Debates of June 7th, 2023

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1

[An hon. member]

Where?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Where, they ask. “Where?” goes the chorus from the other side. The answer is Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Ontario. They have all signed a memorandum to create these small modular reactors. That is where.

I know this is not in the Standing Orders, for them to ask and me to answer, but we need practice because soon I will be answering lots of their questions. It will be refreshing to actually have a prime minister who answers questions, unlike this one, who does not even acknowledge them.

This is what it means to green light green projects. The Prime Minister stands in the way of the very projects that would lower the cost of carbon-free energy while he simultaneously raises the cost of traditional oil and gas on which Canadians continue to rely on.

His approach to the economy is as former President Reagan described: If something moves, he taxes it. If it keeps moving, he regulates it. If it stops moving, he subsidizes it.

That is the approach that he takes to the economy. My approach would be none of the above. It would be to get out of the way to let our creators create and let our builders build. I would let the great Canadian people do what they do best, which is to build. My friends across the way are starting to get the point. I hear the echo of “Bring it home” from across the other side of the House of Commons. Bring it home, indeed.

That is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to bring our jobs home, back to this country. I am glad the member reminded me of that because all of these gatekeepers who stand in the way of our economy are driving industry and resource production out of Canada. For example, according to Liberal former central banker David Dodge, a hard-core, dedicated, establishment Liberal, who was the central bank governor, said that Canadians now invest $800 billion more in other countries than the rest of the world invests in Canada. Why? It is because money goes where it can get things done. This is not one of those places now.

After eight years of the Prime Minister, we rank second-worst in the entire OECD for the time it takes to get a building permit. That is right. If someone wants to build a mine, a pipeline, a shopping centre, an office building or a house, God forbid, they have to wait longer in Canada than in every other OECD country, except one. The average building permit here, and this includes for very small things, such as home renovations, is 250 days. In South Korea, it is 28 days. Why do members think that countries like that are leaving us in the dust?

We are being left behind because we are a place that cannot get anything done. My biological grandfather came to this country from Ireland about 60 years ago. Like most Irish, he came here because Ireland was poor and Canada was a land of plenty. He came here, started a life and built his dream. He was a wonderful man, lived a great life, and unfortunately we lost him a few years ago.

However, today, the GDP per capita of Ireland is 70% higher than Canada. They have none of our resources, none of our land mass and none of our proximity to the United States of America, the most lucrative economy in the history of the world. They have none of those natural advantages, yet they are 70% richer than we are. Why is that?

It is because they removed the gatekeepers. They knocked down the government barriers. They sped up permitting. They cut taxes. They rewarded work. They reformed their tax system so that hard work would pay off, and big money from all around the world poured in and the great Irish people rose up to become among the most prosperous on planet Earth. We all know that the Irish invented civilization, and now they are reinventing free enterprise capitalism. That is why they are one of the most prosperous people on Planet Earth today.

The Irish have done it. The Singaporeans have done it. The Australians, the New Zealanders and the Swiss have all done it by unleashing the fierce power of the free enterprise system by getting out of the way of entrepreneurs and workers, and by lowering taxes to reward work, industry and savings. We could create a cornucopia of opportunities that could supply every Canadian with the life of their dreams. That is the country that we want to fulfill. That is the country we owe to our kids. That is the country that would generate the necessary wealth to avoid the debt crisis I warned of earlier.

I warned earlier on that the problem we face in Canada is the debt-to-GDP. There is a numerator and a denominator. If we could grow the denominator, that is to say the size of the economy, we could reduce the overall ratio. If we unleash the productive forces of our economy, and have a bigger and more powerful economy, then we could pay off that debt, pay off the interest and reduce the debt without having to reduce our quality of living.

That is the real opportunity that we face before us, to make Canada the fastest place on Earth in which to get a building permit. What a goal to strive toward. It is one of my first goals.

I will show up at the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and I will show up at the first ministers' meeting, to challenge the cities and the provinces to join with me in a single goal: Let us make Canada the fastest place in the OECD to get a building permit. Get it done. Bring it home. Bring all the money back.

They are even nodding over there. I think we are actually seeing a kind of convergence of opinion. There is some excitement over there. I do not know if it is my words or the clear liquids they are drinking, but something has raised their spirits on that side of the House of Commons. Whatever they are drinking, I want some over here, and whatever I do not finish, I will bring it home.

