Debates of Nov. 6th, 2023

Bill C-34—Time Allocation Motion

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #440

National Security Review of Investments Modernization Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I declare the motion carried.

I wish to inform the House that because of the proceedings on the time allocation motion, Government Orders will be extended by 30 minutes.

The House resumed from October 30 consideration of Bill C-34, An Act to amend the Investment Canada Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Report Stage

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-34, which would update the Investment Canada Act. This act is designed to do two main things. The first is to ensure that foreign investments in Canada have a net benefit to Canadians. The second is to ensure that foreign investments are not detrimental to our national security.

Many Canadians, especially Canadians of my age, might know this act better by its former name, The Foreign Investment Review Act. In its early days in the 1970s, it was brought in to deal with a rash of foreign buyouts, mainly American, of Canadian companies.

The Foreign Investment Review Agency approved about 90% of the transactions it dealt with, but was criticized by both Liberals and Conservatives for actually doing its job by blocking some proposals that did not show a benefit to Canadians.

Therefore, Brian Mulroney brought in the Investment Canada Act in 1984. He replaced the Foreign Investment Review Agency with Investment Canada, saying that he wanted to welcome foreign investment. True to his word, under his government, Investment Canada did not block a single foreign investment transaction, not one. The Liberal governments that followed Mulroney, under Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, had the same record, not one application blocked.

The Harper government was a different story. Harper blocked the sale of British Columbia-based Macdonald, Dettwiler to the American company Alliant based on both financial and critical technology arguments.

On the other hand, in 2012, the Harper government allowed the $15-billion sale of Canada oil company Nexen to the China National Offshore Oil Company, owned by the Chinese government, and the $6-billion sale of Progress Energy to Malaysia-based Petronas. However, the same day, Harper changed the Investment Canada Act to block state-owned foreign investment in Canadian oil and gas companies, essentially closing the barn door after the horses had left.

Therefore, legislation regarding regulating foreign takeovers of Canadian companies has changed from time to time over the past decades. Foreign investment trends have changed as well. The share of U.S. investment in Canada has declined over the past few decades, but it still leads the pack followed by the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Japan, China, Germany, Brazil, France and Bermuda, although, I suspect the high placement of Luxembourg and Bermuda reflects more where Canadian companies are hiding their profits than real sources of investment.

However, it is clear that we need to keep up with the times in regulating foreign investment, and Bill C-34 is another example of that.

Information and data are the new oil, and earlier versions of the Investment Canada Act were essentially blind to that. The bill before us introduces a pre-implementation filing requirement for certain investments to give earlier visibility to situations where there is a risk that a foreign investor would gain access to sensitive assets or information immediately on closing.

I have talked to numerous tech companies over the past few years. One story I hear repeatedly is that small Canadian tech companies work hard to develop a new technology, say in hydrogen energy development or AI advances. However, when it comes to expand their companies to really get their product to market, they need investment. Too often in the Canadian tech ecosystem, these companies simply get bought out by bigger companies from the United States, Europe or China. With those sales go the intellectual property that represents the core of their company's value.

The present version of the Investment Canada Act allows companies to report takeovers after the fact. However, if critical intellectual property is involved, it is usually too late to stop the transfer of that information, if we find out about the transaction 30 days later, for instance. It is not like the old days when the main value of a company was in the factories it owned. This new pre-implementation filing could help put a stop to that where necessary.

There are several other improvements that provide more flexibility for the minister to act and better manage the entire process.

What would make the act even better? First, the act should mandate the review of an acquisition by a state-owned enterprise of a company previously reviewed by the ICA, and I would like to spend some time on a story that illustrates why this is needed.

There is a company called Retirement Concepts that owns and operates a number of seniors residences in British Columbia, long-term care homes. One of them is the Summerland Seniors Village just outside the federal riding I represent but within the provincial riding I live in. When I first sought to enter politics 10 years ago, I was involved in a provincial election in that riding.

The Summerlands Seniors Village was involved in a tragic story of a local family that lost both its mother and its father in 2012 to poor care and accidents. I met with members of the family and heard the heart-wrenching story of neglect that had taken the lives of their parents.

After that incident, the provincial government demanded that Retirement Concepts hire more staff, but managers claimed that no one was applying. I am guessing that a combination of low wages and overworked conditions had a lot to do with that.

