House of Commons photo

Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was conservatives.

Last in Parliament October 2019, as NDP MP for Skeena—Bulkley Valley (B.C.)

Won his last election, in 2015, with 51% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Mark Warawa June 20th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, today I rise to join with colleagues in paying tribute to a friend and colleague, Mark Warawa. I think all of us agree that we would have given anything to be talking about something else here today than Mark's passing.

It is such a tribute to Mark that there are so many of us here today, choosing not to head home to our own families, and that all parties are here, and independents, regardless of whether we often or even ever agreed with Mark on his politics and policies. I am including my Conservative colleagues in that. He was a man of such deep faith and conviction, and he held those convictions with such a degree of grace and certainty, which is sometimes too rare in our world.

Today was meant to be a day of ending, as we conclude this Parliament, as we reflect as parliamentarians in our time here, be it these past four years or for some of us many more years. It is also a day, by bad circumstance, that we are talking about a different kind of ending.

It is a privilege to stand in this place. Mark always saw that to be true for him, so much so that even as he was so sick, he was determined to come back and give his farewell address to the House, despite his doctors not necessarily agreeing with that.

I am honoured to speak on behalf of my New Democratic colleagues. Mark was an opponent, yet never an enemy. Our friendship was most unlikely. We come from different generations and opposite ends of the political spectrum on almost every issue, yet we found some common ground in the humanity we could share in this place. I think I can speak for many colleagues who also saw that humanity on display.

I do have to tell one story, though. I was reflecting this morning about one day, in the heat of debate, I said something that really upset Mark. I honestly do not remember what it was. I guess I have one of those memories.

Mark came right up to me in my seat. He got right in my face and was really mad, almost on the edge of asking me to step outside. I was a bit shocked. It seemed out of character for him, yet, within minutes, he was back at my desk, apologizing and wanting to make things right. It is important to consider that I do not remember what we were arguing about, but I do remember the apology. I remember the humanity.

For him, I think politics was very personal but he never made it personal, and that is a rare gift.

I was raised in the church and I do not claim to know definitively what a good Christian is, but Mark strove in every way to be one.

I also think we are talking a lot about family today, political family and Mark's family, Diane, Jonathan, Ryan, Nathan, Eric and Kristen. There are families we are born into and there are families we choose.

Diane and Mark were married for just a little less time than I have been alive. Mark, in his final comments, to me said, “I always thought of you as a son”, again, curious and somewhat unlikely, our friendship.

Today is about an ending. It is about mourning and it is about honouring. I join my colleagues and friends in honouring the memory of Mark and wish Diane and his entire family the very best and peace.

Oil Tanker Moratorium Act June 18th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, I think the time ahead of us is somewhat short. This bill is now under a measure to allow it to proceed at a certain pace. For some, it might seem like a bit of a rush, that this is happening at some accelerated pace, but for those of us who make our homes along the north coast and the northwest of British Columbia, this has been a conversation that has gone on for more than a generation. We have been talking specifically about the transit of oil across the northwest and off the north coast to some other ports for almost 50 years. It has been 47 years.

Going back through some of the history would be important to help colleagues and people watching this debate understand how much this has been studied by Parliament, the National Energy Board, people living in the northwest and industry. I am not sure there is another transit route anywhere in North America that has been looked at so often and so often rejected as a good or potential route to pass oil products through because of some of the inherent risks that make the transit of that oil difficult to do securely.

Fifteen years ago, I started my career in federal politics. One of our objectives in running for office and ultimately achieving success at the polls was to put Skeena back on the map, to have the conversation that we were having between and within our communities as part of a national dialogue, issues about the environment and resource exploitation, about indigenous rights and title, and the obligation of the Crown of this place to do a much better job than we have historically done through our colonial past. Fifteen years ago, when I first rose in Parliament, the issue that we talked about was this. We were talking about attempts to protect the north coast, which by anyone's estimation is deserving of our respect and protection.

In the most recent election in 2015, four of the five major federal parties campaigned on the promise to do exactly what we are doing here today. Of the people sitting in this House of Commons, representing over 12 million Canadian voters, 70% campaigned on this promise throughout that election. Making good on that promise is the least we can do for the people in the northwest, who have again been discussing this for more than a generation.