The reality is that we can do this. We can unleash the productive forces of our economy. What would this mean for housing? What do we need to do to allow our young people to again afford a home? There is no natural reason that our young people cannot find a place to live. We have the second-biggest land mass on earth. We have more space where there is no one than we have space where there is anyone.

If we spread Canadians out equally across the country, every single Canadian would have 33 NFL-sized football fields to himself. It would be the perfect place in which to be a hermit. We would never see another human being if we were to spread Canadians out across the country. It is a staggering amount of land. I think there are a few hermits on the other side of the House. They are sitting all by themselves with no one around them. There is nothing wrong with that. Some of my best friends are hermits. There is nothing wrong with being a hermit.

The reality is that we have so much land, so how is it possible that we cannot house our people? We have the fifth-biggest supply of land per capita of any country on earth, yet no one can find a home. Why is this? It is crazy. The Americans have 10 times the people to house on a smaller land mass, yet housing costs there are roughly half of what they are here. For example, Vancouver is the third most overpriced housing market in the world when we compare median income to median house prices. Toronto is ranked 10th. Both are higher than Manhattan. They are higher than Singapore, which is an island. They have nowhere to move in Singapore because there is nothing but sea that surrounds them, yet somehow Vancouver is more unaffordable than Singapore and Manhattan.

Why is this happening? The answer is that we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7, even though we have the most land to build on, because it is the slowest place in which to get a permit. The permitting and other government costs are $650,000 for every home built in Vancouver and slightly less than that in Toronto. The reality is that government at all levels is partly responsible for delaying these permits. However, we know that cities that are controlled by woke, left NDP-Liberal mayors are the worst gatekeepers of all. Ironically, they are the most determined to keep poor people from owning homes.

What are we going to do about it? The federal government gives tens of billions of dollars to the cities for infrastructure. I would make this infrastructure an accelerator of home construction. I would say to the cities that the amount of dollars they get for infrastructure would be linked to the number of houses that actually get completed. I would require all big cities to increase housing construction by 15% per year, or they will lose some of their infrastructure money. Those that exceed the 15% target would get a building bonus, and I would require that every federally funded transit station be surrounded by and even built over top of with high-density housing.

Why does Hong Kong have the only profitable transit system in the world? It builds the housing right on top of the transit. It sells the air rights. It makes sense. The young people get on the elevator, go down to the bottom and hop on the train. It is the only city in the world where they can leave late and arrive early because the housing is right next to the transit. Why do we not require every single transit station funded by the federal government to have high-density apartments all around it? I do not want to drive by another transit station built by our federal tax dollars, handed out by the government, that has no housing behind it. We do not need transit stations in the middle of nowhere. We need housing all around transit stations, and that is what I would require when I am prime minister.

We have got these big, ugly, empty federal buildings. How many do members think we have?

[An hon. member]

Someone said 20,000.

[An hon. member]

Is it 30,000?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, they are getting close.

There are 37,000 of them. As I said, to be redundant, many of them are big, ugly and empty buildings. Why do we not sell them off and turn them into housing and use the proceeds to pay down the deficit? This is common sense. We are going to take that money and we are going to pay down the deficit. We are going to turn the buildings into housing so young people have a place to live.

We are going to bring in faster immigration for the building trades. I am going to allow the unions to sponsor immigration so unions like LiUNA can bring in labourers from other countries to fill the 50,000 job vacancies that desperately need to be filled. That will mean more builders in this country.

I am going to give parity of esteem. I am going to give the same respect and funding for the trades that we give to the universities. We should honour the people who build stuff, fix stuff and move stuff. They need the same support as our professionals. This is the common sense of the common people.

That is how we are going to bring home powerful paycheques and bring homes people can afford by getting government out of the way, but still we are going to need people to have bigger and more powerful paycheques, so how are we going to do that?

Let us look at immigrants. There are 20,000 immigrant doctors and 32,000 immigrant nurses banned from working in our hospitals because they cannot get a licence to practise even though many of them actually have practised in more sophisticated health care systems in places like Singapore. The gatekeepers block them from getting medical licences.

The federal government is not responsible for regulating those sectors. However, the federal government does provide money for both immigration resettlement and for health care. I believe we should use that money as leverage to get all the provinces to agree with a common national testing standard for all the regulated professions.