In 2016, Chinese insurance giant Anbang, then a privately held company, bought Retirement Concepts, a transaction that was reviewed and okayed by the federal government's investment review process. Less than a year after that purchase was okayed, the Chinese government seized the Anbang company and jailed its chairman for fraud. Perhaps it knew something that the Canadian government missed when that review was carried out.

Suddenly, we have the Chinese government owning a company that is one of the largest providers of long-term care in Canada and certainly the largest in B.C.. Not only is it one of the largest providers of long-term care, it is known to provide very poor care at times for our seniors.

In fact, in 2020, the provincial government in British Columbia had to seize management control of four care homes run by Retirement Concepts because of the continuing problems with poor care. It returned that control just over a year later, but it is an indication of the general lack of priority Retirement Concepts had placed on the care of seniors.

At present, there are no provisions in the Investment Canada Act that would allow Investment Canada or the minister to be able to review the subsequent acquisition by a state-owned enterprise of an ICA-approved takeover or merger by a foreign private company. We have to change this.

The NDP put forward an amendment that would allow for the review of a takeover by a state-owned enterprise. This can be done by establishing the power to require a mandatory divestment of all Canadian assets by entities in these specific circumstances.

As an aside, in the case of long-term care homes, the NDP is very much in favour of a move to a future where seniors' care is given the same respect that all health care gets, a future where no long-term care homes are owned by private companies that put profit ahead of the well-being of our seniors.

This is an example of where we could and should take a big step in that direction.

Another factor to consider in investment review is to prevent the loss of publicly funded research and development from leaving the country, resulting in the loss of jobs and, basically, the theft of taxpayer dollars.

A company called Nemak received $3 million dollars from the government's automotive supplier innovation program. However, in 2020, Nemak closed its plant in Windsor, where those funds had been used to create new products for General Motors, and transferred that technology and those jobs to its operations in Mexico.

An NDP amendment, passed in committee, would allow for the review of a foreign takeover to consider the intellectual property whose development was funded by the federal government and to issue remedies to retain the benefits in Canada. Therefore, a situation like that of Nemak would not happen again.

I do not have time today to go over all the improvements this bill would bring to the foreign investment space in Canada or to go over all the improvements that we had hoped it would bring but fell short.

In this new world, where ideas and data are often more valuable than the natural resources we have so long relied on for our wealth, we need a new regulatory framework to protect our industries, our workers and our companies. Bill C-34 is a step in that direction.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, could the member provide his thoughts in regard to the idea that this is a modernization? It has been a number of years since the legislation has been changed to the degree that is being proposed today. Because of technological changes over the past decade, changes to the legislation are badly needed. That is one reason why we hope to see Bill C-34 pass as quickly as possible.

Could he comment on the importance of getting this passed before Christmas?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, things have really changed since this was last updated in, I think, 2009 or 2012. Before that, when I was young, this whole regulatory system was brought in because manufacturing plants were largely going south of the border.

Things have changed. Canada is a leader in several aspects of real high-tech research and development. I mentioned hydrogen. There is fusion and AI that we hear a lot about. These are things that move very rapidly, and almost all the value in the company is not in the offices it has or its labs but in ideas and intellectual property. This is something that has really changed. One thing we need to do is change the regulations to protect that from leaving Canada.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the member's speech, particularly because 30-year NDP House leader Stanley Knowles would not have been impressed with the NDP voting for closure and eliminating debate in the House once again.

Aside from that, this report stage debate is specifically about our amendment to the bill to return the cabinet decision-making process to the beginning and the end decisions on whether an acquisition by a foreign entity poses a national security review.

The hon. member's colleague from Windsor West has done some good work on this bill as well. Will he and his party be supporting our amendment at report stage?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think there is something to be said for both methods, whether we simply require ministerial decision-making or we want it to go to cabinet. Having the minister being the decision-maker in this case adds some nimbleness to it, and there is something to be said about nimbleness and a quick decision. Some of these transactions are happening very quickly in the financial markets. We all know how quickly they can happen.

I have not been part of the committee discussions, so I do not want to presume to say where we will end up on this. However, I can see both sides to that story. I will wait to see what happens.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I see that the NDP has once again decided to support a government gag order. I find this odd because, in general, the role of the opposition parties is to challenge the government. Their role is to try and determine whether the government is doing a good job, to ask questions, to try to improve things.

