Bill C-5 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to, among other things, repeal certain mandatory minimum penalties, allow for a greater use of conditional sentences and establish diversion measures for simple drug possession offences.

Opposition Motion—Repeal of Bill C-5

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, today we are talking about the deaths of 47,000 Canadians, many of them young people. Forty-seven thousand Canadians have died in the last number of years in drug-related deaths. Two of them, I am going to be talking about today.

Young Brianna MacDonald was 13 years old when she overdosed. She was found in a homeless encampment after having a cardiac arrest. She was 13, still a child. Her parents tried to get her into treatment for months. They could give her free crack pipes from the government, but they could not get treatment for her. There was also Kamilah Sword, 14 years old, who died of a drug overdose. Again, hooked on drugs from the government's so-called safe supply, which I will talk about shortly.

It is 47,000 people, many of them young people, many of them young children. It is all of their parents, their siblings and their friends. Beyond that, it is all the people in drug psychosis who have committed violent acts and the innocent people they have hurt with violent break and enters, sexual assaults and murders. It is all of the crime and mayhem to our small businesses, and the decay in our cities and in our once safe communities.

We have seen, in a very short amount of time in our cities, in our towns, in rural Canada, from coast to coast to coast, this drug crisis wreak havoc on our communities. Innocent young people have died. I have been in this place now for five years, and what have we heard as the solution, the proposal to this radical liberalization of drugs in this country? From the NDP members and the Liberals they support, their solution to all these drug deaths is more drugs, taxpayer-funded government drugs, on a mass scale, with no accountability.

What is really tragic is that, for this taxpayer-funded so-called safe supply, there is really nothing safe about it. Totally predictably, it is being diverted to vulnerable people, to young people. A drug addict, someone addicted to drugs, will go and get their so-called safe supply from the taxpayer. They will be provided many pills.

What has been happening is that drug dealers will wait outside the pharmacy. The person addicted to drugs will come out with their so-called safe supply and sell it to the drug dealer for either harsher drugs, like heroin or fentanyl, or for cash so they can buy some food, some cigarettes, alcohol or whatever it might be, another substance. They are taking the government safe supply and they are exchanging it with a drug dealer for something harsher. The drug dealer is then taking this so-called safe supply to kids, for example, and saying, “Oh, it is safe. It is government regulated. It will be a nice high.”

The government and taxpayers are funding the new gateway drug for kids, which has killed Kamilah Sword, Brianna MacDonald and thousands more young people in this country. The National Post and others have done phenomenal investigative journalism on this, and when they visited Kamilah Sword's community, they talked to many of her friends.

I will call one of her friends “Hannah”. It is not her real name. She said that kids aged 11 to 17 in this young lady's circles, kids who should be watching cartoons and having snacks after school, were using taxpayer-funded drugs they bought off drug dealers. Some are 11 years old. Of course, these drug dealers glamorize it saying, “Oh, it will be great. It will be fun.” They downplay the risks.

Hannah said that, once they get you hooked on this safe supply, then they push heroin. They are pushing it on 11 year olds and 13 year olds. This how we have Ms. MacDonald ending up dead, having a heart attack. They start on something that is so-called safe and then end up dead on fentanyl.

One of Kamilah's friends' mothers said that she had never met so many teenagers who were drug addicts before, and that a huge majority of teens were using because it was so easily available. She is talking about government safe supply. She said she had to pull her daughter out of that community because it was just so readily available, so tempting. In order to save her daughter's life, she had to pull her out of the community. That is a brave mom and a strong mom, but not all parents are able to do that, not all parents have that ability.

We are also seeing the vulnerability of first nations. Another young woman who was interviewed was a first nations woman. Her name was Jennifer and she was talking about how drug dealers are, same thing, taking these safe supply drugs, massive amounts of them, and selling them for dirt cheap on first nations reserves to vulnerable kids. As if they did not have enough issues to deal with, now there is a flood of taxpayer-funded government safe supply. It is wrong what is being done. It is so wrong that doctors are starting to speak out.

In fact, one is Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addictions physician. Again, this is Dr. Lester's specialty. He said, “I had several patients who were drug-free for a long time and just couldn’t resist the temptation of this very cheap hydromorphone”, which is the safe supply, “that was now on the street.”

He also said, “Every addiction medicine doctor I’ve spoken to has told me that, on a daily basis in their offices, they’re dealing with diverted hydromorphone, either from new clients coming in addicted to it, or patients of theirs that are using it as a drug of abuse.” It is just so readily available and it is so tempting to people struggling to try to move on from their addictions that doctors are saying that what they are seeing is completely unacceptable.

It is getting so bad that the B. C. government actually had to reverse course. The B.C. government had asked the Liberals, who would gladly help, to decriminalize things like small possession. However, we know that it was not small possession as the possession amount could have killed hundreds of people with things like fentanyl. The B.C. government decriminalized toxic drugs like heroin, fentanyl and meth for just over a year before the public outrage and the disorder that it caused forced the B.C. government to move back and ask the Liberals to help them with that.

This is really wild, but it is just in line with all of this. In that same psychotic government policy year, the top doctor in B.C., Dr. Bonnie Henry ordered vending machines at ERs and hospitals not for Pepsi, Coke or a granola bar, but for free crack pipes. Someone would be walking into an ER with a horrible injury and pass a free crack pipe. They could just get one on their way out like a goody bag.

Obviously, the public outrage on both of these things was fierce, and rightfully so, and both of these things have now been pulled back, thankfully. However, it just shows how far the government is ready to go. That is the reality of where these policies are going.

The people responsible for all of these deaths, over 47,000 deaths, the drug dealers, the drug traffickers, the drug importers and exporters who are bringing in the ingredients and importing the drugs, the ones who are producing the drugs in the meth labs and then of course those pushing them on people, that is, drug importers, drug producers and drug dealers, have a lot of blood on their hands. We should be taking strong measures to ensure that they are punished. A message should be sent to all the other ones that, if they do this, they will be punished and go to jail for a long time. That is what we should be doing or, we would think, that is what would be the case already.

That was the case. There was mandatory prison time for drug trafficking, for drug importing and for drug production. There was, and then the Liberals came along and brought forward Bill C-5, despite all of those deaths.

Do members want to know what Bill C-5 did? It eliminated mandatory prison time for drug traffickers, drug producers and drug importers. All of the people responsible for killing over 47,000 people and causing unbelievable mayhem and destruction in our communities no longer have mandatory prison times. It has been repeated over and over again that Bill C-5's specific goal was that fewer people would go to prison.

Those people are murderers. They are the reason that Kamilah Sword, 14 years old, is dead and Brianna MacDonald is dead. Under a Conservative government, there will be justice for these young women. There will be justice for the 47,000 people who have been killed by these drug traffickers, importers and producers. They will be held accountable.

The porous border we have seen over the last number of years under the government will also be shored up. Did members know that after nine years of the Liberal government, less than 1% of the containers we bring in, all of our shipments, all of our Amazon orders, all of our produce, is checked? That is where guns, drugs and precursors to drugs are coming in. It is less than 1%.

Our approach will be to take the border seriously, invest in scanning technology and hold the monsters who are responsible for killing these 47,000 people and causing destruction and mayhem in our communities responsible for that. They will have to pay for what they have done. They will go to jail, hopefully for a very long time under a Conservative majority government. Rest assured.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, the reality is that Bill C‑5 allows drug dealers and producers to serve Netflix sentences and stay out of jail. The Bloc Québécois made a serious mistake by supporting Bill C‑5. That is why the Bloc Québécois had to do a U-turn and support a Conservative bill. I do not know if the member knows which bill he voted for, but he later voted to repeal Bill C‑5.

I do not know if the Bloc Québécois is doing another U-turn now to support Bill C‑5, but the Bloc Québécois supports all the policies that free criminals and all the policies that have resulted in out-of-control crime. The Conservatives' Bill C‑325 will repeal Bill C‑5 and put drug dealers in jail instead of handing them Netflix sentences. That is common sense. I hope the Bloc Québécois stays true to that—

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, this afternoon, the Leader of the Opposition has been telling us that Bill C‑5 is responsible for the toxic drug crisis, and it sounds like he is serious. He has been telling us that Bill C‑5, which sought to decriminalize simple possession and not penalize addicts or take them to court, would trigger an extraordinary crisis. He has been telling us that Bill C‑5 will let drug lords off the hook. I imagine he knows those people.

Can he name them for us?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is a silent killer, relentless and ruthless, marching through our streets. It is stealing breath, stopping hearts, breaking spirits and numbing pain only to multiply it. There is an invisible force, malicious and merciless, taking our loved ones one by one and turning vibrant lives into fading echoes. How do we fight this silent killer, when its poison lingers everywhere in the land? Now, 47,000 Canadians have died of fentanyl overdoses. This is more than died fighting for Canada in the Second World War.

Never before seen homeless camps and drug dens overtake once-beautiful communities, where contorted bodies lie half dead on filthy sidewalks in scenes resembling third world squalor. The government tranquilizes our people with an unsafe supply of tax-funded narcotics, from which those same troubled souls then graduate to even more dangerous drugs.

Such drugs as fentanyl, which is 100 times more potent than heroin, now abound in our streets. We have seen a 200% annual increase in overdose deaths in the last eight years, with the worst death counts massing in British Columbia, where the policies of soft sentences, non-enforcement and taxpayer-funded drug distribution have all been most enthusiastically embraced. We were told that these policies were based on science and data, yet all the science and data have proven these policies lethal and proven the counterfactual, which is to say that the places doing the opposite are far more secure and safe.

Not only is this killer ravaging our streets, but it is now spilling over our borders. In November, the RCMP busted Canada's largest-ever drug superlab, which had 54 kilograms of fentanyl. This is almost triple what the U.S. border patrol seized crossing the border this year. This lab contained enough fentanyl and precursor chemicals to produce more than 95.5 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. It also seized 89 firearms, including 45 handguns, 21 AR-style rifles and submachine guns, many of which were loaded and ready for use. All of these guns were easier for criminals and drug kingpins to get than ever before, not in spite of, but because of, the policies of the NDP-Liberal government. Small explosive devices, large amounts of ammunition, firearm silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armour and $500,000 in cold hard cash were all part of the drug bust.

The RCMP said that the lab was believed to be behind the “production, and the distribution of unprecedented quantities of fentanyl, and methamphetamine”. In October, the RCMP seized 33 tonnes, which is to say 66,138 pounds, of chemical precursors used to make the same deadly drugs. The RCMP says Canada is now a producer and exporter of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. In other words, despite our massive consumption of these deadly drugs, we actually produce even more than we consume, and we sell the surplus abroad.