That would allow Canada's brilliant immigrants to take a test, not to get a shortcut but to take a test, to prove they meet the Canadian standard and that within 60 days of an immigrant applying to work in their profession they should get a yes or no based on their tested ability and not based on where they come from. I call this the blue seal standard. We have a red seal for the trades. Let us have a blue seal for the professions.

What has the federal government done? In the last eight years, it has done absolutely nothing. We at least, in the prior government, were able to reduce the wait time for an immigrant applying to work in their profession to one year, which I admit was too long but it was shorter than prior. Since that time, there has been no progress whatsoever and the list grows longer and longer of engineers, architects, nurses, personal support workers and doctors who could be helping our economy and serving Canadian patients but who are left on the sidelines in low-wage jobs because there is no simplified, streamlined process to accredit their abilities.

By the way, I will back up 30,000 small study loans so working-class immigrants who need a few months off work to study up to the Canadian standard can do so. Then they can get licensed, get practising, get a bigger paycheque, pay back the loan and that same money can then be lent out to the next deserving immigrant, who can then be propelled to a wonderful paycheque of opportunity serving Canadians.

This is just common sense. I would love to say that this is some work of art I am presenting to the House of Commons, but really it is the common sense of the common people I hear out on the streets when talking to those people every day.

Speaking of common sense, we need to bring home safety again. There is no way we can have a secure economy if we do not have safe streets. Crime has been raging out of control. Drugs, disorder, crime and chaos have become common in our streets under the Prime Minister. He has brought in catch-and-release, which allows the most violent repeat offenders to be released again and again and again onto our streets.

In Vancouver, the same 40 people were arrested 6,000 times, or 150 arrests per offender per year. If those same 40 offenders were just behind bars, we would have had 6,000 fewer people hit over the head with a baseball bat, stabbed with a knife or thrown onto a train track. Why not focus on putting those same repeat violent offenders behind bars?

I believe in second chances. I believe in redemption. I do not believe in a 75th chance. If one has committed 75 crimes, one belongs in jail. One should not have bail. One should not have parole after that many offences. The public's safety is more important than the criminal's right and we should protect the people and keep them safe. That is what we will do with a common-sense criminal justice reform.

We are going to bring home our loved ones recovered from drug addiction. We know that drug addictions have raged out of control under the Prime Minister. He has unleashed a wave of drug addiction since he became Prime Minister. Maybe he is trying to medicate poverty. Maybe he is trying to tell people that they should simply take drugs rather than have a future, because so many people are feeling hopeless and helpless after eight years of his leadership. They lose their jobs and suffer the pain of being unable to pay their bills. They are losing their homes. Many of them cannot take the suffering and end up addicted to drugs, drugs that were originally prescribed by doctors and pushed by powerful pharmaceutical companies.

Under the Prime Minister, there has been over a 200% increase nationwide in the number of drug overdose deaths. His solution has been to give people more tax-funded drugs, tax-funded narcotics like hydromorphone, an opioid more powerful than heroin, now handed out with hundreds of millions of dollars of Canadian tax dollars. We now know that those drugs are being resold by addicts who no longer find them powerful enough to get them high. They are selling to kids and the kids get addicted to those. Then they sell them to other kids and use the profits from selling these free government-funded drugs to buy more powerful fentanyl.

Thus, the places where this experiment has been most enthusiastically tried, like Vancouver, have been the places where the overdose rates have been the highest. There is a correlation both across time and across space of people dying, the more these government-funded drugs are available. The current approach is not working. The answer is, yes, I will shut down taxpayer-funded drugs and I will put all of the money into recovery and treatment.

Recently, I visited an incredible treatment facility in Winnipeg. The story has a tragic beginning, but a happy ending. The story starts with a young man, Bruce Oake, who died of an overdose in Calgary. His father, a legendary sportscaster, Scott Oake, said he was going to make it his life's mission to make sure that no other parent would suffer the same tragic loss that his family had suffered, so he raised the money to create a beautiful, gleaming place where people who had lost all hope and were addicted to drugs could go and have counselling, detox, job training, reconciliation with their families, sweat lodges, yoga, mandatory exercise. They helped them to regain their health and cleanse their bodies of poisons. Not only that, sober homes were built attached to the treatment facility so that when the graduates come out of treatment, they go into an apartment that is right next to the treatment facility, where they can go back any time to see a counsellor or maybe to mentor a new person who is coming in.