We get the impression that the NDP is just rubber-stamping everything that the Liberals come up with. I question the usefulness of having a party like that in the House of Commons, if it votes in favour of everything the government tables.

Is there any critical thinking happening at all on the NDP side, or are the New Democrats completely blinded by a fear of ending up in an election or holding the Liberals to account?

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if the member had been concentrating and looking at the past voting records in this Parliament, he could see the NDP voting against the government on a number of occasions. We are still strongly debating with the government on issues, and this bill is an example of that. We thought the bill did not come up to the standards we would have liked. We put forward several good ideas for amendments in this bill, and some were accepted.

We are always focused on improving the lives of Canadians and improving the field for Canadian businesses. That is what we concentrate on. When it is time to move on, it is time to move on. We see parties such as the Conservative Party do nothing but block everything. We have had three concurrence motions in the past week, which are just designed to waste time. We have to move along and get things done. This bill is very much needed, and we are happy to support its movement through Parliament.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act, at report stage. I will get into the particulars of the bill shortly, but before I do, let me say that in a little more than an hour and a half, Liberal members across the way will have a choice. They can vote for our common-sense Conservative motion to axe the tax on all home heating, or they can do the bidding of their boss, the Prime Minister, and sell out their constituents.

These are Liberal MPs from Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. We will see whose side they are on, because their colleagues from Atlantic Canada, including the member for Avalon, received an exemption for Atlantic Canadians on home heating oil. However, it seems that all other Liberal MPs are so useless that their constituents, including my constituents, Albertans, have received nothing. We will see whose side Liberal MPs, including the member for Edmonton Centre and the member for Calgary Skyview, are on very shortly.

With respect to this legislation, when it was presented in the House at second reading stage, it was a modest bill. It was, frankly, inadequate in terms of strengthening the foreign investment review process, which takes into account the net benefit for Canada, as well as national security considerations. However, the good news is that the bill has been significantly improved thanks to four Conservative amendments that were adopted at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, although opposed by the Liberals.

I would submit that the most important of those amendments is to require a mandatory security review for investments by foreign state-owned enterprises in which Canada does not have a trading agreement with the countries.

This legislation marks the first major revamp of the Investment Canada Act since 2009. It goes without saying the foreign investment environment has changed considerably in that time, with foreign bad actors, including Beijing, posing an increased threat to our security and sovereignty.

PRC firms work closely with Beijing's military and intelligence apparatuses to gain information about foreign companies, as well as to acquire their technology. Professor Balding, who testified at the industry committee in 2020, indicated that PRC firms are actually given a list each year of foreign assets to acquire, underscoring the threat posed by Beijing.

The fact that we have this increasing threat demonstrates that the Investment Canada Act is long overdue for an update. However, for the past eight years, the Prime Minister has been asleep at the switch, while Beijing has attacked our sovereignty, security and democracy on his watch.

Beijing has used its embassy and consulates to interfere in our elections and to target sitting members of Parliament for daring to speak up and call out Beijing's egregious human rights violations, including the genocide being perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims as we speak. This regime has set up illegal police stations to harass, intimidate and repatriate Chinese Canadians, and it is spreading disinformation on a mass scale to divide Canadians.

In the face of that, the response of the Prime Minister has been to do nothing, to turn a blind eye. Indeed, the only concrete measure that the Prime Minister took was to expel one Beijing diplomat, but only after he got caught for keeping the member for Wellington—Halton Hills in the dark about how he and his family were targeted by a diplomat at Beijing's Toronto consulate.

For the past eight years, Beijing has effectively been given the green light to acquire vast amounts of farmland. It has gained a foothold with respect to critical infrastructure and strategic resources, including minerals. Even worse than that, we have a government, under the Prime Minister's watch, that has refused to undertake national security reviews and has given the green light to Beijing-controlled enterprises to invest in Canada and acquire Canadian companies, to the detriment of Canada's national security. In so doing, it has also caused irreparable damage to Canada's reputation among our Five Eyes allies.