In 1970, a House of Commons committee first studied this question asking: is this a good idea or not; is there a port to the north of Vancouver that would make good sense to transit oil? That review came up negative.

In 1972, the declaration of a voluntary moratorium, an exclusion zone, was put in place. Also, in 1972, one of my predecessors, Frank Howard, the MP for Skeena, as it was known at the time, passed a unanimous motion confirming that exclusion zone. All parties in the House of Commons at that time understood the importance of this. It was multipartisan. It was not even partisan or bipartisan; it had all parties in agreement.

The federal commission was struck in 1978.

The voluntary agreement with the United States came in 1988, which has been reviewed many times since and confirmed each and every time.

In 2009, Stephen Harper decided to ignore this long-held moratorium. He simply called it a cabinet utterance, which it was. It had never been written down into law. Therefore, as the then prime minister, he said he did not need to abide by it and then opened up the conversation for a proposed project from the company known as Enbridge, which hived off to become Enbridge northern gateway, a subsidiary, which is a neat trick an oil and gas company sometimes does to protect itself. It creates a subsidiary to run a pipeline, which indemnifies it against legal action if ever there was an accident. This is the same company that spilled massive amounts of oil and diluted bitumen into the Kalamazoo River, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It is unable to clean up the Kalamazoo, by the way, in Michigan in the States. It is a very shallow, slow-moving, warm river. For anyone familiar with the circumstances of our rivers in British Columbia, particularly northern British Columbia, they are not shallow, slow-moving or warm. Every oil cleanup expert in the world, those based in British Columbia and throughout North America, has described a successful cleanup rate for a diluted bitumen spill on the north coast at less than 7% recovery.

Let me repeat that. What would be deemed as a successful, A-plus cleanup operation in the event of a spill from a pipeline or an oil tanker on the north coast in the waters that we know, is 7% recovery and 93% lost into the environment. As we know, diluted bitumen sinks and causes havoc in a place that relies on our rivers and our oceans for our very sustenance.

The great privilege that I have had for this decade and a half representing the people of the northwest is to come to know in some small way the ancient indigenous cultures that have resided there since time immemorial: the Tsimshian, the Haida, the Heiltsuk, the Nuxalk, the Tahltan, the Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en, all the way through and to the coast.

The privilege that has been mine is learning from that leadership that the responsibilities of leaders are not simply to care for ourselves in the moment in which we exist, but in all of our best efforts to represent people, to speak on their behalf and to leave the place better than we found it.

In Kitimat, British Columbia, which would have been the terminus for the northern gateway pipeline, it was the Haisla leadership in particular, elected and hereditary leadership together, who spoke with such firmness and declaration. They rejected the idea of bringing diluted bitumen to the north coast and sailing it down the Douglas Channel in super tankers, trying to perform three 90-degree turns before getting into the Hecate Strait near Haida Gwaii, the fourth most dangerous body in the world, in an attempt to move oil safely hundreds and thousands of times over the course of the life of a pipeline. There is no reasonable person who can offer the people I represent the assurance that an accident will not happen.

The Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 was just north of us. To this day, we can go on the shorelines where the Exxon Valdez went down and where it spilled. All we have to do is dig half a foot into the gravel banks and the water that fills back in comes with an oil sheen that is detectable as spillage from the Exxon Valdez so many years ago.

Most Canadians approach these questions in a relatively straightforward way: What are the risks versus the benefits, not just to us as a community but to us as a province and a nation? The risks that are entertained in trying to move diluted bitumen and any oil product off the north coast in super tankers that are not designed for our waters through very narrow and treacherous passageways so far outweigh any imagined benefits that it is a no-brainer.

I can remember a letter that was issued by the then natural resources minister. I do not know if colleagues remember. It was directed by the prime minister's office, we found out later. It said that those who are opposed to northern gateway are enemies of the state and foreign-funded radicals. That is what they called us. Not only was that an incredibly offensive and ignorant thing to say about fellow Canadians from the prime minister's office and his minister, but it ended up having the reverse effect in the place I represent.