I was amazed to find out that most of the people there doing the work, right up to the accountants and the administrative staff, were all recovering addicts themselves. They said it is one thing to have book learning, but it is much more powerful to have real-life experience when sitting down with someone who is an addict, who is going through the desperate pain of withdrawal. When all they want is one more hit that will relieve their immense suffering, they want to be able to talk to someone who knows what they are feeling. The word “compassion” comes from the Latin word pati, to suffer. Passion is to suffer; compassion is to suffer with someone else.

They sit together in those rooms in that wonderful facility and share in each other's suffering, knowing that when suffering is shared, it is relieved and replaced with hope. We are going to replace people's pain with hope by ensuring that places like the Oake Recovery Centre are replicated hundreds and maybe even thousands of times across the country so that young people can go into those places, cleanse their bodies, get their lives back and then mentor the next crop of addicts to give them their lives back.

This cycle of hope will be repeated again and again and again, as a Conservative government gives people the chance to bring home their loved one drug free. I was just reminded by the member for Brandon—Souris that they have a big beautiful gymnasium in there where they do their exercises and play some sports. They have jerseys and every graduate has a jersey raised up to the ceiling with their name on it after one year of being clean, with the number one on the back of every jersey to recognize the single year, the full year, they have gone drug free. They told me this. There was pride on the faces of those young men when they saw their names go up on that jersey, up in front of all their families. They were able to say, “That jersey means that I won, that I scored the biggest goal in the history of the game of life. I got my life back. I've been through hell. There's nothing more that life can throw at me that I have not already been through”.

That is not weakness, that is a superpower, one that we should celebrate and recreate right across this country. That is what I want for anybody who might be listening tonight because I know that there are a lot of people suffering across this country. I meet these people.

One of the things that I find most emotional about being a leader of a political party is how much people vest in the leader, how much they rely on the leader's success that they have to come through for them. Most times when there are elections, we are really just debating about who is going to manage, who is going to run the store. The differences are fairly small on most occasions, but we are in an unusual time right now. People are suffering like I have never seen. It is really bad out there. I hear stories from people who come up to me at the gatherings I hold, people in tears who tell me I am their last hope, that they do not know what they are going to do because they are just hanging on by a thread. I want those people to know to hang on, keep on fighting. There are better days coming. Help and hope is on the way. That is what we are going to deliver to all the Canadian people who are thinking about giving up. Do not give up. Never give up. Better days are coming ahead.

I want to take a moment now to talk about why this has been such an extraordinary country. I am deeply grateful to this country. This country has been very good to me. I think sometimes that we talk about the country in a modern sense. Modern ideology lacks gratitude. It has become very trendy to talk down our history, talk about all of the horrible things that we as Canadians have represented. I think that is the wrong mentality. Yes, we must acknowledge the flaws and failings of history to correct them, but we do that not by deleting parts of our history but by painting in the entire story, the good and the bad, being honest and debating all of those parts of the story, but also about being grateful and showing gratitude for what this country has offered them.

Why is it that 300,000 to 500,000 people a year would want to come here if this is such an awful place, if we were such an awful country that is so filled with injustice? The answer is they would not. They come here for the promise of freedom. They come here not because there is anything special in the water that we drink, not because of the land or because the weather is more inviting than any other place. There are more tropical and sunny environments where they could go, but they come here for the unique foundation that we have in the form of our freedom.

The great former prime minister Wilfrid Laurier was asked to define our country. He was a good Liberal. I will give him credit. He would not be in that party today. He would not recognize the Liberal Party of today, because he was a Liberal who believed in liberty. He understood the meaning of the word, the real word, as it was meant in its origins, not the illiberal, wokist liberalism that we have on the side of the Prime Minister today.

Listen to what he understood about this country. He was asked what Canada's nationality was. In most countries, this would have been a very easy question to answer. If he had been in France, he would have said “French”; if in England, he would have said “English”; if in Scotland, “Scottish”, and so on. Most places define their nationality by the ethnocultural makeup of the country, but that was impossible, even back then, because we were already mixed up. We had Scots, Irish, indigenous, French, English, Catholic, Protestant, people from Asia and Africa back then, a century ago, so it was impossible to define our nation or our nationality on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. What he said was, “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality”, and so it is today. It is our freedom that fundamentally distinguishes us from so many places on this Earth. That is the reason people come from such far distances to live here in this country. It is not because of any new grand invention the Prime Minister has created; it is because people want to come here to live their own lives and make their own decisions. That is what I want to empower them to do.