CSIS has identified that more than 350 organized crime groups are actively involved in domestic illegal fentanyl marketing. CSIS says the precursor chemicals are largely sourced from China. Eighty per cent of chemicals used in fentanyl production are actually legal and unregulated in Canada. They can be procured here and imported from China, and even if they were not legal, the head of the border guards recently said that 99% of the incoming shipping containers go completely uninspected. Therefore, it would not even matter if they were banned, because the government would have no way of stopping them from coming in.

Eighty-four per cent of organized crime groups are involved in some aspect of the illicit drug trade, primarily in distribution. Street gangs are involved in the fentanyl trade, and street gang involvement in that trade has more than doubled in five years. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seizures of fentanyl doses from Canada have gone from 239 kilograms to 839 kilograms. More than three times as much fentanyl was caught in 2023 than in 2024. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol seized 14 pounds of raw fentanyl in 2022; this has risen to 43 pounds. That, by the way, might not sound like a lot, but 43 pounds of fentanyl is enough to kill almost 10 million people. This illustrates the deadly nature of this poison.

What has the government done in this regard? First of all, it passed Bill C-5, reducing penalties for the murderers who produce and market these drugs. I call them murderers. Members might ask how I know that those producing these drugs have committed murder. The answer is that if we produce fentanyl on a large scale, we know with statistical certainty that we will kill people. There is no doubt that, on a statistical basis, if we are selling 2,000 or 3,000 hits of fentanyl, someone will die as a result of our actions, and we know it.

The government has allowed these murderers to get out of jail and go back to the streets, where they legally import the ingredients that go into this deadly poison. It can then be sold to people who are hopelessly addicted and have no way of getting off the drugs. Simultaneously, the government has found millions of dollars to subsidize the distribution of synthetic opioids that are supposedly used to “reduce harm”.

As my colleague from Kildonan—St. Paul will point out, as I split my time with her, there is no doubt that people are graduating from and using the proceeds of these tax-funded opioids to fund the fentanyl trade. While we have had wild inflation in almost every product that is on the market in Canada, one thing that has become vastly cheaper is synthetic opioids, such as the ones the government funds. They have gone down, not because they are cheaper, but because the greatest part of the price is paid through taxpayer-funded subsidies, supposedly to reduce the harm. We now know that this has done precisely the opposite. It not only murders our people but now threatens our livelihoods as our American friends demand swift action to secure the border, to protect their people against the recklessness of the government.

That is why common-sense Conservatives are making proposals to stop the drugs. We call for the repeal of Bill C-5, the law that allows these drug kingpins to go free. We must act to reinstate longer drug sentences for the kingpins, to ban the importation of fentanyl precursors, to buy high-powered scanners, to put more boots on the ground at our ports in order to stop fentanyl and to reinforce that we have a strong border, as we did nine years ago.

It should not have taken Donald Trump to make this point. Our government should have been thinking about our people. It is not because of another president that we should take these actions. It is because we believe that not one more mother should bury her face in her hands out of the heartbreak of losing a child. We must take the swift actions to secure our borders, to lock up the drug murderers, to clear our streets of these toxins and poisons, to invest in treatment and recovery, to bring our loved ones home drug-free and to heal our nation.

Public Accounts

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to this important motion on behalf of the great people of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, and I just want to remind the Speaker that I will be splitting my time with the great member for Chilliwack—Hope.

I am always happy to discuss the issue of border security and how we can maintain and improve our relationship with the United States. Given that Canada and the United States share the longest undefended border in the world, addressing the very real and very serious public safety issues we are facing at home are of the utmost importance to managing our relationship with our biggest trading partner and greatest ally.

U.S. President-elect Trump has made it very clear that he will impose a crippling 25% tariff on all Canadian products if Canada does not fix our chaos at the border and get a handle on the fentanyl crisis that is plaguing our country. While Conservatives agree that these issues must be addressed, we do not want to address these issues for the sake of the United States but for the sake of Canadians.

For far too long, the Liberal government has taken a soft-on-crime approach to drugs at our borders, and as a result, Canadians are suffering. The Prime Minister made a deal with the British Columbia NDP to decriminalize fentanyl, crack and heroin. He lowered jail sentences for drug kingpins and did nothing to prevent the import of the deadly precursor chemicals that are cooked into poison in drug superlabs and sold on our streets.

The Prime Minister has also broken our border. Since the Prime Minister came to power, there has been a 632% increase in U.S. border patrol encounters with people illegally attempting to enter the United States from Canada. In the first 10 months of 2024 alone, the U.S. border patrol has intercepted more than 21,000 people illegally crossing the border from Canada into the U.S.

The NDP-Liberal government sat back and watched as the backlog of the number of asylum claims in Canada skyrocketed from 10,000 to 250,000 over the past nine years. There are as many as 500,000 people in Canada who are here illegally. Statistics from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that roughly twice as many suspected terrorists have tried to cross from Canada into the U.S. as from Mexico into the U.S. in recent years. Additionally, in the 12 months leading up to September 2024, U.S. border agents seized about 11,600 pounds of drugs entering the United States from Canada. Seizures of fentanyl doses more than tripled between 2023 and 2024, rising from 239,000 doses to 839,000 doses.

The issue of fentanyl production in Canada has skyrocketed under the Prime Minister. Drug kingpins and gangsters are allowed to operate with impunity, and if they are caught, many of these criminals can serve their sentences in the comfort of their own homes under his soft-on-crime policies. A memo drafted by CSIS to the Prime Minister recently stated that CSIS identified more than 350 organized crime groups actively involved in the domestic illegal fentanyl market, and “China continues to be listed as the main source country for a variety of precursor chemicals intended for the illegal production of drugs in Canada and some illegal drugs smuggled into Canada.”

We are producing so much fentanyl here in Canada that we have become a net exporter of fentanyl rather than an importer of the product. According to the RCMP, the fentanyl threat in Canada has shifted from one of importation to one of domestic production. Almost all of the fentanyl consumed in Canada is now “produced in Canada”, according to a criminology professor at the Université de Montréal, and there is actually a production surplus.

While we are certainly exporting fentanyl to the U.S. and distributing it in the domestic market here in Canada, the RCMP's federal serious and organized crime program has stated that the fentanyl that is produced in Canada is also destined for export to southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, where drug users pay considerably higher prices for fentanyl than in Canada and the U.S.

How did we get here? Why have we become a net exporter of fentanyl? Before 2019, fentanyl was effectively legal in China. We could go on the Internet and find legitimate Chinese companies selling fentanyl online. This Chinese-made fentanyl flooded Canadian streets throughout the mid-2010s.

In 2019, Beijing finally caved to pressure, primarily from the United States, and blanket-banned the production and sale of all fentanyl analogues. However, it continued to fuel the fentanyl crisis by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of the precursor chemicals and materials that are used to make the drugs by traffickers.

In April 2024, U.S. investigators discovered a Chinese government website that revealed tax rebates for the production of specific fentanyl precursors as well as other synthetic drugs, as long as those companies sold them outside of China. We know this had a significant impact on the Canadian production of fentanyl, because seizures of precursor chemicals increased dramatically between 2020 and 2021.

In the first half of 2021, our border officers seized 5,000 kilograms of precursor chemicals, up from 500 kilograms the year before. Last year, the U.S. sanctioned several Chinese companies and individuals who have profited from the trade of precursor chemicals without facing consequences in China. So far, Canada has not sanctioned any of these individuals.

The enforcement of both exports and imports at our west coast ports is also dismal. The public safety committee recently did a study on auto theft and learned just how little we are searching and seizing at our ports. In 2023, the mayor of Delta, British Columbia, called out the Liberal government for its failure to address the rampant crime at the port of Vancouver.

He stated, “We're witnessing a relentless flow of illegal drugs, weapons and contraband into Canada through our ports and that threatens our national security.... They need to recognize this. We have a fentanyl crisis going through our community here in Delta, through Metro Vancouver, through the province, across the nation”.

Just recently, Mark Weber, the CBSA union head, was on Global News and stated, “We search less than 1% of what comes into Canada”. It is clear that something must be done. We must act to fix our borders and stop the rampant production of fentanyl within our borders.

Many constituents have been writing and calling to ask the following: Why did it take so long to address these very real issues? Why did it take the United States president-elect threatening crippling tariffs for the Prime Minister to take any meaningful steps to address the chaos at our borders and the scourge of fentanyl on our streets? Was it not enough that parents were seeing their children overdose on fentanyl in homeless encampments, that Jewish communities faced threats from ISIS sympathizers who came to the country on student visas or that Canadians were being gunned down by gangsters with illegal guns that had been smuggled over our borders?

All these terrible realities that Canadians are facing should have been enough for the Prime Minister to act. Instead, he stood by and told Canadians over and over again that they have never had it so good. Only Conservatives have a real plan to address the crime and chaos at our borders and to bring our loved ones home drug-free. Today, we are asking all parties to support our common-sense plan calling on the Liberal government to address the illegal importation of fentanyl precursors and the illegal production and export of fentanyl here at home.

Conservatives are calling on the government today to reverse Liberal Bill C-5, to reinstate longer jail sentences for drug kingpins, to ban the importation of fentanyl precursors, to buy high-powered scanners, to put more boots on the ground at our ports to stop fentanyl and its ingredients from coming into our country and to stop buying unsafe supply of opioids.

Conservatives want to stop drug overdoses so that not one more parent has to bury their son or daughter, after 47,000 other Canadians have died. That is more than we lost in the Second World War, and it represents a 200% annual increase in drug overdose deaths since the Prime Minister's radical liberalization of drugs.

The Liberal government and everyone in this place must put partisanship aside, not just for the sake of team Canada but for the sake of the families who are suffering, and support our common-sense Conservative plan. We must secure our borders and bring our loved ones home drug-free.

École Polytechnique de Montréal

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, December 6 is always a hard day. It is always a harsh wake-up call. It brings back all the trauma. Exactly 35 years ago today, the unthinkable happened. It was in Montreal, on the eve of exams. The holidays were approaching. It should have been a time for celebration, but on that day, 14 female engineering students at the Polytechnique in Montreal were murdered in cold blood, because they were women.