What the former Harper government had not learned was that sometimes those people who are concerned about the environment and worried about oil spilling into our oceans and into our rivers are not all wearing Birkenstocks. They are not all fully paid members of Greenpeace. In fact, in the place I live, some of the most conservative people I know take that word “conservative” seriously, to mean they want to be able to take their kids fishing and to the out of doors. I need to respect that place in order to have that privilege and for them to have that privilege for their children. The former government accused us of being radicals, of being foreign-funded stooges to some great, grand conspiracy theory, which continues on today, unfortunately, for law-abiding, proper-thinking Canadians who are simply saying they want a voice in this conversation and that the government has to listen to them.

It was so shameful for any government of any political persuasion to stoop to those tactics, and it had the opposite effect. People where I live, those from the right, the left, the middle and outside all of our conventional thinking said, “How dare you” to the former government. In fact, it may have in part contributed to the Conservatives' eventual downfall; that the arrogance and the bullying represented in that attitude toward citizens whom we seek to represent backfired completely and exposed that government to something else.

To former colleagues and current provincial premiers who are waving the national unity flag, one way to not do national unity is by threatening and bullying other Canadians. We do not bring this country together by yelling at each other. We do not represent the best interests of Canada when we talk to another province in a disrespectful and offensive way. Unfortunately, what we are seeing out of some of our provinces is to suggest to British Columbia, the place that I call home, “How dare you stand up for things you believe in? How dare you represent your views politically and socially?” We can see what is coming out of Edmonton these days, and it will not have the effect that I suppose they are hoping for.

To my friends and family in Alberta, whom I have spoken to many times over these long years, and we have been campaigning and talking about this for a long time: We absolutely understand the fear that is exhibited, particularly by those who are involved in the oil industry, because they have had a hard go. Oil went up to extremely high prices, $140 a barrel, money was easily made through hard work and focus, and then, steadily, prices collapsed. The economy of Alberta, in particular, and of Saskatchewan as well, are very reliant on that particular economy. They fell on incredibly hard times, and things got more and more tight and desperate. It felt as if the world was lined up against them. However, no one is controlling oil prices, last I checked, effectively. Not the current government and not past governments. This is a cycle that we have seen many times.

In the face of this, we are also collectively challenged with what we are seeing in our world. The predictions and thoughts we were getting in the 1980s and 1990s about the impacts of climate change were that forest fires would become more intense and broader, that floods and storm events would no longer be single-century events but many times over many years, and that we are seeing the impacts and the weather pattern changes that are directly attributable to dangerous climate change. Albertans know this. We saw the floods in Calgary. We saw the fires in Fort McMurray, and we saw them in my region as well.

I sat down with a forest firefighter just last season, which was another record and devastating year. For those who have ever experienced or been in proximity to an out-of-control forest fire, it is devastating. It is so shaking to our very understanding of home and security when we see the full rage and power of Mother Nature in effect. However, I was sitting across the lunch table from a firefighter who had blackened eyes and was completely covered in soot. He had just got off the line. He has been fighting fires for 30 years. I asked, “How are you doing?” He said, “It's different”. This guy is to the right of Attila the Hun and way out there in terms of his conservative views on the world and so I asked, “How is it different?” He said, “The impacts of climate. I'm watching it”. I said, “You're putting me on.” He replied, “Absolutely not. It's the way the fires are behaving; the way the things are conducting themselves is not the way that we know.”

Now, with the bill before us, many in the oil industry are seeking certainty. It is a common refrain: “We want certainty. We just want to be able to know what the landscape is”. I will offer this to those interested in certainty: We want certainty too.

For millennia, the people of the north coast have relied upon the oceans and rivers for our economy, our basic social fabric and the sustenance that builds the incredible cultures that we now celebrate and enjoy across the globe. The certainty that we require is that these moratoriums that were voluntary, that were utterances from the government, will no longer be uncertain; they will be certain, and that is what the bill would do. However, the bill would also bring certainty to the industry, because last I checked, and someone can correct me, there is no one knocking on the door to try to build a diluted bitumen pipeline to the north coast, because the risks so far outweigh the benefits. It is because the political and social environment of the northwest is so connected to the land, so connected to the oceans and the rivers, that the viability of anyone proposing to build a big old diluted bitumen pipeline and put all of that in supertankers with some faint promise to get it off to overseas markets is not a reality. So let us create that certainty.

I mentioned in a question earlier in the debate that I worked alongside Jim Prentice, who has left us, while he was environment minister for the former government. Jim had come to the north coast, unlike many people who speak with some sort of authority as to how the north coast works.

