Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I had a plan of where to begin, and this is not it, so I don't know where to begin now. Nonetheless, I would like to address the amendment brought forward by Mr. Andrew Lawton.
I don't know about you, Mr. Chair, but I don't remember the first time meeting Mr. Lawton. However, I do remember listening to Mr. Lawton on a podcast for a long time. Even today, when I hear his voice, I think I'm still listening to a podcast. Oftentimes, I'm listening to him through one of these earpieces, so it gets me a little discombobulated, but I'm really excited that he is our new colleague here in Parliament. I welcome him.
I remember one of the first conversations I had with Mr. Lawton when he got here. It's always fascinating to me to ask new members of Parliament what they did before and what motivated them to come onto the field, so to speak. He said to me that defending the freedom of expression, the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion has been a major motivator for him. I took that for what it was, and I appreciated it, as these are things I care about as well.
I reflected upon what had motivated me to get involved. The defence of the province of Alberta, the defence of firearms owners and the defence of the Christian faith were all things that motivated me, yet often, we do not get to tangibly capture those things.
Tonight we're debating an amendment by Andrew Lawton that does precisely the thing he told me he came here to do, which was to defend the freedom of expression and the freedom of religion. It is not often that you get to come to Parliament and do, in as many words, exactly the thing you came here to do.
The fact is, Mr. Lawton made the decision to become a member of Parliament and pursue that many years ago—probably at least two years ago. Mr. Lawton knew this was a threat. He knew this was a threat more than five minutes ago, more than whenever he got to draft this amendment. He knew this was a threat, and that's what motivated him to run. That speaks to the trajectory the Liberal government has put this country on. That speaks to what's happening to our country when we open our eyes and look around us.
I sit on the veterans affairs committee. We've been dealing with veterans' mental health and the things that drive them to take extreme action. One thing they say is that they don't know what they fought for. They don't recognize the country they came back to.
I think that's what Mr. Lawton was motivated by as well: to build a country that's worth defending. I don't know where his grandparents came from, but my grandparents moved here from the Netherlands after being liberated by the Canadians. They moved to a country that was going to defend freedom, that was going to defend the freedom of religion. That was a motivator for many people.
I appreciate that Mr. Lawton put his name forward to run for our party. I think we have been defenders of the freedom of religion.
I remember that when I first got here, one of the first things the Liberal government did was shut down the office of religious freedom. It had a special ambassador dedicated to the defence of freedom of religion. That was one of the first things the Liberal government did.
The Liberal government has not been known as a spendthrift government. They have been known to run deficits for as long as I've been around here. They said there were going to be modest deficits. That has definitely not been the case. They did not seem to have fiscal responsibility in their repertoire, but nonetheless, the thing they had to cut from the get-go was the office of religious freedom. Perhaps that was the tipping point, the thing Mr. Lawton noticed: that religious freedom and the freedom of expression were under attack.
We've seen multiple things coming from the Liberal government and through the courts that the Liberal government has failed to defend when it comes to religious freedom. We saw prolonged attacks against religious organizations with the summer jobs attestation. In that situation, the Liberals denied it and said that wasn't what was happening, and then when it eventually came out that that was indeed what was happening, they backed down and paid millions of dollars out to organizations that had sued the government. You'd think what happened with Canada summer jobs would have taught the government a lesson, but, no, the next year, the Liberals took a run at it again with a separate form and a checkbox on the Canada summer jobs initiative. It seems they've backed down on that, but they brought forward two recommendations from the finance committee to revoke religious organizations' charitable status.
Those are just the very tangible things, but I think Canadians from across the country have felt the push from this government to relegate religious practice and religious thought inside places of worship. The Liberals seem to be concerned about what goes on inside those places. I recall that it was a tradition in the past that the police wouldn't enter places of worship, and then we saw during the pandemic that police were ready to enter places of worship. The state's encroachment on places of religion and freedom of religion....
It was with good reason that Mr. Lawton told me that when he first got elected, he was motivated to protect these things. I am happy to support the amendment from my colleague, and I look forward to the time when we're able to vote on it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
