years to answer the request from provinces to meet to discuss health care funding. It took years for the Liberals to come up with support for the provinces. If this is what help looks like, Canadians are crying for them to stop. Raising taxes when Canadians are struggling is the very last thing they need. They need help, not hurt.

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Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/9/23 6:36:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we are in a cost of living crisis in Canada, and we have heard one of the driving factors for that crisis is the contribution to inflation of things like the carbon tax. It is a tax on everything. That is not the only area where the government is ignoring the serious situation Canadians find themselves in. One can take a look at the lack of prudence the government is approaching the taxpayer dollar with. Canadians work extremely hard, and when they have to remit that hard-earned money to the federal government, they expect that it is for the purpose of furthering the national interest and for basic services only the federal government can provide. When one looks a little closer and scratches just beneath the surface, one will see an absence of care or concern for where that tax dollar comes from. It comes from the pocket of a Canadian who, like the average Canadian family, is paying more than $1,000 in increases in their grocery bill this year. That price would be higher for Canadian families if many Canadians were not skipping meals to help drive down their grocery costs. The government has not found a tax dollar it is not prepared to waste. Now, it is not using the increase in tax revenue it is getting from inflation to do things like reduce wait times for passports, although we have seen people camping outside for them. It is not doing it to improve services at our airports when we have seen people stranded and delayed in just unprecedented wait times and disruptions to our airline industry. We are not seeing it with improvements to the interdiction of firearms at our borders and to end gun smuggling from the United States, although we have seen the scourge of gun violence being perpetrated with smuggled firearms across Canada. The government is also spending wild sums of money on projects with no care or concern for where that dollar comes from, like the $54 million it spent on arrive scam. That app was supposed to cost many orders of magnitude less than it did, and it did not even work right. It arbitrarily detained Canadians in the thousands. We recently learned that the Prime Minister was charging $6,000 per night for his hotel room in London, and he did not just stay a single night. Meanwhile, Canadians are struggling to keep the heat on, feed themselves and put enough gas in the tank of their truck to get to work or their minivan to get to a doctor's appointment or an after-school activity for their children. The government needs to approach the serious issue of the affordability crisis we are facing in Canada, and it needs to hold up the mirror and ask itself: What is it doing to make life more affordable for Canadians? Where is it going to find the savings? When is it going to stop raising taxes?

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Mar/9/23 4:03:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Madam Speaker, we do not want this bill to pass. There have been reasonable amendments put forward. There have been amendments proposed by the Senate that would offer some protections to user-generated content, but this is a deeply flawed bill that has ignored the advice and the expertise of the witnesses who testified in committees of this place and of the Senate. It is not a solution when we have more control by the government over what Canadians see, where it is able to control its critics. That is not freedom. That is not Canadian. This is why the bill cannot move forward.

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Mar/9/23 4:02:33 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Madam Speaker, some great Canadian content that has come out of the province of Quebec is an absolute favourite of my wife, and that is Celine Dion. My wife loves Celine Dion not because the government told her to but because Celine is Celine. That is the kind of content that we do not need the government to tell us we have to like. Although I am not familiar with the artists my hon. colleague has referenced, I am sure that if they bring him great enjoyment, they should be available on the streaming service. He should have the option to be able to listen to that if he likes it.

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Mar/9/23 4:01:28 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member opposite for the question because it makes my point. The Senate came back with amendments. The senators did the work and listened to the witnesses. They said that there needed to be a carve-out for user-generated content, but the minister has rejected that. The minister should recognize the important work of the Senate, accept the amendment and exempt user-generated content.