Jim came many times. He saw the splendour and the grandeur. He worked with us on bringing forward the Great Bear Rainforest initiative. It had started under a previous Liberal government but had never come to completion. I worked with Rona Ambrose and John Baird. It was all these folks who had not exactly hugged a tree every day, but who understood the importance of this part of the world. We funded that initiative, protecting the largest tract of temperate rainforest in the world, and protecting it in such a way that includes the people who live there. We did not draw a line on a map around people, saying that the local communities were not important. We included them in the creation of a global leading conservation effort.

We bought back some, and some companies just simply forgave the permits they had to drill for oil and gas in the Hecate Strait, a preposterous notion for anyone who has ever been across the Hecate Strait. It is incredibly shallow, prone to storms, and has some of the strongest winds in the world. It is a place that so relies on the ocean being intact for the survival of the people there.

It was through a Conservative, and I got in a lot of trouble for it. Some people said, “How dare you work with Conservatives to get something done?” There was a headline in the Toronto Star, claiming I had sold out. People wonder sometimes why we lose faith in politics. Something good was done, and I did not care who did it. I did not care who got the credit for it. I just cared that it got done. It was something people in the region wanted. It was through the Conservative government that we did it.

This is a strange, circular moment for me. When we came into this place, we were fighting to protect the north coast. As this parliamentary session winds down and my colleagues turn their eyes toward the next election, those who are re-offering, I think sometimes life offers us a little bit of a bookend to a story, that where one starts ends up being where one finishes.

For the people I represent, who have been engaged in this battle, indigenous and non-indigenous, right and left, rural and urban, for more than 40 years, to see this bill come to pass as one of the last acts of this Parliament, in which there have been disappointments, failures and mistakes as there always are, they can look to this piece of legislation, know that it is in fact founded in science, know that it is in fact founded in deep and profound consultations that have gone on for decades, and know for a fact that what we are doing as a Parliament here today is good.

What we are doing here as colleagues, as parliamentarians, who are called to serve, and in our best ways represent the people of this great country, is something right. There will be those who think it is wrong. I would invite them to come to the place where I live. I would invite them to see this place and meet the people who rely on this place for their very survival.

Allow me to end with this. I was in Bella Coola in Bella Bella, Heiltsuk and Nuxalk territory just last week. It was in the Heiltsuk territory where the Nathan E. Stewart went down. It is a relatively small, segregated barge. The world-class oil spill response that this country has claimed to have for 20 years was unable to handle a relatively small spill that took place on the clam beds and areas where salmon spawned, vital to the Heiltsuk Nation.

That experience was traumatizing for people there. It was traumatizing because they had been warning the federal government for many years that the clean-up for spills was insufficient, our navigational responses were insufficient, and what they were trying to protect was so precious to them. They could not go anywhere else. This was their home, this was where their ancestors were buried.

In watching the response, the brave response from that community, and knowing the risks posed by a much larger and more devastating spill, the least we can do is listen. Politicians are not always great at that. We like to talk. I have been talking for a bit here.

We have had many failures in this place. Parliament has failed rural people and indigenous people more often than not. Every once in a while, we can do something right and we can do something good. Passing this bill, enshrining what has existed for many decades into law, will be doing something right, and I believe doing our jobs on behalf of all Canadians.

Oil Tanker Moratorium Act June 18th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, I have a curiosity for the Conservative government, because I had worked quite closely with our dearly departed friend, Jim Prentice. One of the projects we worked on was the approval of the Great Bear Rainforest. In order for that entire tract of land, coastline and ocean to come under conservation protection, under a Conservative government, we had to abrogate and remove the drilling leases that had been acquired over many decades in the Hecate Strait. That is a body of water between Haida Gwaii and the mainland of coastal British Columbia.

There is no way to be able to bring in the Gwaii Haanas National Marine Reserve, which we did over successive governments and both Liberals and Conservatives joined with us and the people of the north coast in understanding that it is a particular part of the world. I am not sure if my friend has been to the north coast or to Haida Gwaii. It is beyond question for anyone who has spent time there that there is something truly unique about this place. There is something special about and it has been acknowledged not just in words, but also in law and practice, again by Conservative governments of the past.

I am wondering if she could attempt to acknowledge here today that we are not talking about just another part of the world, that it is something special that future generations are counting on us to protect.