When I was running for leadership of the party, some people asked me whether, if I could win power, I would take power. The answer is that I do not want to take power; I am running for prime minister to give power back.

I do not believe there is a special species of humans who are able to make decisions for everyone else. I believe that every human being is endowed with their own ability to make judgments about their own lives. When I go around the country and I meet with the mechanic who can take apart a transmission and put it back together; the farmer who can master meteorology, economics and soil chemistry; the waitress who can balance 10 plates on her hand, deal with 15 tough customers at once, go home and teach her kid math, and balance her budget on a minimum wage salary, I look at these people and ask myself what business I have running their lives. They know how to do that better than anyone else in this House of Commons.

I do not want to run their lives for them; I want to give them the freedom to make their own decisions.

That is why immigrants come here. They do not come here because there are these really brilliant politicians who can decide for them; they come to get away from politicians who think they can decide for others. That is why they come to our country. It takes a different kind of humility to be that type of leader, because if the government is small, then the leader's power is small and his reach is small. That is not what the Prime Minister wants. He wants big and powerful government because he thinks that it will make him big and powerful. It takes humility to be a leader who withdraws his control so that he can seed it back to the people to whom it truly belongs. It takes humility to lead a small and lean government, a small government with big citizens. That is the kind of humility that we need back in Ottawa, a humility that accepts the wisdom of the common people to decide for themselves. That is the fundamental essence of why I am running.

What does this come down to in the specifics? It means limiting the government's role in the economy. It means not throwing away money on corporate welfare, but rather lowering taxes for all productive businesses. It means allowing workers and parents to spend their own money, rather than having politicians spend it for them. It means allowing people to see and say on the Internet what they think, want to see and want to say without censorship by the state. Everything that is legal in the real world should be legal on the Internet and everything that is criminal in the tangible world should be criminal on the Internet, but no special censorship should be imposed on the people's thinking on the World Wide Web.

The Prime Minister passed Bill C-11, a law that empowers the bureaucracy at the CRTC to manipulate the algorithms of the Internet to control what people see, to give a bigger voice to the government's favoured broadcasters—

[An hon. member]

Like the CBC.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Like the CBC. He just very honestly spit out that he wants the Internet to be controlled by the state broadcaster. It is nice when they accidentally tell the truth over there. It is so rare and so unintentional at the same time.

In real, free countries, they do not believe that a state broadcaster should have the monopoly on what people see on the Internet. That is only the case in dictatorships, like Communist China, like North Korea and like Cuba, places the Prime Minister admires and wishes to emulate.

This bill has been called creeping totalitarianism, not by me—my criticisms have not even gone that far—but by Margaret Atwood, a famous and, I believe, Liberal-leaning author, who testified that when bureaucrats are allowed to control the creation of art and culture, we are then heading to a very dangerous place. This Prime Minister has mused, recently, about going even further.

Let me give an example of one of the justifications he has been giving lately. He was over at, I think, a fire hall. He started rambling about how much time he spends studying people who believe in a flat Earth. He claims that this is the next big risk, that there are all these people who believe in a flat Earth, kind of like people who believe budgets balance themselves. Those are the kinds of weirdos we really have to watch out for.

He said that we have to be careful, that there are all these people who believe in a flat Earth. They are going to invade the world, and we are all going to forget, according to him, that the Earth is actually a sphere. He also said that this is the first time in human history that anyone has believed that the world is flat, and that it is because the Internet has too much freedom of speech that this crazy idea has spread.

Never mind that there have been many civilizations that believed the folly, and yes, I point out that it is a folly, and the Prime Minister was not fooled into thinking that the world was anything but round.

There have been others who have believed this over the years. What the Prime Minister failed to realize is that there have been many falsehoods about the physics of Earth and its relationship with the sun. For example, people used to believe that the Earth was stationary and that the sun went around it. Why did that falsehood persist for so long? It was because censorship prevented anyone from thinking otherwise.