The tragedy left us stunned with horror. We could not believe what had happened. We were all in shock. These 14 young women were all university students in the prime of life. They were probably feeling carefree, like people are at that age, when they think that they have everything figured out, that they are invincible, that the world is their oyster. That is how it should have been for these women.

Remember the 14: Geneviève Bergeron; Hélène Colgan; Nathalie Croteau; Barbara Daigneault; Anne‑Marie Edward; Maud Haviernick; Barbara Klucznik‑Widajewicz; Maryse Laganière; Maryse Leclair; Anne‑Marie Lemay; Sonia Pelletier; Michèle Richard; Annie St‑Arneault; and Annie Turcotte.

They were separated from the male students and murdered in cold blood because they were women. It is unspeakably cruel that a woman can be murdered and suffer this fate simply because she is a woman. In fact, it was so shocking that this Parliament decreed that every December 6 would be the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women.

I was in shock when it happened. I was 22. Obviously, we were all shaken by this tragedy. I also remember the moments surrounding the event. These women were my age. They were studying at university, just as I was. They had dreams and ambitions. In an instant, all that was shattered. Understandably, there were countless collateral victims, including family, colleagues and friends. Their journey came to an end, while mine continued. For all these reasons, they will forever be in my thoughts.

Today we pay tribute to these women, but we also pay tribute to the women in Canada and women around the world who are victims of hate and violence in all its forms. Thirty-five years later, this day is still necessary and just as relevant. Unfortunately, intimate partner violence, sexual assault and misogynistic speech still exist. The year is not over yet, but in 2024 alone, in Quebec, there have been 25 femicides. In Canada, there have been 169 so far in 2024.

In Canada, gender equality should not even be an issue. It should be settled question. It should be absorbed and learned from an early age. Gender equality is not up for debate. Everyone needs to understand that violence is never the answer, that women need to be completely free, free to study, free to govern, free to be MPs, free to be ministers, free from fear and from all forms of violence. They should never have to be in a constant state of hypervigilance when they walk down the street, as we are far too often. Only a woman can say that these days. Only women can say that.

At the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, I have incredible colleagues from all parties who I work with to improve this sad state of affairs, to ensure that women can move around freely and safely. We are making recommendations to the government.

Respectfully, I would like to make a few observations. This is not coming from a place of partisanship. I just want to share these ideas so that we can work together to fix this very sad trend of increasing violence. Violence has increased by 116% in Canada since 2015. Whether it is sexual assault or child abuse, all this violence is happening right under our noses. In my riding, people are firing guns. We really need to put positive measures in place in order for things to improve.

Quebec's justice minister, Simon Jolin-Barrette, says that Bill C‑5, which has been introduced in the House, allows people who commit violent acts to serve their sentences at home. Then there is Bill C‑75, which allows violent offenders to be released on bail. Normally, we would not allow people who have committed such acts to serve their sentences at home or to be released on bail. This is something that worries us on this side of the House. I am not saying this in a partisan way. The police forces are telling us this. Quebeckers are very sensitive to what the Quebec government says. It was Quebec's justice minister who shared this message about sexual assault. Women are being assaulted and men are walking around free. I say men because we know that 90% of sexual assaults are committed against women.

Today we are paying tribute to the victims. It is nice, and we are all giving fine speeches. We are joined in sadness. However, let us also take a close look at the actions we are taking and the decisions we are making as legislators. When we realize that something is not working, that we are not getting the desired results, let us have the collective intelligence to review, in this place, the measures that have been taken. I will pick up on something that was said earlier by the minister, whom I like very much. She talked about measures that have been put in place and an action plan she wants to table. I will just make this comment.

I would be remiss if I did not take a few seconds to commend the organizations in my colleagues' ridings and in my own riding, such as Fondation jonction pour elle, the Centre-Femmes Bellechasse, the Centre-Femmes l'Ancrage, and the Association féministe d'éducation et d'action sociale. These are all women helping other women in need, including women fleeing violence. These women welcome them and help them move forward.

In tribute to all the injured, abused and murdered women, I say this: We must never forget them.

Public Safety

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it was just reported in Vancouver that two people were wounded in another random stabbing. After nine years of the Prime Minister, these tragic stories are sadly more common, as violent crime is up 50%. The NDP-Liberal soft-on-crime policies and laws have unleashed a crime wave across Canada, including random attacks.

Bill C-75 created a catch-and-release bail system. Bill C-5 removed mandatory minimum sentences on many serious crimes. Will the Liberal government reverse these reckless policies?

[Richard Martel, Conservative, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's violent crime rate is 14% higher than that of the United States. Again this week, the media reported that a woman was kidnapped, beaten and strangled in Val‑d'Or, in Abitibi. This government has abandoned victims with the full support of the Bloc Québécois, which voted in favour of Bill C‑5, a bill that allows violent criminals to serve their sentence while they sit at home watching Netflix.

The Liberals and the Bloc would rather support criminals than victims.

When will an election be called?

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Madam Speaker, we are here because of the Liberal government's refusal to release documents, which is the will of this Parliament.

It really makes us question what the Liberals are trying so desperately to hide. The government should have obeyed the request of the House of Commons. The House of Commons is the voice of Canadians, and the government cannot ignore this request. It is not just a request; this is an order of the House. This is exactly what the Liberal government has done.

Our motion could not have been clearer. It demanded that all documents related to Sustainable Development Technology Canada, now widely known as the Liberal billion-dollar green slush fund, be tabled with the law clerk of the House of Commons and transferred to the RCMP for investigation. The government had 30 days to comply, but it did not do so.

As a result, the opposition House leader raised a question of privilege with the Speaker. The Speaker agreed that the members' privileges of the House had been breached and that the government had ignored an order of the House. However, the Liberal government continues to ignore it. I know Liberal colleagues across the aisle will say they have tabled 29,000 pages of documents. What they do not say is that many of those documents were heavily redacted, against the instructions of this Parliament. It does not matter whether they table two pages or two million pages; if the documents are redacted and blacked out, we cannot see the information on those pages.

If the Liberals chose to hide the relevant information that the House requested to protect Liberal insiders, then those documents are not worth the paper or the ink that was used. Ultimately, the Liberal government is hiding the information from the RCMP. We have to question why this has gone on for weeks and weeks. What are the Liberals trying to hide?

Just to go back and give a little history for anyone listening who is not familiar with this ethical scandal at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, before the current Liberal government, this program was not controversial. Through past governments of other parties and all parties, SDTC provided funding to Canadian innovators seeking to develop clean new technologies. However, under the current Liberal government, SDTC became widely known as the green slush fund because it was known as a hotbed of corruption for use by Liberal insiders.

We know this because the Auditor General of Canada, the Ethics Commissioner and whistle-blowers uncovered clear and widespread corruption in favour of Liberal insiders. The issues began in 2018 when the Liberal industry minister at the time, Navdeep Bains, chose to appoint a new chair to the SDTC, an entrepreneur who was already receiving funding through one of her companies. The Liberals were warned internally of the risks associated with appointing a conflicted chair.

We had heard this and this has come to light. The Liberals were told that up to that point, the fund had never had a chair with interests in companies receiving funding, yet they chose to appoint her anyway. The new chair went on to create an environment where conflicts of interest were tolerated or managed by board members, as described by the Auditor General. Board members went on, through SDTC, to grant funding to companies that they held stock or positions in. It was a direct conflict of interest.

Bains, the Liberal minister at the time, went on to appoint two other controversial board members who engaged in unethical behaviour, in obvious conflicts of interest, acting by approving funding to companies in which they held ownership stakes. Department officials from the government sat in on board meetings. They were witness to 186 conflicts of interest at the board, but they did not intervene.

Then, in November 2022, whistle-blowers raised internal concerns with the Auditor General about unethical practices at SDTC. In September 2023, the whistle-blowers took the allegations public, forcing the Liberal industry minister to suspend SDTC funding.

In November 2023, the Auditor General started to conduct an audit. This audit found many approved projects that were ineligible for funding, a conflict of interest or both. There was $58 million that went to 10 ineligible projects that, on all occasions, could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or development of green technology, the actual purpose of the fund. The Liberal-appointed SDTC board approved $334 million, over 186 cases, for projects in which the board members held a conflict of interest. These numbers are absolutely staggering. The Auditor General found that the Liberal minister “did not sufficiently monitor” the contracts that were given to the Liberal insiders.

This is a culture of corruption that was Liberal-made. We know this because the Auditor General gave SDTC a clean bill of health back in 2017. It was only after the hand-picked Liberal board members were appointed that this fund began voting itself really absurd amounts of taxpayer dollars.

The Liberals will say this agency was at arm's length, but there were government officials sitting in on board meetings, so it was not at arm's length. The Liberal minister recommended board appointments, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada had senior department officials sitting in on every board meeting, monitoring the activities of the board. It is unbelievable that senior department officials said nothing during this time.

As well, we know the Auditor General did not analyze all of the projects and contracts. In fact, it was only approximately half that the Auditor General analyzed. Therefore, these 186 instances could potentially be considerably higher, maybe even double that. This is shocking. It is why this Parliament has been seized with this.

It really bodes the question: Why are the Liberals fighting so hard to not bring the documents forth and to not shine a light on what has occurred? If there were all of these conflicts of interest, why would they not want to shine sunlight on the situation and bring all of this to light so it can be analyzed, and if there is criminal activity, that could potentially be pursued? It is unbelievable that this is all being pushed under the rug because the government does not want it to come to light.

It is disappointing we are here discussing this matter of privilege rather than discussing issues that are important to residents in my community of Kelowna—Lake Country and, in fact, all Canadians. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, there is really no shortage of issues to be discussing.

One issue I would like to talk about, and hear more on, is crime and how members of my community are worried over the rise in violent crime that has happened under the watch of the NDP-Liberals. The statistics are shocking compared to 2015. Homicides are up 28%, sexual assaults are up 75%, gang murders have nearly doubled, auto thefts are up 46% and extortion is up 357%. These are serious, violent crimes. British Columbia has seen the total number of violent Criminal Code violations increase by over 50% since 2015.

The situation of crime really is out of control. Instead of debating how to better keep our communities safe, we are debating this matter of privilege regarding this apparent Liberal cover-up. The legislative changes made by the Liberal government, supported by the NDP, serve to put the welfare of perpetrators, often violent ones, over the welfare of victims.

Law enforcement and policy experts are calling for reform. Liberal Bill C-75 directed judges to act with restraint when imposing bail conditions, even with violent repeat offenders. It has been a driving force behind the catch-and-release nature of Canada's bail system. Liberal Bill C-5 removed mandatory minimum sentences for 14 Criminal Code sections, including serious crimes related to firearms and drugs. It is unbelievable.