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Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/9/23 3:49:35 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Madam Speaker, we are here today talking about the Liberals' online censorship bill, Bill C-11. That is what this is. It is an attempt by government to meddle in the leisure time and the cultural and social education that Canadians have. Sometimes, under the Liberals' proposal, Canadians would have to pay for it. Canadians will subscribe to services and pay for their own Internet service and the Liberals would decide what they should be watching and what they should not be watching. It is interesting, but not surprising after eight years of the Liberal government, that it is on full display now for Canadians that it is a government that wants to control what Canadians see and control what Canadians think. This is a theme we have seen over the last eight years with a Prime Minister who is always looking to silence his critics and who is also looking to discredit those individuals who have the reputation, who are able to hold him to account. A few obvious examples comes to mind. We will first talk about media. The Prime Minister has said on more than one occasion that stories that have appeared in mainstream media like The Globe and Mail are false, that they are fake news or misinformation. Then it comes to light, as was the case in the SNC-Lavalin scandal where the Prime Minister was found to have used his position to interfere in the criminal prosecution of his friends, that the story in The Globe and Mail was correct. We must not let that get in the way of a good cover-up from the government. It wants to be able to control the narrative, even when there are members of the King's Privy Council who push back against the government and push back against the Prime Minister. Instead of taking that advice, that sober second thought, what did the Prime Minister do? In the case of Canada's first female indigenous attorney general, Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, when she spoke truth to power to the Prime Minister, he fired her. He kicked her out of cabinet. When another eminent Canadian, a minister of the Queen's Privy Council, Dr. Jane Philpott, spoke out on that issue, he kicked her out of cabinet too. Canadians are best served when they get truth and honesty, and not when we have a government that is looking to exert control. That is the pattern we have seen with the government. When we are hearing from Canadians and from experts that this would affect what Canadians are able to watch and see online, we should take notice. It should give the government pause, but instead, what is it doing? It is dismissing its critics and saying it is misinformation. We have seen that pattern before. When the Senate, Canada's chamber of sober second thought, brought forward amendments to protect some of the areas where we have heard the greatest concerns from Canadians with respect to user-generated content, the government dismissed those amendments out of hand. It said it was absolutely not going to do that, but not to worry as the bill does not affect user-generated content. Why would the government defeat those amendments at committee and why would it refuse those amendments from the Senate? It is because, make no mistake, Bill C-11 would regulate and censor what people see. It would make the government, the Prime Minister through his Minister of Canadian Heritage and through the CRTC that reports to him, the regulator of what we can see online. It would also censor what one can say. When I say the bill would censor, I mean the government and the Prime Minister, through his Minister of Canadian Heritage and through the CRTC. They would make sure that homegrown talent would not be able to rise to the top based on its quality. We have seen countless examples where, against the odds, against media giants and production company giants around the world, not the least of which is the United States, Canadian content has flourished. Digital content of course is at the heart of what a lot of Canadians see and do online. The marketplace of ideas should be a meritocracy, but the government is afraid of that. The Liberals are afraid of that. They want to decide who the winners are and who the losers are, when it should be the consumers. It should be Canadians who get to decide. We hear a lot about favourite programs that people grew up watching or listening to. No one made them watch it because it was Canadian. If it was quality, Canadians consumed it. Now that there is more content, there are more opportunities for Canadian content to flourish, and that is exactly what is happening. We have a content creator in my riding, and I am not confused. It is McMullan Appliance and Mattress. Corey McMullan from McMullan Appliance and Mattress, which on a county road in my community, is a viral Internet sensation. He is not making cat videos. He is not doing any crazy stunts. He is talking about fridges, washers, dryers and stoves. His honesty and his authenticity has caused him to gain global celebrity, and with that has come revenue for his business. He is able to sell products online. People buy them from him online because he talks about it. He is not advertising and he is not paying for advertising, but the innovation, the entertainment value and the character of this gentleman have propelled him to such fame and credibility that folks in my community in southeastern Ontario will take their pickup trucks from North Bay and drive all those hours to my community to buy an appliance from Corey because they trust him. This type of obviously Canadian content is now going to be subjected to a test by the government, where it will decide if it is Canadian enough. We have heard other speakers talk about productions that are made in Canada, written by Canadians, produced by Canadians and have Canadians who star in them, but they do not meet the standard for Canadian content. If the Liberal government is not prepared to exempt user-generated content, we need to ask why. Why does it refuse to recognize Canadians should have the freedom to say, to think and to watch whatever they want? I believe in my community and I believe in Canadians. I believe in people like Corey McMullan rising to the top based on that sometimes indefinable quality that Canadians are recognized for around the world. That is why, for a very small population, so many actors of stage and screen, so many people who write and produce, and so many people who create are household names. It is not because the government made people like them. It is because Canadians are extraordinary and we are extraordinary because of our freedoms. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, Canadians have had enough control. That is why a Conservative government would repeal this bill and that is why we believe we need to kill Bill C-11.