Oil Tanker Moratorium Act June 18th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, I am curious about my friend's last comment regarding indigenous rights and title and respecting consultative obligations with respect to the north coast specifically and the oil tankers that could potentially plow through B.C. waters. When the Conservative Party was in government, it issued the permits for the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline. In Federal Court, the former government was shown to have completely failed in the most basic obligations to consult and accommodate first nations and indigenous communities across the northwest. I was privy to some of those consultations, being the member of Parliament from the northwest.

It is passing strange to me that one of the central criticisms now coming from Conservatives is that the Liberals have inadequately consulted first nations. In the first round of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the Federal Court also threw out the current Liberals' effort to adequately and properly consult. I do not understand how Conservatives now say they believe in this fundamental principle when, while in government, they practised one of the worst forms of consultation, which the court immediately threw out, totally abrogating all of the permits that had been issued for the northern gateway pipeline. Now they are lecturing anyone about what proper consultation looks like.

Is this a new evolution in their thinking? Do they have any suggestions regarding what they might eventually do in the future to make up for the many mistakes they made in the past?

Oil Tanker Moratorium June 18th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, 15 years ago, I first rose in this place to pay tribute to an environmental and peace activist named Alice Coppard, who had just passed away. In 1971, she hitchhiked across Canada, gathering signatures for a north coast oil moratorium. One year later in this place, in 1972, Frank Howard, the MP for Skeena, passed a unanimous motion to the same effect.

For those of us watching the devastating impacts of climate change in our communities and watching governments unwilling or unable to act, it is tempting to lose faith. However, hope springs eternal, for after almost 50 years of a campaign to unite indigenous and non-indigenous, environmentalists and conservationists, rural and urban, tonight we will vote to finally pass the north coast oil tanker moratorium into law.

In my final statement to Parliament, I thank all those who fought and campaigned to protect the northwest and who believe firmly in their hearts and minds that it is never too late to build a better world.

Members Not Seeking Re-Election to the 43rd Parliament June 5th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, this is quite an occasion for me, personally, and for my family. What a rare privilege this is, to stand, at any point, in the House of Commons, a place I consider sacred in our democracy. It is a privilege, as well, to be able to talk about life in politics.

This is called a farewell speech. I looked around, and I quite like this quote from Steinbeck:

Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.

I like the idea of farewell. The last number of weeks and months have been quite a strange experience for me. It has been a bit like being at my own funeral, actually. People come up to me and talk about how they feel about me, good and bad, and I get to hear comments that I think we do not share with each other nearly often enough.

I had some reluctance about giving this speech. I did not want to do it at all. My wife, Diana, said, “Don't be stupid”, which is often the advice she has for me. How do I sum up 15 years in politics in a 10-minute speech? How do I, in a 10-minute speech, properly sum up all of the proper thanks that I have for the many volunteers, the staff, the people who support us and make what we do possible? How can I properly express, in a 10-minute speech, the gratitude I feel for the privilege and the opportunity to be a member of Parliament?

I can recall my first speech, which, to no surprise of my parents, Marguerite and John, I was late to. I was rushing to the House. I was a new MP and was told that my staff would write my speech, and then I would read it. I bolted into the House, and as soon as my backside touched the seat, the Speaker said, “The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley”. I popped up and started to read the text that had been prepared over many diligent hours by my staff, Gerry. Within the first paragraph, I was bored out of my mind. I thought that if I was bored, it was very unlikely that anybody else would be interested in what I was saying, so I turned the page over, and I just spoke as best as I could.

It was a bit intimidating, because in the front row, at the time, was Ed Broadbent, who had come back to politics. He turned around in his seat to watch. I thought that if I could get through this trial by fire, with the steely eyes of Ed Broadbent looking at me, then I would do okay.

I know I have been here quite a while now. I knew this as I was walking through the city just last year and saw construction projects that had been started and completed during my tenure as a member of Parliament, government projects. It was shocking. I do not want anyone to look back, but it has been so long I actually had a full head of hair when I got here. I will ask that no one google that.

I thought of how to try to put this all together in my mind. A favourite quote of mine is from the great writer Thomas King, who said, “The truth about stories is, that's all we are.” I firmly believe this. I think we are all stories. We all have our past. We all have our memories, our family, our connection to this place.