One egregious example of that, and I stress that there are many examples I could cite, was when the Beijing-controlled Hytera sought to acquire the B.C. communications technology company Norsat, which worked with National Defence Canada, Public Safety Canada and the Pentagon. Our U.S. ally said to put a pause on this takeover by Hytera, but the Liberal minister of the day, in his infinite wisdom, ignored the U.S. and gave the green light without any security review.

Last year, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage by the U.S. This underscores the degree of recklessness on the part of the government to give the green light, not to mention the damage it has done to our reputation with our most important ally, the United States.

As bad as that is, one would think that after a company such as Hytera was facing 21 espionage charges in the U.S., it would be enough for the government to decide not to do business with Hytera. However, one would be wrong; it was not enough for the current Liberals. Eight months later, the Liberals gave the green light for a contract with the RCMP to sell technology to protect sensitive RCMP communications equipment for espionage from a subsidiary of none other than Hytera, a company charged with 21 counts of espionage. One cannot make this stuff up. It is scandalous incompetence with real national security implications.

In 2020, to make it appear that he was actually taking Beijing's interference seriously, the minister of industry announced a policy of enhanced scrutiny for investments from foreign state-owned enterprises. No sooner had he announced the policy than he disregarded it, giving the green light to another Beijing state-owned enterprise to acquire a mining company that operates the largest lithium mine in Canada. Now, all that lithium is controlled by Beijing.

In closing, let me say that when it comes to protecting Canada's national security from authoritarian states such as Beijing, the government cannot be trusted. The good news, however, is that this bill would require the reckless government to undertake the security reviews that it should have taken but did not. On that basis, it is a much stronger bill going forward, thanks to the Conservatives and no thanks to the Liberals.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the member's speech. Perhaps he could explain further the extent to which the government has failed to take Canada's national security seriously and necessitated this. The review is long overdue and the threat environment has changed, but this bill, if passed, would in some ways force the government to do things that it ought to have had enough sense to do in the first place.

Could the member comment?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is going to force the government to do what it needed to do and had not done before by lowering the threshold from $512 million to zero with respect to investments from foreign-controlled enterprises. This is a government that announced a policy. The minister announced a policy in 2020. What good is a policy if the policy is not followed? That policy had no teeth and the minister was not sincere about seeing it through, so this bill is an improvement.

I will say that there were other amendments that Conservatives supported but these Liberals opposed, that would have gone a long way to strengthen the bill, including the fact that Beijing acquires companies and investments, sometimes through third party entities. We have supported an amendment that would have allowed for a proper review where those assets were then sold to a Beijing or other foreign state-controlled enterprise. The Liberals voted against it.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not a part of this committee but my colleagues do a really good job of passing on information around what is happening. I am wondering if my colleague can speak a little bit more around the amendment that was put forward by the NDP to clause 8, which speaks to the importance of reviewing a foreign investment or takeover to consider the intellectual property whose development was funded in part, or in whole, by the federal government and to issue remedies to retain the benefits in Canada. My understanding of this was that it was to ensure that the effect of the investment on the use and protection of personal information of Canadians is at the forefront of this legislation.

I am wondering if the member can speak to this amendment and share a little bit further information around the importance of protecting the personal information of Canadians.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in short, Conservatives fully supported that amendment around IP. It is an amendment that would have strengthened the bill but the Liberals did not support it. They did not support that amendment and they did not support our amendments.

As far as the Bloc Québécois goes, I believe the Bloc opposed the amendment. I would say in regard to this bill that the Liberals have been soft on national security issues and standing up to the likes of hostile states such as Beijing. By contrast, the Bloc has not been much better. It has been all over the map and completely incoherent.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to respond right away to my Conservative colleague, who is criticizing us for not supporting their amendment to Bill C‑34.

The Bloc Québécois did not support the Conservatives' amendment to Bill C‑34 because it was too broad. It was so broad that it included just about every investment not originating with one of the Five Eyes countries, the Commonwealth allies or certain major countries in the world. Unfortunately, my colleague may not be aware of this, but Quebec accounts for 40% of European investments in Canada. The amendment would have discouraged a whole lot of investments.

We suggested another solution. We suggested lowering the review thresholds, which had been raised so high that we ended up with a net benefit review threshold of $1.7 billion. In 2015, that figure was about $300 million. Why has the review threshold skyrocketed like this, and why do the Liberals seem to think that is okay?