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Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/9/23 2:36:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, documents reported in the Globe and Mail illustrate how the communist dictatorship in Beijing was operating an interference campaign in Canada, and it had two aims. One was to elect a Liberal government. The other was to defeat certain Conservative candidates. Canadians deserve answers. We know that the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Katie Telford, was briefed on this very situation. Will the Prime Minister allow Katie Telford to testify at committee or will the Liberals continue, for a fourth day, their cover-up filibuster?

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All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 165 - Mar/7/23

Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/7/23 2:54:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the committee that these members on this side of the House sit on is banned by the Liberals from talking about what took place. Today, I was at the procedure and House affairs committee, where the Liberals were engaged in one of their cover-up filibusters. My question is for the chair of that committee to find out if she will resume the committee today at 3:30 p.m. so there can be a vote on having the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Katie Telford, testify on what she knew and when she knew about the foreign interference efforts. If the chair will not stand, will the vice-chair of the committee stand and tell us if that committee will resume today?

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All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 164 - Mar/6/23

Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/6/23 3:00:19 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Mr. Speaker, while Conservatives are standing up for Canadian creators and helping them to be successful, the Liberals are looking to do everything they can, and I am sure if we let them, they would freeze the bank accounts of Canadians they disagree with. The Liberals could not even pick Canadian content out of a lineup if we circled it for them. After eight years of the Prime Minister, it is time for a government that protects Canadian free speech and that protects Canadian creators' rights. Will the Liberals scrap their online censorship bill?

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Context: House Hansard - 164 - Mar/6/23

Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Mar/6/23 2:59:18 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-11

Mr. Speaker, these Liberals are so determined to have control over the lives of Canadians that they want to control what Canadians are able to see on the Internet. The online censorship bill is a back door for the Liberals to silence their critics. Social media executives have said that the measures in this bill are the same used by North Korea, Cuba and the communist regime in Beijing. When will the Liberals scrap this attack on free speech?

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Feb/17/23 12:13:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with respect to my hon. colleague's intervention, and having reviewed the recording, that was the spirit in which the request for unanimous consent was not granted. Mr. Speaker, having heard your comments and appreciating that it is important that the member may not have been comfortable in delivering her statement because of the conversation that you mentioned, I think that if you were to seek unanimous consent again, you would find it is there. Of course, as the member for Kingston and the Islands said, we expect that this practice is always exchanged based on the member's request.

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Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Feb/17/23 11:23:06 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, well, I do not think the people who cannot afford to feed themselves or heat their homes, the people who have experienced their rent or mortgage doubling, the 20% of Canadians who are skipping meals and the 1.5 million Canadians who are lined up at food banks would say that it is going well. However, that is the tactic of the Liberals. They tell us that even though people cannot afford to feed themselves, they have never had it so good. Let them eat cake, the Prime Minister says. The Liberal member for Louis-Hébert said, “Time to stop with the division and the distractions”, distractions like that one. “It’s time to choose positive, not coercive methods. It’s time to unite.” That is what Conservatives will do, from Victoria, B.C., to Victoria-by-the-Sea. When are they going to follow our lead?

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Mr. Michael Barrett (Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, CPC)

Feb/17/23 11:21:51 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, she says side by side, but the Liberal member for Louis-Hébert said, “a decision was made to wedge, to divide and to stigmatize.” That is exactly what the Prime Minister has done. Working people are struggling to pay their bills, and Liberal insiders are getting rich. Urban Canadians have been pitted against their rural neighbours. The Prime Minister even labelled Canadians who disagreed with him as racist and misogynist. When will the Prime Minister follow the lead of Canada's Conservatives, who will unite Canadians instead of dividing and stigmatizing?

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