In reality, the real purveyors of falsehood, of fake news, of information that is untrue, of conspiracy theories actually come into play when the state has too much control over our thinking, not too little. It is by challenging false ideas that we overcome those ideas. It is by smashing bad information with good information that the better information comes out on top. It is precisely in the pursuit of truth that we must allow freedom of expression online and everywhere to prevail.

Speaking of misinformation, the Prime Minister says one of the reasons he needs to have censorship is to stop all this misinformation. Well, I believe it is still on the Liberal Party's website that the budget would be balanced in 2019. I believe it was the Prime Minister who spread the misinformation that the Globe and Mail story about his interference in SNC-Lavalin story was false. It was the Prime Minister who spread that misinformation. It is was the Prime Minister's own fall economic update that said we would have a balanced budget in 2027, once again reiterating misinformation.

Here is the problem: If the government's mission is to stop misinformation, what happens when it is the government itself that is spreading that misinformation?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I apologize for interrupting, but I would remind the hon. members who would like to chat that they have a wonderful lobby to chat in. I would like to hear the Leader of the Opposition conclude his speech.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, that is what happens when it is in fact the government that is spreading misinformation, not the people. Is it not then more dangerous to have concentrated the power over what is seen and said in the hands of those few people?

It goes back to the fundamental and basic question: If a man is not capable of governing himself, how can he govern others? That is the basic and fundamental question and the contradiction that those who believe in the superiority of the state over the citizen fail to answer.

If everyday humans are so flawed that they cannot decide for themselves, how can those same humans decide for anyone else? Well, their answer over there would be that there is this small group that are made of finer clay, that have intellectual and moral superiority, and therefore, if we just hand over all of our decisions to them, they could correct all the flaws and frailties of humankind. However, we know that the opposite happens: When we concentrate more power into fewer hands, we attract power-hungry people who are more flawed and less capable, more incompetent and with less common sense, who then inflict all of their failings and bad behaviour on the rest of society. That is why a limited and smaller government is always better: It because it allows everyday individual people to make their own decisions and to have personal responsibility and personal freedom in how they do so.

That is why one of my first actions as prime minister will be to repeal Bill C-11. I will repeal the censorship law to let people express themselves online. Let freedom of debate reign so that everyday people can hash out their differences.

[An hon. member]

Freedom.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

The member just mocked the word “freedom”. It shows how far they have gone. Only a short time ago, they used to celebrate something called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and now they think freedom is something that should be mocked. Everybody should know that they mock freedom because they want to take away freedom. They do not believe that Canadians should have the freedom to make their own decisions.

We on this side of the House of Commons will always defend freedom. My purpose in running for prime minister is to put Canadians back in charge of their lives by making Canada the freest nation on earth.

Madam Speaker, they have the freedom to leave any time they want. Some bring happiness wherever they go, others bring happiness whenever they go.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I will ask all hon. members to please respect decorum.

The hon. member for Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am a former teacher and I have four kids, and I would be absolutely embarrassed if my kids were acting like that, and they never would. I think that is the point I want to make. My kids know better about how to act in this place than members of Parliament across the way. I would expect respect for our leader, who is making a great speech tonight about an issue that is very important to all Canadians. I would wish that they would grant him that respect.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

That has been asked a few times by Chair occupants.

I must remind hon. members that heckling happens on both sides of the House, not that this is an excuse. We do wish to have some decorum and allow the hon. Leader of the Opposition to make his speech in peace.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, all of this chaos, all of this yelling and screaming, all of this rambunctiousness here on the floor of the House of Commons proves once again that Parliament is the worst system of government except for all the others, that the great debates are meant to be uproarious and distracting. That was said by Winston Churchill, a great member of the British Empire, alongside which we fought for freedom in the Second World War, and today, here in Canada, we continue to stand for freedom here in the new world. We will continue to stand for freedom in this country.

I have already said that I will repeal the anti-freedom legislation that the government has brought in that—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Could the conversations stop between members? It is on both sides right now. It was literally on both sides. Members on both sides were talking to one another, and I would like to give the hon. Leader of the Opposition the possibility to pursue his speech.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, this demonstrates again the peril of freedom of expression. It is frustrating, difficult and hard. However, it is the best thing we have. Freedom is the only way we can clash good ideas against bad ideas, so that the good can triumph over the bad. That is why I accept all the aggravations and petty interruptions. They are all worth it. Canada is worth it. Putting up with them is worth it to fight for this country. Our country is worth it. That is an inspiring, uplifting message for us all, is it not? That brings me to my next point.