Liberal Bill C-83 changed the correctional system in part to ensure those convicted and sentenced to penitentiaries are provided with the least restrictive environment for that person. Many believe it is this legislation that allowed serial killers like Paul Bernardo to move to a medium-security prison environment despite committing heinous crimes.

Across Canada, law enforcement experts and associations have made it clear they are fed up with the Liberal government's legislative agenda that increased crime and chaos in many of our neighbourhoods. For example, recently, the Police Association of Ontario, the Ontario Provincial Police Association and the Toronto Police Association issued a joint statement following an intense shootout in Toronto that led to 23 arrests and 16 firearms being seized. It states, “Our members are increasingly frustrated and angered as they continue risking their lives to apprehend repeat violent offenders.” It went on to say the incident “should serve as a call to action for the federal government to fix our bail system so repeat and violent offenders can’t continue to harm our communities while out on bail.”

The Vancouver Police Union, close to where I am in British Columbia, stated how Liberal justice reforms are “doing little to address actual crime and violence.” It also said the Prime Minister is “not aware of the ongoing gang war here in B.C. which is putting both our members and public at risk on a daily basis.” The Surrey Police Union, also in British Columbia, described its pressing current issue as “the surge of illegal firearms coming across our borders and ending up in the hands of violent criminals”.

Conservatives will stop the crime by first scrapping Liberal Bill C-75, Bill C-5 and Bill C-83. Conservatives have also put forth many common-sense bills to address public safety. My own private member's bill, the end the revolving door act, Bill C-283, would have expanded justice system sentencing to people suffering from addiction through treatment and recovery in federal penitentiaries. Unfortunately, this was voted down by most NDP and Liberal MPs.

Again, instead of discussing these common-sense solutions to stop the crime in our communities, we are discussing this matter of privilege. Many of our Conservative colleagues, too many to mention in the time I have here today, have also put forth really great private members' bills that would address the issue of crime, everything from looking at crime that is happening in hospitals to extortion, car thefts and many more. I could do a whole speech just on that. We are putting forth common-sense solutions.

There is another issue that I would like to be discussing more, instead of a matter of privilege. Although that is important, we are only discussing it because the Liberals are holding us in this place, because the Liberals are not abiding by the will of the House. Another issue that I would like to be discussing is fixing the budget and restoring affordability.

Inflationary spending and the lack of good economic policies have seen the Canadian economy deteriorate, and Canadians are worse off because of it. We know why. The Prime Minister has said that he does not think about monetary policy and that budgets balance themselves. His latest comment was, “I'll let the bankers worry about the economy.” How completely out of touch is this with what the role of government is and what his role is? The Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported that “rising inflation and tighter monetary policy have eroded purchasing power, particularly among lower-income households.” Most Canadians spend the bulk of their income on basic necessities like food, shelter and transportation. When their purchasing power suffers, it makes just getting by that much harder.

This reality has been realized when it comes to food bank use in Canada. The cost of food has increased by over 22% since 2020 alone, forcing many to go to a food bank. The committee that I am on, the human resources committee, has had a lot of testimony on this from food banks and from not-for-profits, who have talked about the fact that they had volunteers before who have now become clients, that seniors who would maybe volunteer now have to go back to work, that people are not volunteering because they literally cannot afford the transportation to come and volunteer, that donations are down. This is what is happening in Canada. This is the Canada that we are in right now, and this is after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government. We know, for example, that over two million Canadians have visited a food bank in one month alone.

Something that is especially upsetting is the rise of child poverty. According to the 2024 report card on child and family poverty in Canada, 1.4 million children live in poverty in Canada now. We need to discuss how economic policies and inflationary spending have really gotten us to this point. Instead, we are discussing this matter of privilege. There are really serious and broad economic concerns that are happening in Canada. It just really illustrates the results of the disastrous Liberal government and how it has affected people's lives and Canadians' prosperity.

I will say as well that the Liberals have not given a fiscal update so that we would know where the debt is this year. They continue to have spending. We have no idea what the status of our debt is. Canada's federal debt will rise to $1.2 trillion this year. That is based on previous numbers. The interest we will pay in servicing the debt will increase to $54 billion. Again, this is based on previous numbers. Just to put that into perspective, that is more than the revenue that has been raised in the past from GST. It is unbelievable how much we will be spending on servicing our debt and how much our children and grandchildren will be spending.

As well, Canada's GDP per capita continues to decline, meaning that there is less money to go around for more people. This is really troubling, given that while Canada's GDP per capita fell by 3% in the last four years, the GDP per capita of the United States increased by 7% in that same time period. It is total economic mismanagement on the account of the NDP-Liberal government.

The government is continuing to not comply with the will of Parliament and refusing to bring forth the documents that are the will of Parliament. There are a lot of important issues that we need to be discussing here. I will just end with the carbon tax.

We have all of these tax increases that will be coming down the line early next year. We have the carbon tax, which will be increasing on April 1. We have the excise tax, which will be increasing on April 1. Especially with the carbon tax, this just makes the price of everything go up, everything that is grown, produced and transported, yet the government is bent on increasing these taxes. It is putting us really at an economic disadvantage. We are hearing testimony at a lot of committees about how tax increases are forcing people to leave Canada and forcing businesses to leave. These are the things we need to be talking about.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak about our oh-so-beloved Liberal government and, more specifically, about the problem that we have been discussing for several weeks now, namely the infamous $400 million that was diverted to Liberal cronies.

Those funds came from a program that worked flawlessly from 2001 to 2016 or 2017. What happened at that point? There was a change of government. All of a sudden, the Liberal government did what it usually does and started rewarding its cronies. That is why we have a major issue with the $400 million that has gone missing. The money that disappeared into the pockets of Liberal friends is our money. What does that tell us? It tells us how little interest the Prime Minister has in financial matters, although we have known that for quite a while now.

It also tells us that he has little interest in security matters. Last week, we saw a telling example of how the Prime Minister handles situations that people in Canada are experiencing. On Friday, things got intense in Montreal. Protesters started smashing things in front of the convention centre, where a NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting was taking place, attended by members of the association I belong to. Meanwhile, what was the Prime Minister up to? The Prime Minister was dancing in front of Taylor Swift.

He was playing with his little bracelets while Montreal was burning. This is a powerful symbol that proves the Prime Minister does not act like an adult, let alone like a prime minister. Violent, destructive riots have been going on in Canadian communities for months now. Instead of taking action, the Prime Minister did not even take a few minutes' break from dancing the night away to issue the following statement:

What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling. Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them. The RCMP are in communication with local police. There must be consequences, and rioters held accountable.

That nice tweet was posted on his page. He probably did not even see the message before his staff posted it. That brief message was posted on X, so he figured his work was done and he could keep dancing and having fun. Everyone saw the pictures. It was really something.

Some will say that the Prime Minister has the right to go and see a concert with his daughter. Of course, but the Prime Minister has a fundamental responsibility. When a major incident happens in the country, he has a duty to stop having fun himself and tell his daughter to keep going with her friends. He should then go and see what is happening and deal with the situation. That is not what happened. We know the Prime Minister has the resources. He has his security team by his side. He has a command post. He can visit in person to see what is going on and decide what needs to be done. Instead, he simply carried on having fun, as though nothing had happened. For the past nine years, the Prime Minister of Canada has been perceived as someone who is not serious.

Terry Glavin from the National Post said the same thing in October. Referring to groups that are causing problems in Canada, he wrote, and I quote, “Such hateful rhetoric is unacceptable. This has no place in Canada. All options must be considered. This is not who we are. We are treating this with the utmost urgency.”

As Mr. Glavin writes, “For more than four years, this is what we have been hearing from the Liberal government about the bloodcurdling incitements that are the stock in trade of the Vancouver-headquartered Samidoun Network, the overseas agitation and propaganda wing of the terrorist-listed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”

According to a newspaper article, in August, the Minister of Public Safety stated that federal departments are currently examining how two men suspected of having ties to a foreign terrorist group were allowed to enter Canada and, worse still, to obtain Canadian citizenship. Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, 62, and his son Mostafa Eldidi, 26, were arrested in Richmond Hill, Ontario. They face nine separate terrorism charges, including conspiracy to commit murder on behalf of the Islamic State, a terrorist group. The RCMP announced the charges and said the two men were in the advanced stages of planning a serious, violent attack in Toronto.

What I just read out is an example of the government's incompetence. Videos clearly show this man committing barbaric acts with the armed group Islamic State. He came to Canada and became a Canadian citizen.

How can the United States trust Canada when Canada gets into situations like these? That is just one example among many. The Americans are very nervous, and rightly so. Just think: Canada let in a member of the Islamic State who then became a Canadian citizen. There is even video evidence to support it. No one can wrap their heads around it.

In July, the National Post reported that U.S. senator Marco Rubio and his colleagues had sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, urging him to beef up precautions along the Canada-U.S. border. Why? It was because Canada had recently increased the number of refugees allowed to enter the country on temporary resident visas from Palestinian territories, including Gaza and the West Bank. The letter cited concerns that this would allow Gazans with possible ties to terrorists to enter the U.S. via Canada. With so few reliable records or background checks available, Canada's decision will turn the northern border into a much bigger national security issue.

All of the Liberal government's decisions bring us back to this debate. Since 2015, the Prime Minister has made it so that nothing works. I am thinking, for example, of the $400 million from the green slush fund that was given to friends, rather than being used to help companies develop green technologies. That is corruption. I am also thinking about how our public safety is threatened because of the decisions made by various jurisdictions. That is not working at all. No wonder our American neighbours are nervous. There is no shortage of examples. This is not necessarily coming from President Trump. It is coming from his administration, from people who work on border security and national defence. These people are meeting with us and asking us what is happening in Canada because things are no longer working. They are very nervous. They are worried about what is happening here and what could come their way.

I cannot say it better than my leader, who addressed the Prime Minister directly on Friday. Here is the message that the Leader of the Opposition posted following the riots in Montreal. He said, and I quote:

You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed.

This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends 9 years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc.

On top of driving people apart, you systematically break what used to bring us together, saying Canada is a “post-national state” with “no core identity.”

You erased our veterans and military, the Famous Five and even Terry Fox from our passport to replace them with meaningless squirrels, snowflakes and a drawing of yourself swimming as a boy.