I would like to know if the Conservatives are okay with it too.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the issue of undertaking reviews, the amendment that Conservatives put forward was specifically targeted at countries that we do not have trade agreements with. For those countries that we do have agreements with, and that includes the European Union and most European countries, that automatic review would not apply.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about Bill C‑34 at third reading stage. I feel like I am going back in time because even though I am not a member of the committee that studied Bill C‑34, I had the opportunity to speak to it at second reading. That was on February 8, if I am not mistaken. I find it fascinating to see what has changed in the bill between February 8 and now, or rather, what has not changed in Bill C‑34.

At the time, we said that it was an interesting bill that would enhance security, for example in terms of foreign investments in sectors where we feel that national security might be jeopardized or in danger. We said that we agreed.

However, we also said that we should take the opportunity to examine another thing while studying Bill C-34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act, which includes a mechanism for initiating a study or review of an investment when it exceeds a certain threshold, in order to determine whether the investment is of net benefit to Canada. That is what Bill C‑34 says. We thought we should go a little further than just considering the issue of national security and also question the effectiveness of this legislation in terms of protecting our head offices.

When a foreign entity comes to Canada and says that they want to buy a certain brand or company for a lot of money, and when that purchase would have an impact on our entire supply chain, our infrastructure, our habits and our competition system, one of the first things we should instinctively do is look at whether it is a good investment or not. Unfortunately, that was not included in Bill C‑34 at the time. It is still not in Bill C‑34 today. There are mechanisms, but they are weak. They are extremely weak.

Back when I was elected in 2015, the review threshold was set at $300 million. That was okay, because at least some reviews were being done. Maybe it might have been better if it were lower, but a threshold of $300 million would already capture many businesses. The government could say that a review would be done to see if allowing a foreign business or investor to buy a business worth $350 million, $400 million or $600 million would be of net benefit to Canada. I thought it was a good thing. There was a baseline.

The problem is that, since the Liberals took office, the threshold has jumped. Today, it is no longer $300 million. It is $1.7 billion. I challenge anyone in the House to go search online and find a Quebec business worth more than $1.7 billion. There really are not many. There are maybe a handful, no more than 10 for sure.

In theory, a wealthy investor, or several wealthy investors, from any country in the world could swoop in and buy everything, or nearly everything, and the government would not make a peep because each of the transactions is less than $1.7 billion. According to the government, that would not be a big deal. That is the reality of this government's laissez-faire attitude. What is worse is that the government has exacerbated the situation over the years, saying that things are fine that way.

In Quebec, we take the notion of national interest to heart. It is important to us. However, in a self-proclaimed postnational state like Canada, nobody even knows what a nation is anymore. How can the government know what is in the national interest if it does not even know what a nation is?

The problem relates to a significant difference between the economies of Quebec and Canada. It may be an underlying factor in the government's non-response or hands-off approach to this issue. Canada has a branch-plant economy, which means that, naturally, a foreign company that sets up shop in Canada will often have a Canadian head office. The company will do all the buying, but it will keep a head office in Canada and manage its Canadian interests from there. It might well belong to someone who is 1,000 kilometres outside the country, but that is no big deal because the company still has a small head office here. Where is the head office usually located? It will be located in Toronto, not in Montreal, Quebec City, Shawinigan or Boucherville.

That is sad because many entrepreneurs in Quebec are working hard to build a strong ecosystem. We decided to build an entrepreneurial economy, rather than the type of branch-plant economy that is part of Canada's vision, if it even has one.

The Bloc Québécois has a constructive vision. We simply want to know what is happening. We want investments to be reviewed. We are not saying that we are against investment, but we want to at least know whether an investment is in our interest before it is authorized.

I am very disappointed. The fact that the government is not even thinking about this is problematic. The government does not even want to know whether investments are in our interest or not. If the transaction is less than $1.7 billion, the government closes its eyes, signs on the dotted line and everything is good. That approach is not working and, unfortunately, we are going to have to resolve that problem. If Canada does not want to solve this problem within the framework of the Canadian Confederation, then an independent Quebec will certainly be able to solve it when it has all the tools at its disposal to make its own decisions.

Bangladesh

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this past summer, I visited Bangladesh, where I met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and other government officials. I also visited Hindu temples, Buddhist monasteries and a church, and I met dozens of religious minority community leaders. I met many business leaders as well.

