Okay.
The reason I'd like to add these two dates, colleagues, is that I think we would like to have more witnesses come here. As it has been noted many times before, this is a 660-page budget. It's quite extensive. I think there is a will—I hope there's a will—in this room to be able to have more witnesses.
I think my friend Gabriel expressed this as well. He suggested a postponement of one week. I think we could agree. In that spirit, I added the two dates of the 28th and the 30th. Subsequently, that's why I moved the other dates forward. It's to accommodate that. It's because I fully agree with Mr. Ste-Marie on having one more week of witnesses.
It would shift those dates for amendments one week forward. On May 30, we could make the amendments, and the start of clause-by-clause consideration would be no later than June 3 at 12 p.m. Typically, as we know, opposition parties don't always agree to an end date, but we could definitely agree to start it then and there.
The one that's really important, I think, is this item iv that we want to amend.
We and the chair all received a letter from Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, on October 6, 2023. It was her request. She needed assistance with the fourth five-year parliamentary review of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, so she requested this last year, in October. She also said that the last review was completed in November 2018.
At this point, this is a very important topic, and my colleague and friend Mr. Chambers also put a motion on notice with regard to this, because right now, just in the last few days.... It just goes to show how important this study is.
I'm going to read some headlines with regard to TD Bank: “TD probe tied to laundering drug money, says Wall Street Journal” and “TD Bank could face more severe penalties after drug money laundering allegations, says analyst. Bank could face worst-case scenario after report connects TD to illicit fentanyl profits”. These fines could hit up to $2 billion, says the article. Then “TD Bank hit with $9.2M penalty after failing to report suspicious transactions”.
This is all getting worse, and we know there's an opioid crisis, so it could possibly be tied in to that. We are also seeing things like extortion and car thefts, which could also be tied in to money laundering and the proceeds of crime that are taking place under this government. That's why I think it's more important than ever.
We never hear the Liberals or the NDP talking about how important this is, even though the finance minister has requested that this committee study it. My friend Adam Chambers talks about that all the time, and he's right. These headlines on TD are from just days ago. This is how serious this issue is.
If we're going to be planning, I think we need to add these into the amendment so that it gets passed. If we're all going to decide to keep, and we want to keep, this so-called “spirit of collaboration”—which I feel the Liberals and NDP have broken—I feel this could be a good compromise as well, because this is important for Canadians. The amount of extortion....
I actually visited the owner of a trucking company and I saw the video and heard the audio first-hand of someone who's trying to extort money out of him. They said, “We will shoot your house up next week.” They didn't comply. These people live in fear. The family had to separate and live in separate hotel rooms so they couldn't be seen together. The next video he showed me was of a car pulling up and shooting at his house. After that meeting, we went outside into the parking lot and he showed us his two cars, which had been fitted with bulletproof windows. This is the state of Canada after nine years of Justin Trudeau, with the help of the NDP.
This is what's happening. Common-sense Conservatives put forward a private member's bill from Tim Uppal, our deputy leader, who had to put forward a bill because this current government is not serious about crime. This soft-on-crime policy is the reason that things have gotten so bad in this country. He put a bill forward on extortion. If this government's not going to act, then we might as well, even before Pierre Poilievre becomes prime minister.
It just goes to show how bad a state this country is in after nine years. Many people left where they came from to come here for a safer future for them and their kids. Many immigrants risked it all and left everything behind to come here. When they come here, they get hit with high taxes and crime like we have never seen before—drugs, chaos, crime all over the place—and get hit with double the rent. We're hearing about international students living under bridges in tents, and nurses and teachers living in their cars, because after nine years of this Liberal-NDP government, housing costs have doubled. Immigrants leave everything to come here. They risk it all. Then they ask themselves, “What the hell did we leave our country for in the first place? It's even worse here.”
These are the kinds of comments we get when we talk to Canadians as we're travelling around the country. Every single place we go, we hear about these kinds of stories: “What did we do wrong? What did we do before? We were always heating our house. We were always filling up our gas. We would get groceries like anyone else. What is this carbon tax?” They had been doing things that they had always been doing; now they are being hit by a carbon tax that makes everything more expensive.
It just goes to show you that you can risk it all, leave it, and come here, but under this current government there's no way you can succeed. This budget does nothing to help those people either. It does absolutely nothing for them. In fact, it just raises their taxes, which this government is known to do no matter what.
That's why I think it's important that we have more witnesses. It's so that the government can clearly hear from people about their suffering. Obviously, they are not talking to their constituents. We might as well have more witnesses here so that they can hear from everyday Canadians about how bad their policies are and how negatively impactful they are to their lives.
I think it's very important that we follow up with what the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance has asked for as well, with the proceeds of crime and money laundering, and that we act on that right away so that more people don't have to face extortion. Under this current government, with the support of the NDP, they don't feel safe in this country anymore.
I gave one example of a family and a company that we visited. There are numerous others across the country that are facing the same thing. They are too scared to speak up, because they know that under this current government, nothing happens. You can literally commit a crime in the morning and, because of the failed policies under this government, the soft-on-crime policies, you can be off in the afternoon, commit another crime and be out again in the evening. There's no justice for people.