You opened the borders to terrorists and lawbreakers and called anyone who questioned it racist.

You send out your MPs to say one thing in a mosque and the opposite in a synagogue, one thing in a mandir and the opposite in a gurdwara.

You have made Canada a playground for foreign interference. You allowed Iran's IRGC terrorists to legally operate here for four years after they murdered 55 of our citizens in a major unprovoked attack.

You passed laws that release rampant offenders from prison within hours of their 80th arrest.

And what is the result? Assassinations on Canadian soil, firebombings of synagogues, extremist violence against mandirs and gurdwaras, over 100 churches burned or vandalized (with barely any condemnation from you), all for a total 251% more hate crime.

And, while you were dancing, Montreal was burning.

Every corner of the country has seen a huge increase in violence and crime. This increase has affected women in particular. This self-proclaimed feminist government seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Since 2015, since the arrival of this woke Prime Minister, violent crime has increased by 50%.

Statistics from Statistics Canada on Canadian women, children and the most vulnerable show that the total number of sexual assaults at all three levels has increased by 74.83%. The total number of sexual offences against children has increased by 118%. Forcible confinement and kidnapping has increased by 11%. Indecent and harassing communications have increased by 86%.

Non-consensual distribution of intimate images is up 801%. Trafficking in persons is up 84%. Of all sexual assault cases, 90% of victims are women.

The Prime Minister always talks a good game about his desire to protect Canadians, but it is all nonsense. He talks the talk, but never walks the walk, unless it is initiatives that make life easier for criminals. Take Bill C‑83, for example. I did an interview about this today actually, because in my region, Quebec City, there has been a lot of talk lately about what is happening in prisons, about how the situation is out of control, about how incarcerated criminals are no longer monitored as they used to be because of the legislation stemming from Bill C‑83, which came into force in 2019. Correctional officers are afraid for their lives. It is total chaos inside the walls. That is a whole other issue, but this just got me thinking about the long list of problems related to how criminals are dealt with in Canada.

In the Prime Minister's world, who gets arrested? Journalists get arrested. Journalists were arrested last week while certain violent criminals, following the passage of Bill C-5, have been allowed to serve their sentences at home, watching Netflix, even if they committed aggravated sexual assault. It is unbelievable.

No man on the Liberal side had the courage to stand up and say what needed to be said, to tell the Prime Minister that he was heading in the wrong direction. Some women had that courage. What happened to them? The Liberals gave three of them the boot.

As far as the Bloc Québécois and the NDP are concerned, my main criticism of them with respect to criminal justice concerns their support for Bill C‑5, the infamous bill that lets offenders be sentenced to house arrest, and Bill C‑75, which lets them get bail. A person can be arrested four or five times in one day and released every time. Criminals all across Canada and Quebec are rolling on the ground laughing, especially in the Montreal area. No one is afraid of the justice system anymore because of laws put in place by the Liberals and supported, unfortunately, by my colleagues from the other parties.

This incompetent government is being kept in power by the Bloc Québécois and the NDP. The Bloc Québécois has made it clear that it no longer has confidence, but we do not get the impression that its members are all prepared to vote in favour of a non-confidence motion. The NDP made a big show of tearing up the agreement and even produced a little video about it. To make sure they did not mess things up, the NDP made a video. In the end, now it is clear that it was pointless. They are still supporting the Liberals. We hope that they will show some courage, scrape together enough money to run a campaign, get a conscience, put Canadians first and put their money where their mouths are by saying they are finally done with this government and voting non-confidence so we can have an election.

Canadians will vote for whomever they want. If a Conservative government is fortunate enough to be voted in, we will be there to get Canada back on the right track.

Public Safety

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the Liberal government is not worth the crime or the chaos. Just this week, a Winnipeg police officer was stabbed in the neck during an arrest at a shopping mall. While I am relieved to hear that the officer is recovering, incidents like these are happening far too often under the Liberal government.

The 50% increase in violent crime since the Liberal government came to power is a direct result of the Prime Minister's soft-on-crime catch-and-release policies. The Liberals made life easier for violent criminals by repealing mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes with Bill C-5, made it easier to get bail with Bill C-75 and failed to stop the flow of illegal guns across the U.S. border.

Canadians deserve a common-sense Conservative government that will ensure repeat violent offenders remain behind bars while awaiting trial and will bring back mandatory jail time for serious violent crimes. A Conservative government will bring home safe streets.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one woman or girl is killed every single day in our country. That is inexcusable.

We just heard the minister deliver a speech in the House praising her government's efforts to combat gender-based violence. I cannot believe that the minister would have the audacity to deliver this speech after all the things the Prime Minister has done to harm women and make life more dangerous for women and girls. The Liberals must make new ministers check in their shame when they get sworn into cabinet.

The Prime Minister has deliberately implemented a criminals' first agenda, which has directly led to a dramatic increase in violence against women. Despite the desperate pleas from already marginalized voices of women, survivors, victims and their families, he just doubles down. In his ideological pursuit of progressive catchphrases and clout chasing from international organizations in Strasbourg and Brussels, the Prime Minister has caused the meteoric rise of the epidemic that is gender-based violence through policies that place rapists and murderers above victims and survivors.

It is no coincidence that before the Liberals took office in 2015, rates of police-reported family violence and intimate partner violence was on the decline. Under the Liberals government, there have been alarmingly higher rates. This is verified by the government's own data.

Since the Prime Minister's famous “It's 2015” quip on the steps of Rideau Hall, where he touted that his would be a feminist government, the rate of female victimization for intimate partner violence has increased by 18.75%. Now, in 2024, total sexual assaults have increased by 74%.; total sexual violations against children, up 118%; forcible confinement or kidnapping, up 10%; indecent harassing communication, up 86%; and trafficking in persons, up 83%.

In addition, Liberal Bill C-5 repealed the previous Conservative government's ban on house arrest for the following offences: section 144, prison breach; section 264, criminal harassment; and section 271, sexual assault. The list goes on.

The Liberal Prime Minister is a fake feminist. The government needs to own it, admit its failures and let the law enforcement agencies enforce laws and put the scum of society behind bars. The government brought in legislation that repealed mandatory minimum sentences for gun-related offences and removed the former Harper government's ban on house arrest for rapists, kidnappers and human traffickers, allowing them to be put back on the streets to re-terrorize and revictimize the very people we are supposed to protect.

The Prime Minister has not only been an architect of a systemic coddling of violent criminals through his own legislation, he has instructed his caucus in both the Liberal and NDP to vote down common-sense legislation like Bill C-325, which would have reversed its own short-sighted decision to put literal rapists and traffickers behind a TV instead of behind bars.

It is not just the Prime Minister's soft-on-crime approach that has hurt women. Canadian women are bearing the brunt of the Prime Minister's poor economic and fiscal decisions. Canadian families paid $700 more for groceries this year than they did last year. The carbon tax is driving up the cost of goods and services, disproportionately affecting women and children. One in five children are now living in poverty. There have been two million visits to a food bank in a single month.

Activism alone will not stop intimate partner violence and gender-based violence. We need strong leaders who will fix the broken bail systems, keep dangerous and violent offenders away from their victims and work with the provinces to fix the backlogged justice system instead of blaming them for a system that the federal government helped create.

The refusal of the Prime Minister to take legitimate action against gender-based violence can charitably be interpreted in only two ways: Either the Prime Minister does not know how bad the situation is or he does know and he does not care. Neither is acceptable and shows a complete dereliction of compassion and responsibility for our most vulnerable.

For the Prime Minister to act like this, for the minister to stand in the House and suggest otherwise is nonsense and disrespectful to survivors, victims and their families. It was not like this before he was elected and it will not be like this after he is gone. Canada is done with the woke, fake, feminist Prime Minister. He should call an election.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, normally when I rise in the House to speak, I say I am pleased to rise today. However, I must say I am super sad to rise today in the House. I am super sad about the state of our nation. I cannot believe what happened in Montreal on Friday night and the state of events.

For those who are watching the debate today, we are still here, two months down the road, talking about the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, which was $400 million of taxpayer money that ended up going to insiders who gave the money to their own companies. The Auditor General said there were 186 conflicts of interest. The whistle-blowers within the department itself said there was criminality involved.

Parliamentarians did their due diligence. It was the will of the House, with a majority vote, to have all the documents associated with this sordid affair produced and sent to the RCMP. The Liberals did what they always do. They redacted the good parts of the documents that were produced and did not produce the other half of them. Here we are, and the Speaker has ruled that no other government business will take place until this question of privilege is addressed and those documents are produced and sent to the RCMP.

My theme today is that this all comes back to the problem of the Liberals not having any regard for the rule of law in this country. Canada is built on the rule of law. It is what makes us a civilized society. We have seen, from the time the Liberals were elected in 2015, a lack of respect for the law and a continual erosion of the rule of law in Canada. Let me spend a few minutes talking about that.

In 2015, the Liberals were elected and they first brought forward Bill C-83, which forced judges, when considering bail, to put the least restrictive measures on an individual to reduce it to the easiest bail. That was the beginning of what has become catch and release in this country.

In 2017, the Prime Minister went to billionaire island, which was $215,000 of taxpayer fraud. The RCMP ended up not investigating it, but at the end of the day, that sets the expectation of what kind of respect for the rule of law we should have. If the Prime Minister does not have any, then we can see that that lack of respect would go through the whole lot.

In 2019, Bill C-75 was brought forward by the government. In that bill, the government removed a lot of the mandatory minimums and set sentencing to be either a fine or a summary conviction of up to two years. Again, that diluted the rule of law in this country. Many of the things on the list were egregious, such as kidnapping and some terrorism offences. There were a whole list of things that the government reduced to a fine or a summary conviction of less than two years, which is a slap on the wrist.

In 2022, the Liberals brought in Bill C-5. This was something that has led to further erosion of the rule of law. I want to read a couple of things just so people can understand the impact of all of this. Many of the comments were made by my friend, the member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, who himself was a very experienced prosecutor when he came to this place. He said, when it comes to the different rules that were introduced, there were some that did not help. When former justice minister, David Lametti, introduced Bill C-5 in November of 2022, he described it as giving those who made small mistakes a second chance at life. The bill was really about eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for second and third convictions of serious gun and drug crimes.

We see that this continual erosion of the rule of law has led us to where we are today with the green slush fund. We know that the whistle-blower said there was criminality, and we see a number of subsection 119(1) violations. For those who do not know what that part of the law is about, subsection 119(1) says that no holder of public office can take an action that benefits themselves or their family.