With stability in the country and certainty in economic policies, Bangladesh has seen excellent economic growth for several years, thus lifting millions of its citizens from poverty. Foreign investment in infrastructure projects like special economic zones is further boosting the economy and creating much-needed jobs.

At this important time, I call on Canada to lead western democracies in supporting and strengthening Bangladesh so it continues to protect religious minorities and maintain stability. This is required to ensure that Bangladesh achieves much-required economic growth.

Artisanal Mining in Democratic Republic of Congo

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, all of us here have at least one cellphone, and there is a very good chance it contains component parts dug up by artisanal miners under deplorable conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Artisanal mining is mining done by hand by subsistence miners. In the DRC, this often includes children and pregnant women working in tunnels that frequently collapse.

In our shame regarding these abuses, but also in our insistence on having our technology, we have compounded the mistake by letting our strategic rivals dominate Congolese mining production, while still buying from them. Morality and strategic sense require us to engage with Africa's artisanal mining sector. We must work to allow adult artisanal miners to earn a living wage for their family in safer conditions, including by cutting out the many middlemen who exploit workers.

The future of the world will be shaped by who controls the DRC's vast resources, and that control should not be in the hands of colonial powers, past or present, or even of local elites, but finally in the hands of the Congolese people.

Women in Construction Forum

[Joanne Thompson, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, “trailblazers”, “change-makers” and “visionaries” are just a few of the words to describe the participants in the Newfoundland and Labrador Construction Association's Women in Construction Forum.

The NLCA knows that to literally build the future of this province we all need to be at the table or the work site and is putting in the work to ensure increased representation. The government is also committed to this through the Canadian apprenticeship strategy, which proudly aims to support a trades workforce that is skilled, inclusive, certified and productive, through funding, grants and more.

I want to congratulate everyone at the Women in Construction Forum again for their great work.

Gala de l'ADISQ

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, these are troubled times for Quebec culture, but yesterday's ADISQ gala showed just how vibrant and diverse French-language music is in Quebec.

Among the winners were greats like Ginette Reno and Michel Rivard, who won an award for his show Le tour du bloc. What a great name. Félix awards were also handed out to well-versed artists such as Daniel Bélanger, Les Cowboys Fringants and Alexandra Stréliski, as well as to Innu artist Kanen and the Acadian band Salebarbes. The awards show spanned multiple genres and generations, from Ginette to Fouki. Overseeing it all was Louis-José Houde, who is bowing out of hosting duties after 18 fantastic years.

Not only was it a night to honour the winners, it was also an opportunity to see Quebec's entire musical family deliver a colourful celebration. It was a reminder that, in 2023, every song sung in French and Innu is a song of resistance. Bravo to our artists, and long live Quebec culture.

Remembrance Day

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize Remembrance Day. On that day, we are asked to give thanks to veterans, their families and members of the Canadian Armed Forces. It is a time to honour those who gave their lives in the line of duty, who paid the ultimate price.

Wars are currently raging in many parts of the world. We should be eternally grateful to those who fought for our freedom. We should also recognize and thank the soldiers and personnel on peacekeeping missions around the world.

I would like to thank all the local branches of the Royal Canadian Legion, including Nickel Belt branches 564, 503, 179, 553, 225 and 336 for being pillars of the community.

Please, keep our heroes in our hearts on November 11 and every day. Participate in a Remembrance Day ceremony. Lest we forget.

Carbon Tax

[Arpan Khanna, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the current Liberal-NDP government, Oxford families are struggling to eat, to heat their homes and to house themselves.

After tanking in the polls, the Prime Minister is panicking and has admitted that his carbon tax is punishing Canadians. He decided to temporarily pause the carbon tax for some Canadians in some places. His flip-flop will leave 39 million Canadians out in the cold, but the Prime Minister does not seem to care. The polls are driving his policies, and he is focused on saving his job. His own minister admitted that Canadians get relief because they vote Liberal.

The government should stop dividing Canadians and stop playing politics. It is time the Liberal member for Cambridge and those Liberal members from Kitchener and London do what is right, admit that the carbon tax is not worth the cost and vote in favour of our common-sense Conservative motion that would keep the heat on and take the tax off for all Canadians.