Campus life is filled with these kinds of petty arguments. If I could, I will refer to Churchill one more time. He said, of student politics, that never had so few argued for so long about so little. However, those petty arguments are part of the open debate that exists in campus life. Unfortunately, of late, we have seen a movement by the woke totalitarian left to shut down that debate, to prevent students and faculty from expressing opinions that are not authorized by the academic consensus. The academy is losing its very purpose, which is the pursuit of knowledge and truth through open inquiry. It is a true marketplace of ideas where people come together without fear and without violence to share and express and, yes, sometimes to have their feelings hurt, to be frustrated and to be angry with what they hear. However, ultimately, it allows inquiring minds to compete and for the best to come out on top.

One of the most revered professors in modern Canada is Dr. Jordan Peterson. He was one of the most academically cited before he gained notoriety around the world. His prolific writings were respected by people across all the social sciences and humanities. This is a statistical fact. However, he expressed views that were not acceptable to the new totalitarian one-size-fits-all groupthink. As a result, he was driven out of the University of Toronto and silenced. More recently, he has been told that he might lose his licence to practise as a psychologist. In one case, he had a complaint against him because he retweeted me. In another case, he tweeted a criticism of the Prime Minister, and the association that licenses psychologists in Ontario said that this could provide great danger to his patients; if they were to see a tweet by their psychologist criticizing the Prime Minister, this might cause a massive psychological breakdown. My goodness, how fragile a supporter of the Prime Minister might be if they shatter like glass at the mere tweeting out of a criticism. Maybe the Prime Minister himself would find it psychologically devastating to see criticisms of him coming from someone like Dr. Peterson. My answer to those censors is this: If they do not like Jordan Peterson, they should not shut him down. They should debate him. I wish them luck with that.

I debate all kinds of people with whom I disagree. I disagree with the Prime Minister and his whole cabinet. I do not want to silence them. I want to debate them. In fact, I believe they help me make my case every time they open their mouths. I want them to speak even more.

We have something called section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is a section that protects freedom of expression: “2(b), or not 2(b)? That is the question”. My answer is this: A Conservative government led by me would uphold freedom of expression and require every campus that gets federal research dollars to give an oath that it will respect the freedom of expression of all students and faculty so that the best ideas can come out of talk in a free and open debate.

We are going to bring home freedom for all of our people. Let us review the bright and prosperous future, the hopeful destiny, that we will restore.

We will bring home lower prices by getting rid of the inflationary deficits and carbon taxes. We will bring home powerful paycheques with lower taxes and fewer clawbacks so that hard work pays off. We will remove the gatekeepers so that brilliant immigrants can work as professionals, our first nations can develop their resources and our energy companies can bring back production to this country. We will bring in homes that people can afford by removing the government gatekeepers. We will free up land and speed up permits to build, build, build.

We will bring home safety with jail and not bail for repeat and habitual violent offenders, and by ending the relentless government attack on law-abiding firearms owners. We will put money into reinforcing our borders against smugglers and will tackle the gun criminals who are shooting up our streets.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes, Madam Speaker, members can applaud that. Polite Canadians never want to interrupt, but I want them to feel comfortable interrupting my remarks with their applause.

We are going to bring home safety by focusing on the real bad guys. The problem with the Prime Minister is that oftentimes he targets the good guys. He punishes the good guys.

Have members heard of the latest story? He is kicking out these wonderful Punjabi students, 700 of them. These brilliant young people were defrauded by shady consultants who gave them fraudulent university and college admission letters. The students came here in good faith and did their studies, and many of them got jobs and have settled down. They have been in the country for four years, and all of a sudden when they applied for permanent residency, the border agency, which cannot stop illegal guns from coming into the country, was able to find the time and resources to harass these kids and tell them it was going to send them home with their debts.

Their families are often poor farmers in Punjab who mortgage all of their assets and use their life savings to send their kids here for a better opportunity. These kids will have to go back to the bankruptcy of their parents and lose everything. We need young people and we need workers, and these are good, decent kids.