We can see numerous issues with the green slush fund when people took these actions. Some of them were at the cabinet table. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change took an action as a cabinet minister to approve money, from the $400 million that was in the slush fund, to go to Cycle Capital, which he owns 270 million dollars' worth of. That company tripled its value, and that is a direct benefit to him. I will allow the RCMP to do its good work investigating.

We saw a similar problem with the WE Charity scandal when the Prime Minister was taking an action that benefited his mother, his brother and his wife. Now we see in the “other Randy” scandal that, while at the cabinet table, the former minister took an action to give money to a company that he was a 50% shareholder in. I see that the police are investigating that, and I expect them to come to the conclusion that any reasonable individual would come to.

As such, the introduction of all of these laws to chip away at the rule of law to allow criminals to go back on the streets has an impact, and I want to talk about what that impact is. Since the time these Liberals took power in 2015, homicide is up 33%; auto theft is up 39%; theft over $5,000 is up 49%; identity theft is up 121%; child sexual abuse is up 141%; human trafficking is up 210%; extortion is up 429%; child pornography is up 565%; and sexual assault is up 75%.

There is an impact when we remove the rule of law and the consequences that are put in place to disincentivize criminals from repeat offending. Many Order Paper questions have been asked to find out what is happening with catch and release and giving the least restrictive bail. It is said that one-third of homicides committed in Canada are committed by somebody who is out on bail for a previous violent offence. I want to speak to some of the human cost to that.

There was a shootout in Toronto, and of the 23 suspects collared, according the sources, one was wanted for an unsolved murder and four were free on bail conditions.

Here is another one: A gentleman was facing an attempted murder and gun charge and allowed out with an ankle monitor, which he cut off. Durham Radio News reports:

They say the man was ordered to wear a GPS ankle monitor after being let out on bail in September 2023 while his case was before the courts, but he cut it off and fled.

[He] is currently before the courts for:

two counts of Attempt to Commit Murder Using a Restricted Firearm...

Careless Use of Firearm

Possession of Weapon for a Dangerous Purpose

Unauthorized Possession of a Firearm

Unauthorized Possession of a Weapon

Knowledge of Unauthorized Possession of a Firearm

Possession Prohibited or Restricted Firearm with Ammunition

Use Firearm While Committing Offence

two counts of Possession of Schedule 1 Substance for the Purpose of Trafficking

Who thought it was a good idea to let a guy like this out with an ankle bracelet?

Similarly, there is a 36-year-old Montreal man who was let out on bail after allegedly uttering death threats against his partner. He is now accused of murdering her on the south shore.

Here is another one from CTV News:

Authorities have issued a public warning after a 19-year-old man facing multiple criminal charges, including two counts of sexual assault, was released on bail in Vancouver.

In a news release, the Vancouver Police Department said Bryce Michael Flores-Bebington poses a “risk of significant harm to public safety in relation to alleged unprovoked physical and sexual violence against strangers.”

This guy is a danger to the public and they had to issue a warning to the public about him. Who thought it was a good idea to let this person out on bail?

It was not a good idea, but the Prime Minister and the Liberal government has continued to allow criminals off to reoffend. Let us look at some of the most heinous examples, starting with Paul Bernardo.

I am from St. Catharines. I was born there. I went to school with Kristen French's brother Brian. I lived a block and a half from where they lived, and I walked the same street where Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy were taken every single day of the five years I was in high school. I followed this case, and it was disgusting what was done to these girls and the many other victims. He deserved to be in maximum-security prison but, under the Liberals, they put him in minimum security, where there is hockey and tennis. I am sure that he is having a much better time there. When he comes up for his parole hearing, they will not even allow the victim's family to attend. That is what the Liberal government has done to the rule of law in Canada.

Let me give another example. Let us talk about Terri-Lynne McClintic and Michael Rafferty. These two sickos took an eight-year-old Tori Stafford and they sexually assaulted her and murdered her. They are child killers. Yes, they were in maximum security until eventually Terri-Lynne McClintic was let out into a minimum-security healing lodge. It was not until the Conservatives found out and made a big stink about it that they put her back into a more secure prison. As soon as our back was turned, where did she go? She is now in a townhouse in a minimum-security facility next door to a mothers-with-children program. Members have heard that right. Terri-Lynne McClintic has access to children while in prison, and she is a child killer.

This is the undermining of the rule of law that the Liberal government has done. It is totally unacceptable and we see the results on our streets. For over a year, we have seen pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas illegal protests blocking roads, calling death to Jews and death to Canada, and burning our flag. All the while, what is being done from an enforcement point of view? Nothing has been done. There have been very few arrests. There was an incident in Montreal with thousands of people rioting, and there were three arrests. They will probably be out on bail before we know it. It is an undermining of the rule of law. It is also letting people into the country who are criminals and terrorists.

It has been admitted by the immigration minister that there was a period of time where, because of the backlog, they stopped doing security checks on people who were coming into the country. We have seen how that goes. They also decided to let 3,000 Gazans in when none of the other countries around would take them because of concerns about their links to Hamas, which is a designated terrorist organization. Canada brought them in. We have seen ISIS terrorists who were brought in through our immigration program.

This lack of respect for the rule of law extends to other departments that are inviting chaos into the country. When people want to become Canadian citizens, there are three things that they have to promise to do. The first is to obey the rule of law in Canada. It is one of the things that is part of any visa that we come to the country on, such as a tourist visa or work permit. Every one of these illegal protesters should be charged if they are Canadian citizens. Their files should be flagged if they are permanent residents so that they cannot become Canadian citizens, because they are not upholding the rule of law in Canada. They are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

I am sure our neighbours across the aisle here will decide that I am a racist. I am not a racist but I am about the rule of law applying equally to all. If I get up and I block a road, I know that they are going to arrest me in a New York minute. If I commit a crime, I am going to get arrested, but that does not seem to be what is happening.

In Toronto, there was a protest. Protesters were calling death to Jews. They were harassing them in their own neighbourhood. One of the Jewish women went to the police and said to arrest these people. The police said that there was nothing they could do. What is the point of having laws if we do not enforce them? The federal government puts the rule of law in place. The federal government has a responsibility. If the rule of law is not being enforced by the police, it can be escalated to the RCMP. The military can be brought in.

We know, in the peaceful protest of the freedom convoy, that Liberals decided to declare the emergency measures act, which was deemed illegal because it did not meet the threshold.

What is the threshold? There has to be violence taking place across the country. We can check that box. There has to be proof that there is foreign interference. There has been a lot of proof about the Iranians backing up the pro-Palestinian protests, so we can check the box there.

It has to be beyond the resources of the police and the existing lots, so I would argue that maybe it is time to revisit that whole one. Of course, right now, even though it was declared illegal, not a single one of the individuals who voted for it is seeing any consequence at all while they appeal the process, whereas I, if I committed a crime, could appeal from prison. Again, that is not acceptable

Now we know that the reason that the government will not produce the documents is that there is criminality; there is something to hide there. It is not the first time. We have seen this pattern of behaviour before. We saw it with respect to the Winnipeg lab documents, where what was being hidden was the fact that we were complicit with the Chinese military in providing it with viruses to work on developing bio-weapons. What did the Liberals do to keep that from coming forward? Well, first of all, it was the usual: They redacted the documents, claimed national security, and did not give anything. Then, they sued the Speaker of the House to keep the Liberals from coming forward with these documents. It has dragged out for years and we may be here for years, holding them to account on this slush fund.

We saw it as well with respect to the WE Charity scandal. Clearly, there was something going on there that would have been a violation if the evidence came forward, but the Liberals claimed cabinet confidence and all of these kinds of things. When it got hot, they decided to prorogue and call an election so that they could go back to square one. It is a pattern of behaviour of not only undermining the rule of law in this country, but of obstructing when we are trying to get to the bottom and find criminality. That, again, is not a surprise to me when I look over there from the Prime Minister on down to his cabinet ministers and to many other individuals who have been in the Liberal government here during my term. Since 2015, we had Joe Peschisolido, whose law firm was accused of money laundering; Raj Grewal, charged with fraud; and multiple RCMP and police investigations that continue to go on today. We have the minister from Edmonton who is under investigation by the police and there are a number of fraud suits against the company that he was involved in. Therefore, it is not a surprise, but it is unacceptable.

The good news is that it was not like this before the Prime Minister arrived with the Liberals who are corrupt and it will not be like that when we get rid of them. We common-sense Conservatives would come with a plan to stop the crime. We would stop the gun crime by upping the security at our borders to keep out the smuggling of illegal guns that the police associations are saying is 85% of the gun crime. We would bring down the number of car thefts by doing more scanning at the ports. We have plans that would get the hard drugs off our streets and it would be jail, not bail, for repeat violent offenders. That is what we need in this country. We have good laws, but we have to start enforcing them. We cannot keep reinforcing to criminals that they can commit a crime without any consequences at all, which is essentially what happens when they commit a crime and are out again in the afternoon to commit another crime. We have all heard the statistics about the 6,000 crimes that were committed in Vancouver in one year by 40 individuals. I would argue that to take those 40 individuals off the streets, away from where they are damaging the public, is the wiser way, the common-sense way and it is something that we would do.

Again today, I call on the government to produce the papers and give them to the RCMP. It is the right thing to do. It is the way we would uphold the rule of law and not be secretive and not try to hide wrongdoing. If we do not do that, we will continue to be here on this side of the House speaking out against corruption and a lack of accountability in the Liberal government. We will make sure that when we become government, we restore accountability, restore the rule of law, and uphold and enforce the rule of law.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour and a pleasure to bring the voices of Chatham-Kent—Leamington to this chamber.

My colleague before me lamented the fact that he had to speak twice on this. I will add to the lament, as this is my third time rising, because the government is not listening to ordinary Canadians as they are represented in this chamber.

Before I get into the substance of my speech, I want to take a moment to recognize the efforts of 40 extraordinary Canadians, for that is truly what ordinary Canadians are, for bringing the peace train to Ottawa two nights ago. MPs from a cross-section of this chamber, representing a cross-section of philosophical paths to peace, from our military veterans and peacekeepers to our peaceniks, all agreed on the message represented by the peace train participants: that Canada should do more for peace in our world.

It has been said many times that war is a failure of statecraft. We thank these folks for reminding us to invest more, in many ways, for peace.