My story of getting into politics was a most improbable one. I was a working-class kid growing up with a single mom in Toronto, a cashier at a Dominion food store, with no political inclinations in our family whatsoever, and I ended up in the northwest of British Columbia through a very strange series of fortunate events.

I was asked by a good friend, Bill Goodacre, to consider running. I think many of us have this story, of a friend saying, “You should run.” I said the appropriate thing to Bill: “You're crazy. That is a terrible idea.” He was quite skilled at convincing me that this might be a good idea.

I believe politics, at its best, is a vocation. It should be a calling, not a job. It is not something people show up to. It is something that people are called to do, to serve that calling as best they can.

My goals in coming to Parliament 15 years ago were quite modest. I wanted to leave with my health; I wanted to leave with my family; and I wanted to leave with the integrity I came with intact.

Now, those might seem like modest goals, but they are actually not that modest, as I learned, because this can be a brutal place. It can be hard on families. It can be hard on relationships. It can be hard on us as individuals, and we do not often talk about the strains of being away, the mental health struggles many of us have and do not talk about, maybe increasingly so now.

However, I am proud to represent a place like Skeena—Bulkley Valley. Those who have not been there should go, because it is a magnificent part of the world. It is vast. It is beautiful. It is breathtaking. It is the very best of our country, and even better still are the people who live there. We have an expression up north: “The people don't make the land. The land makes the people.” We are informed by that place, and I am proud of the work we have done.

In this strange life, I have had opportunities to meet great, powerful men and women, such as presidents, kings and queens. They are all impressive in their own way, but the most impressive people to me have been the leaders I have been fortunate enough to encounter in the northwest of British Columbia: local mayors, local community activists and indigenous leaders, who have let me into their hearts and their worlds to express what their vocation is.

A number of years ago, I was attending a Nisga’a celebration called Hobiyee. It is a beautiful, ancient celebration. It is the coming back of the salmon and the eulachon to the northwest. The ceremony goes on all night, and the chiefs at one point come into the hall. Members have to imagine a community hall in northwestern B.C. on a beautiful night, and the chiefs are all milling about outside in their beautiful regalia with amazing masks. One of the chiefs came to me and said, “Walk in with us”, and I said, “This is not my place. This is your hall. This is your place. I am just an observer.” He said, “We've talked about it, and you're walking with us.”

As I came into the hall for Hobiyee, the first three rows on either side were filled with women singing, and they sing into the middle, where the chiefs walk in. Outside of them are the drummers. The Nisga’a have a tradition of turning a bent wood box drum on its corner, and big Nisga’a dudes pound away in a heartbeat rhythm. I walked in with the chiefs. It is a very slow procession, and they sing to their leadership. They call their leadership forward and hold them up to represent them. I thought about what we needed to learn from that as parliamentarians, as people who purport to lead and speak on behalf of others.

I have been so blessed. We are a family, and there are many families that inform our politics. My political family is here, and in my riding in Skeena, executive and volunteers, far too many to name: Jennifer Davies, Rob Gofenay, Len and Irene, and Pat Moss. We all have dedicated Canadians who care and inform us. My political family was also Jack, whom I miss to this day.

We also have our parliamentary family, and that is not often spoken of. We, as colleagues, struggle with one another and disagree, but we also meet in this sacred place, and sometimes, not often enough maybe, we find common ground as we seek to make this country a better place.

Then I have my actual family, who are here: Diana and my beautiful boys, Isaac and Elliot. We have some plans. We have some time together, which I so look forward to.

We join together in the northwest to defend what we believe we must defend. We try to reach out across traditional political lines of interest and groups of interest to support one another and defend what is sacred to us, which is the land and the rivers that feed us, the very world that enriches us. For 15 years, the folks in the northwest have decided to put me forward as their voice, and no more of a humbling experience have I ever had.

I believe we are actors passing across the stage. We all have our moment here, and we can lose perspective as we pass across this stage, yet others will pass behind us. May we, in all of our efforts, seek to not only leave Parliament a better place, but leave this country a better place. For sure, I have been left better by this experience.

Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1 June 4th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question about the credibility and value of Liberal promises. In a single bill, the Liberals have managed to break three sacred promises they made during the last campaign.