Why are the Liberals going after the good guys? Why did they not go after the shady consultants who defrauded the system in the first place? Why do they not fire the bureaucrats who made the mistake of not verifying the admission letters at the front end, rather than trying to fix it five years later at the back end? Why do they not simply look into each case and find out which of the kids were acting in good faith and let those good-faith kids stay here? They are filling jobs, earning paycheques and contributing to the Canadian family. Why do they not have a bit of common sense and compassion for a change? It is shameful.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, they are screaming at me and asking why I am still speaking. I am speaking for those kids who have no voice. That is why I keep speaking. Even as I am losing my voice, I will continue to be their voice.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Order. Do I need to start naming members? I have asked hon. members to keep order.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, we are going to go after the bad guys, not the good guys, not the law-abiding hunter and farmer, and not the honest student who got ripped off by a foreign shady consultant. We are not going to go after the good and decent people. We are going to go after the multi-gazillionaires who stash their cash in faraway tax loopholes. We are not going to go after small businesses that are trying to save up for their futures. We would target the bad guys with punishment and reward the good behaviour of good, honest and decent people. We would be a government on the side of those who work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. Would that not be a change from what we have right now?

What we are seeing here are the contours of the hope that we are bringing for the Canadian people, hope that is so desperately needed, now more than ever, when the government is broke and everything feels broken, when the Prime Minister divides and distracts, and when everything costs more. Work does not pay. Housing costs have doubled. Crime, chaos, drugs and disorder are becoming more and more common on our streets. The Prime Minister tries to distract from it all by dividing our people on the basis of race, gender and other irrelevant distinctions.

We have a hope for a better way to bring home lower prices, paycheques, homes people can afford, safe streets and our freedom.

Every home is built on a foundation. In fact, the most important part of any home, as my finance critic, who was a home builder, would tell us, is the foundation. It is not the fancy decorations. It is not the new shingles we put out. It is not the colour we paint the front door. It is the foundation that supports the house and holds it up against the storms and the tempests of time, and our house, this House, was built on a solid foundation.

If we look around this place, we see stones. It was built of stone. If we look around the Centre Block building, we can actually see limestone that has fossils in them, which were embedded in that stone millions of years earlier. We are literally looking back millions of years in time when we look at those stones and those incredible fossils that are etched and crystallized in them forever. Why do we build these places with stone? It is to represent the permanence of the principles on which the entire place rests.

We are all just visitors in this place. We do not own these seats. We are lent these seats from the people to whom they belong. It is an 800-year-old tradition that we uphold in this place. It is 800 years since the Magna Carta, the great charter. In 1215 the commoners gathered in the fields of Runnymede and forced King John to reluctantly sign on to this great charter.

If we read the charter, we might say it is filled with all kinds of antiquated concepts that no longer have any relevance today, but we will also see some things that have preserved, such as no arrest without charge, no trial without jury, no confiscation without compensation, and no taxation without representation. All of those things originated in the Magna Carta.

Many of them, our American cousins across the border tried belatedly to take credit for, but really all they were trying to do in the American revolution was defend their rights as Englishmen and Englishwomen. It was actually more of a civil war than it was a war between nations. They were ancient principles that came from generations before and were slowly and painstakingly perfected. The most important principle of all in that document was liberty under the law, the recognition that nobody, including the king, was above the law. Everybody was under the law, and only that way could liberty be upheld for all of the people.

That inheritance is a precious one, and though it is 800 years long, it is only one generation deep. It is the duty of every living generation to take it from those who came before and pass it on intact to those who will come next. That is our duty. We are that living generation.

The great philosopher, the great Conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, said that liberty is a contract between the dead, the living and the yet to be born, and it is the duty of every living generation to pass down the ages. That is why we need to remember how small we are in this place. Our purpose is really to keep alive that tradition. That is the one thing we do as parliamentarians.

It is the most valuable thing of all because everything springs forth from that, such as the ability of people to have the freedom of enterprise to provide for themselves, the freedom of association to get married, to form friendships and other associations and the ability to work together to provide each other with health care and schooling. All of these things come from the foundation of freedom that is passed down through the ages.

If ever we allow that tradition to be broken, then it may never be regained. That is why we treasure so much these institutions that are represented by the stones on these walls, stones I hope my great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren will look up at and see and remember that during this brief time, during our time, we protected the freedom many generations after us would go on to enjoy.