Speaking of state and government failures, here we are again because the current government is ruling like an autocratic regime rather than a parliamentary democracy. Of course I am referring to the green slush fund and the Liberal refusal to hand over documents as ordered. The government is not being accountable on any front.

Today we are talking about the subamendment that is to be added to the amendment, and it reads as follows:

...except that the order for the committee to report back to the House within 30 sitting days shall be discharged if the Speaker has sooner laid upon the table a notice from the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel confirming that all government institutions have fully complied with the Order adopted on June 10, 2024,—

That is my birthday.

—by depositing all of their responsive records in an unredacted form.

In other words, the government does not have to report back to the House if it actually complies with the ruling of the Speaker's office. At issue, of course, is the Auditor General's finding that the Liberal appointees gave 400 million tax dollars to their own companies, involving 186 conflicts of interest. This is about 400 million wasted taxpayer dollars while Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat or house themselves.

The NDP-Liberals must end the cover-up and make the unredacted documents available, as ordered by the Speaker, so Parliament can get back to working for Canadians.

Let us review a few of the facts. The Speaker ruled that the NDP-Liberals violated a House order to turn over evidence to the police for a criminal investigation of the latest Liberal $400-million scandal, but why the cover-up? Why would they allow Parliament to be incapacitated rather than address the issues that Canadians really and truly care about, like the doubling of housing costs, food inflation, crime and chaos?

On the crime front, the government has made a mockery of our justice system. Terri-Lynne McClintic, who abducted, and then assisted her boyfriend in the sexually motivated killing of, eight-year-old Tori Stafford in 2009 was allowed to be in the presence of children through a mother-child program at a women's federal penitentiary. It is hard to even fathom. Where is the accountability? I spoke so much about accountability in my previous two interventions.

Time after time, the government has revictimized victims, just as it did when it allowed Paul Bernardo to be moved out of a maximum-security facility. The government created the problem by passing Bill C-83, which ensures that even the worst of the worst, like Paul Bernardo, Luka Magnotta and Terri-Lynne McClintic, must be incarcerated in the least restrictive environment.

The Prime Minister has unleashed a wave of crime across the country with disastrous policies like Bill C-5, which took away mandatory jail for violent crime and allowed sex offenders to serve their sentences in the same home as their victims, under house arrest. Bill C-75 also made it easier for repeat violent offenders to be given bail. While the Liberals are concerned about heinous criminals being given a less restrictive environment, Canadians suffer the consequences of unrestricted crime and chaos. Again, the victims of crime are revictimized.

The government must be held to account for its failures. It has allowed Parliament to be paralyzed by its refusal to be transparent about the SDTC documents. Its own self-interest supersedes all other issues in their minds. Refusing to hand over the documents is an affront to Parliament. What is so bad that the government would go to such lengths to hide it?

Why would the government not instead focus on the food inflation it has caused? Food bank use has doubled. Wholesale food prices in Canada have risen 36% faster than wholesale food prices in the U.S., a gap that has opened up since the introduction of the carbon tax. Sadly, now there are two million people lined up to feed themselves and their families at food banks. Our economy is teetering on the brink, but the worst is yet to come.

The coalition government voted for and legislated the quadrupling of the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre. In Ontario alone, Feed Ontario revealed last September, a record one million people visited a food bank in 2024. This is a dramatic increase of the 25% from the previous year, with Feed Ontario's CEO telling the media, “I never thought I would see this day”. She went on to say that she had been with the organization for almost 15 years and never thought it would see this level of demand. She cannot believe it has reached a point where the numbers are so dramatically high. However, the Liberals seem oblivious to the suffering.

In a parliamentary democracy, Parliament is supreme. If a citizen finds a certain law repugnant, their only option is to mobilize a change in Parliament, for example by campaigning in favour of a certain issue, by joining a political party or by standing for office, such that Parliament changes that law. Citizens who disagree with the law of this land and believe that their rights have been violated can push for political change.

The rule of law is crucial in a democracy because it ensures that everyone, including government officials, is subject to the law. Key points about the rule of law in a democracy include equality before the law regardless of social status, checks on power, and holding the government accountable, which is a fundamental point in the rule of law. Other key points are the protection of rights; social sustainability, where citizens trust the law will be applied fairly; and economic development. A strong rule of law fosters a predictable business environment, encouraging investment and economic growth.

It is evident that the government believes that it is above the law and above the sovereignty of the chamber. Holding leaders accountable for serious wrongdoings is a hallmark of democracy. That is why we are here today. Again I ask, where are the documents? What is in them that is making the Liberals so afraid of the Canadian public's finding out?

To the matter at hand, let us talk for a moment about what the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund could have done with respect to research and innovation, and in particular, for a moment, with the energy sector. If colleagues would please indulge me, I will come back to the direct issue of the corruption at hand in a moment. I have often talked about this next sequence in round tables at town halls that I host.

If we think back to the creation, development and increase of wealth in our western world, it has largely mirrored the increase and the densification of our energy. When we came out of the caves, we kept ourselves warm and heated our food with wood. Over time we moved to charcoal and coal and on to fossil fuels. Today we have nuclear energy. Potentially tomorrow we will have hydrogen. Each one of these sources of energy has come with its own set of environmental consequences. As we have moved to a new path to that densification of energy, we have found ways of reducing and eventually removing, hopefully, environmental consequences.

There is a question I often ask when I am hosting round tables. We often hear the opposition speak of fossil fuels, their use and a hope for the day of peak oil. Here is my question: When did the world achieve peak coal? I do not mean the metallurgical coal we need for steelmaking. When did the world hit peak use of thermal coal?

I often ask this question at home, and I get responses from my constituents. Some say it was probably during the 1870s, during the Industrial Revolution. Maybe it was in the roaring twenties in the lead-up to the great crash, or more recently, after the green revolution of the 1970s. However, our world hit peak coal, the record use of fossil fuels in the form of coal, in 2023, and we are going to break that record this year.

Why is that important? Coal has twice the greenhouse gas emissions of liquefied natural gas. If Canada truly wanted to address greenhouse gas emissions that had a material effect on the world, we would be championing the sale and use of our clean and ethically produced liquid natural gas. We had 15 projects on the books 10 years ago. That is not what the government has done.

We have had the world come asking for that energy. Instead, the government has introduced a carbon tax, and while it might make someone feel good by patting themselves on the back that they are doing something, Canada produces 1.5% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Weather and climate are a worldwide phenomenon. If we wanted to impact greenhouse gas emissions on a worldwide scale, we could. A carbon tax is not going to do it. We could, not as an end goal a century out but as an interim step, reduce greenhouse gas emissions from a material perspective and fund our own wealth as we transition our economy over to even more environmentally benign technologies. That is what we could be doing.

There was a fund set up to direct energy, investment and innovation in that direction. The Auditor General took a look at it back in 2017 and that fund was working well then. However, here we are today. I will end in a few minutes after already speaking for an hour to the corruption that has come from the government, but I will note that if we wanted to do something, that is where the fund could truly be making a difference. Instead, we are here talking about corruption.

I have spoken at great length in the House about the lack of accountability and about the endemic corruption of the government. There was a lack of accountability by the former employment minister. After months of Conservative prosecution, he finally resigned. There have been allegations of fraud, of being involved in a private business while sitting at the cabinet table and of fake indigenous claims, and they were not enough to remove him from cabinet for months. Why is this behaviour seemingly endemic in the government?

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister defended the former minister and claimed, “I'm happy that he is continuing to lead on issues around jobs and employment and represent Alberta in our government.” It is now clear that the Prime Minister knew about the crime and corruption the other Randy was engaged in the entire time. That was not enough to remove him. He knew about the double identity but chose to look the other way. The Prime Minister knew that the member for Edmonton Centre was operating his own business while sitting at the cabinet table.

Members may remember that the former minister had the nerve to testify that the Randy referenced in texts was not him but another Randy who just happened to work at the company he has a 50% ownership stake in. His business partner has refuted these claims, stating now that he was the only Randy who worked at that company. I guess he thought if the Prime Minister was backing him, he could get away with it. After all, the Liberals have gotten away with a litany of scandals over their rocky nine-year tenure in government.

The Prime Minister knew he was falsely claiming to be indigenous to steal money from indigenous people. After firing a legitimate indigenous justice minister for upholding the rule of law in Canada against his wishes, the Prime Minister decided to protect a corrupt, fake indigenous minister. There is a double standard when it comes to the Liberals: They expect the rest of us to be responsible for our actions, but they are not accountable for theirs. Everything from Frank Baylis and the $273-million scandal to the former minister Navdeep Bains getting an executive position at Rogers after the government green-lit the Rogers-Shaw merger.

It is unconscionable. Every member of the House of Commons swears an oath to uphold the democratic institution of Parliament. Parliament is the foundation our nation was founded upon; it is a firm and solid base. As we come here to work every day, we are witnessing the rebuilding of Centre Block. The government is spending between $4.5 billion and $5 billion in part to provide a firm and solid foundation under that national treasure.

There is an old hymn whose refrain goes like this:

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand....

When we build a home, the foundation is arguably the most important part. Without a firm foundation, Centre Block would not be secure. Our security in a democracy is the firm foundation that our country was built upon. It provides the stability upon which we stand. When a democratic government rules as if it were a dictatorship, the supremacy and the stability of Parliament is lost. Freedom is not free.

Over 118,000 Canadians have died in military service for our country to keep this “land glorious and free”, a predominant line in our national anthem. It is time the government adhere to the principle of the rule of law in Canada. The fundamental principle of the rule of law means that everyone is subject to the same laws and no one is above the law. The rule of law is based on the idea that laws should be applied fairly and equally to all people, regardless of their power, wealth or societal position. It is time to restore accountability and democratic freedom in Canada.

Conservatives will continue to hold this government accountable and demand that the documents be released in an unredacted form. When will the government call a carbon tax election so that Canadians can vote out this out-of-control, corrupt government and vote in a common-sense Conservative government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, stop the crime and bring home lower prices for all Canadians? For our home; for your home, Mr. Speaker; and for my home, let us bring it home.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, here we are, five weeks in, and we are still debating the Liberal government's refusal to produce documents relating to the latest scandal, the green slush fund scandal, as ordered by Parliament on June 10. This is the third time that I am rising to speak on this issue, so I want to take a slightly different approach. I want to talk about the legal principle of subsequent remedial measures in the law of evidence.