I want to make a couple of comments in English. My friend talks about the 2008 budget, when the Conservatives were forced to spend money. He was not here, but he will recall that the initial iteration of the Conservative budget under Harper, leading into a global recession, was actually meant to massively cut back on expenditures in Canada. It was only when threatened with their own government's demise and having to seek permission from the Governor General to shut down all of Parliament when facing a non-confidence vote that the Conservatives reversed course and made virtue out of a crisis, saying, “Oh, here is our new budget responding to the global recession.”

This is an omnibus budget bill. Buried in it are significant changes to our refugee laws. It is obviously not a budget item to change immigration or refugee laws. One of the reasons my colleagues on the Conservative side are not arguing about this today is that they agree with the Liberals. In fact, they pushed the Liberals on these refugee claims, that they should be handled differently, much to the chagrin of many of the refugee advocates who previously advocated for the Liberal government.

Could the member verify if that is true, and maybe fully rectify the historical record of how deficits were first created under the Harper government?

Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1 June 4th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, Canadians have grown somewhat accustomed to the Liberals breaking the promises they put hand on heart and solemnly swore to in the last campaign. However, in this one instance, the Liberals are breaking three commitments all at the same time. First, they committed not to use omnibus legislation to sneak in major changes that have nothing to do with the budget. That is exactly what we see here with respect to refugees. Second, they said they would not use closure to shut down debate in Parliament, yet here they are, at a record pace, beating even the Harper government's pace, shutting it down 69 times.

When asked about these refugee claimants, the border security minister said these changes were necessary because there was too much “asylum shopping” going on, which refugee advocates across this country properly condemned. He also said the reason for these changes was that a fearmongering campaign had been initiated by the Conservatives, with support from groups like the yellow vest movement. He actually laid the claim that this fearmongering was going on with respect to refugee claimants. Then what did he do? Rather than fight against that fearmongering, he capitulated to it in the changes we see here today.

We see the hypocrisy. It is exactly right. I believe Amnesty International and the refugee advocates in this country when they say the Liberals have broken that promise to Canadians in three different ways. Why are they so surprised that Canadians are failing to support them now when they failed to keep their promises sacred?

The Environment May 16th, 2019

Madam Speaker, I think it is unhelpful and lacking in courage or ambition for the government to use the standard set by the previous government. Stephen Harper's targets and actions, or inactions, are not really much of a bar to set for a government that came in with a promise and such hopefulness regarding climate change. The member may argue whether it was proper for the government to continue with Stephen Harper's targets, but it is hurt by the fact that the government is not even going to meet those targets, according to the Auditor General.

The Harper government promised not to subsidize oil and gas. It made that promise to the OECD. The current government did the same thing, yet it continues the practice of subsidizing carbon.

Last night, the Senate, at the committee level, rejected Bill C-48, on the north coast tanker ban, which 67% of the members elected to the House voted to pass. This is a question of power between the Senate and the House. When democratically elected members of the House pass a bill like the one on the north coast tanker ban, what is the member willing to do, joining with us, to push back on the unelected house, the Senate, when its members describe a reality and preference that is different from the will expressed by the voters of this country?

The Environment May 16th, 2019

Mr. Speaker, there are contradictions within this debate. The government talks about this being an emergency and a crisis, but it also went out and bought a $4.5-billion pipeline, and it plans to expand it by tripling it. It is a bit of a contradiction. I think the minister, in a quiet moment, could admit to do doing harm, while saying that they are doing a benefit, and that the targets will not be met.

I want to speak to her about something very specific, which is larger than even the issue of climate change, and that is our role as parliamentarians. Last night, the Senate committee voted to kill C-48, a government-sponsored bill on the north coast tanker ban, which I had sponsored in a previous Parliament. The government campaigned on this, as did four out of five parties in this House.

This is a democratic question I ask. I think this is the first time in Canadian history that a government-sponsored bill is threatened with defeat at the Senate, which this government reformed, perhaps creating a bad problem and maybe making it worse.

What will the minister do to join with us not only to protect the north coast from the threat of oil spills and to make sure that this bill becomes law but to push back on the unelected and unaccountable Senate that is looking to overturn the democratic will of this House, as expressed by Canadians in the past election? This does not just have an effect now; it will affect future parliaments and the expressed will of Canadian voters in those elections.