That rule says that evidence of a defendant or a possible defendant in a civil case effecting repairs to some obstacle that injured a person in order to avoid future similar injuries is not admissible in the court of law. The principle behind that is that we do not want to disincentivize people from actually making repairs to prevent future injuries. The example that is often given is when a homeowner repairs the steps up to the front door on which the postal delivery person was seriously injured the day before. Is doing the repair effectively an admission of liability? The answer is yes, probably, but here is the point. That evidence is not admissible in a court of law for the basic public policy principle that I stated before.

How does that apply to the current case relating to the green slush fund? A little bit of background is in order. The Auditor General revealed some shocking findings in her June 2024 report, which was tabled in Parliament on June 6, I believe, about how the Liberal government had turned SDTC, a federally governed and owned business, into a green slush fund for Liberal insiders.

Here are some of her findings. She found that SDTC gave out the following in taxpayer dollars: $58 million to 10 ineligible projects without even ensuring that contribution agreements were in place and the terms met. On some of them, the applicants could not even demonstrate the development of green technology or any environmental benefit at all. The purpose of SDTC was just ignored. There were $334 million and over 186 cases where there were clear conflicts of interest. This is board members at SDTC voting for each other's applicant grants, clearly a conflict of interest.

One of the whistle-blowers had this to say:

Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.

This is very serious, not just mismanagement, but allegations from a credible source that there is criminal activity under way. Where there is smoke, there is fire. We, the opposition, did what we are supposed to do, which was to hold the government to account. Back in June, the Conservative Party put forward a motion in the House of Commons shortly after we received the Auditor General's report. That order reads, in part:

That the House order the government, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and the Auditor General of Canada each to deposit with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, within 30 days of the adoption of this order, the following documents....

There was then a long list of documents that had to be produced.

The Conservative motion passed on June 10 with the help of the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. I thank them very much. It was only the Liberal members of Parliament who voted against it, because they were worried. They did not like it. They did not like the order. Over the summer months, they just ignored it. They delivered some of the documents but clearly not all.

When we got back here in September, things got ugly pretty quickly. Our House leader, the opposition House leader, on the first day back, rose on a question of privilege “concerning the failure of the government to comply with the order that the House adopted on Monday, June 10.”

That was presented to the Speaker, and the Speaker agreed with us, confirming that the Prime Minister's Office and all relevant government departments had not fully complied, but that they must comply with this order made in June for unredacted documents. At the time, the Speaker said, “The Chair cannot come to any other conclusion but to find that a prima facie question of privilege has been established.” In parliamentary terms, that is a serious allegation. There was a breach of privilege and that should have embarrassed the government.

It is pretty clear and easy to understand what the Speaker meant, so why are we still here, five weeks later, debating this question of privilege? The answer is simple. The Liberal government is still not complying with it. Why not? We do not know. The government has raised some smokescreens and innuendo, but it has not come clean to say why it is not complying. As long as that goes on, the longer this fiasco drags on, the more suspicious we become that perhaps the aforementioned whistle-blower is right that there was criminal activity going on here.

I want to get back to my original comments about the principle of subsequent remedial measures. Such evidence, as I said, is generally not admissible in a court of law. Did the Liberals actually take remedial action to try to fix SDTC after they claimed they were as surprised as the rest of us were that this corruption and mismanagement was going on? The answer is no, they did not do anything. As a matter of fact, they just wound up SDTC. There was so much corruption, so much smoke, so much contamination that even the Liberals were embarrassed by it. Rather than trying to fix it, they just wound it up altogether.

Now we are really suspicious, along with Canadians. What are the Liberals hiding? What was going on at STDC? Why are we not getting the documents? Canadians want to know. What does the Prime Minister's Office know? What is in those documents that the Liberals are refusing to produce? What are they hiding? Was there criminal activity? Can we recover some of the taxpayer money, $400 million altogether? Canadians deserve to know.

The total amount of money, as I said, was $400 million. What could we do with that money? We could do a lot of good, positive things, as the previous speaker, my colleague from Banff—Airdrie, just said. It could certainly help veterans and parents. It could help people who have been going to food banks who cannot afford groceries in these high inflationary times. Four hundred million dollars goes a long way to solve many problems. It could have been much better used than having it distributed by Liberal insiders among themselves.

I would like to compare this to the scandal of some years ago, the sponsorship scandal that brought down the previous Liberal government. That was only $40 million. This is 10 times as large. This is very significant and taxpayers, I think, need to understand what is going on here.

Things were not always corrupt at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. It had a great reputation at one time. It was created by an act of Parliament back in the Liberal days of former prime minister Jean Chrétien to promote investing in green technology, a laudable goal. It continued its work under former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper and likely it would still be thriving today if the current Prime Minister had just resisted getting his fingerprints all over it. However, he just could not resist the temptation of putting his own friends in there. He and his industry minister at the time, Navdeep Bains, could not resist putting their own close friends in charge.

They fired the old board and put in their own friends. Many of them owned businesses that were applicants or potential applicants for grants under this program. Maybe somebody could have raised a red flag to say there was a lot of potential for conflict of interest, but that did not seem to concern anybody on the government side of the House. The result was that the Liberal-appointed board created an environment where conflicts of interest became the norm. Conflicts of interest were tolerated; they were managed.

In that orchestrated manner, these Liberal-appointed board members were able to, nicely, award grants to each other. This is the way it went: “Hey, you vote for my project, and I'll vote for your project.” That is what the whistle-blower told us. That is what the Auditor General uncovered. The Liberals broke SDTC, as they have broken so much else in Canada. I just want to raise a couple of examples.

Recent statistics from Statistics Canada about crime in Canada are really quite shocking. During nine years of the Liberal government, violent crime has increased by 50%. Homicides are up 28%. Sexual assaults are up by 75%. Gang violence has nearly doubled, and auto theft is up by 46%. Extortion is up by an astonishing 357%. Recently, the Liberal government has been forced to admit that 256 people were killed in 2022 by criminals who were out on bail or other forms of release.

This all happened under the Prime Minister's watch, with his Bill C-5, which eliminated many of the mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes, and Bill C-75, the catch-and-release bill that puts accused people out on bail on the least restrictive conditions possible. Canadians are concerned.

This is what our police are saying about the Liberals and how they have been mismanaging criminal law responsibilities and, specifically, their record on gun crime. The Toronto Police Association had this to say, speaking to the Prime Minister: “Criminals did not get your message. Our communities are experiencing a 45% increase in shootings and a 62% increase in gun-related homicides compared to...last year. What difference does your handgun ban make when 85% of guns seized by our members can be sourced to the United States?”

The Vancouver Police Union had this to say about the Prime Minister's record on managing gun crime: “Guessing he’s not aware of the ongoing gang war here in B.C. which is putting both our members and public at risk on a daily basis.”

The Surrey Police Union, right next door to my community of Langley, says, “The federal handgun freeze fails to address the real issue: the surge of illegal firearms coming across our borders and ending up in the hands of violent criminals.”

It is not just the police who are concerned about the drastic rise of crime in our streets and our cities. I heard from a group of CEOs and other directors of a group of downtown business improvement associations from across British Columbia. I am familiar with the work that business improvement associations do because I sat on the board of the Downtown Surrey BIA for a few years before I was elected to Parliament. That is where my law office was, so I am very familiar with the area and very familiar with the work the BIA does. I was happy to meet with this group to hear their concerns and their solutions to some of Canada's toughest problems.

I found it remarkable that this is what these community organizations are asking for. Number one is to invest in mental health, addictions and homelessness support across Canada. Indeed, homelessness is a problem right across Canada, but particularly so in our downtown cores. I am thinking of the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, which at one time was a beautiful place but is not anymore because of homelessness, crime and chaos.

The second ask is this, from the community organizers of our downtown cores: to ensure Canada's downtowns and main streets are safe and inclusive spaces by initiating a systematic review across the country concerning the bail system and implementing further changes to the system by reforming Bill C-48, which is a bill that went through the House not too long ago that took a small step in the direction of bail reform. They are saying it needs to be extended, not just for serious repeat violent offenders but also for theft offenders.

They are saying we need to stop the easy bail practices that have become the norm in Canada with the introduction of Bill C-75. The Vancouver Police Department talks about the same 40 individuals having negative interactions with the police 6,000 times in one year; that is every second day for 40 people. Imagine what the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver would look like if those 40 people were not on our streets. This is the message we are getting from community organizers.

The third thing they are asking for is to incentivize local entrepreneurs and commercial entities to form businesses in downtowns and on main streets. This is what they are asking for: give people shelter, keep repeat thieves off the streets, and create an environment where businesses and entrepreneurs come flocking back to the downtown core. This is what ordinary Canadian citizens want.

People are reporting that they feel less safe on our streets. Those fears are now being supported by evidence from Statistics Canada and from credible and, I would say, non-partisan organizations like police unions and business improvement associations.

The Attorney General should meet with people like that instead of just left-leaning law professors from Liberal-friendly law schools who teach their criminal law courses from a pro-accused perspective instead of from a pro-victim perspective. Our Attorney General would benefit, indeed, all of Canada would benefit, if he and the Prime Minister would listen to the concerns of ordinary Canadian citizens.

These are the things we should be talking about, or would be talking about if the Liberal government would just comply with the order so we could get down to business again. We should be talking about stopping the crime, building homes, implementing a fair and competitive tax regime by axing the tax, and fixing the Liberals' out-of-control, never-ending, inflation-producing deficit budgets.

Until the Liberals come to their senses and comply with the order, I guess we are just going to remain in this holding pattern. Here is a better idea: The Prime Minister could walk to the Governor General's house and acknowledge what everybody knows, that he has lost the confidence of this House and that the 44th Parliament should be dissolved and we should call an election. I spoke to many people when in my home community last week for Remembrance Day, as well as in the neighbouring community of Cloverdale—Langley City, where there is a by-election going on because the Liberal member of Parliament resigned.

I am hearing from people on the street that they are very anxious and eager to have a general election. They are happy with a by-election, but they want a general election. They want to stop the corruption, they want to fix what the Liberals have broken and they want a government that is going to have common-sense solutions.

Canadians deserve a government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Canadians deserve a government that does not play favourites for Liberal insiders but creates an environment where non-insiders can work and get ahead. They deserve a Canada that delivers on its promise to all who call it home: that hard work earns a powerful paycheque and pension, and buys affordable groceries and affordable homes on safe streets, in beautiful neighbourhoods, where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.

This is all achievable, but first, we need to have a general election and a common-sense Conservative government that will start working seriously on these issues that concern ordinary Canadians.