Debates of Sept. 25th, 2023

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Democratic Institutions

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

Mr. Speaker, we see clearly how, across the board, the government fails to take responsibility for its failures. When things go wrong, it is always somebody else who is responsible. It is always somebody else's fault. We could talk, for example, about inflation, about grocery prices, about how everything is more expensive under the government, especially so many household essentials that people rely on to feed their families.

The Liberals' response to it is not to acknowledge at all the role that their policies have played in this, not to acknowledge the fact that the reason we have rampant inflation in this country is because the government has spent massively beyond its means and that it has driven up the cost of goods. It is the inflation tax that was a policy choice of the government. That is what is driving up prices. Now Liberals want to present themselves as there to solve a problem that they themselves have created, with absolutely no recognition of the role that they have played fundamentally in causing that problem.

There are the housing challenges. The parliamentary secretary just spoke about how the government spent millions here, thousands over here and they are doing all these things for housing. How is it going? What are the results? We are building fewer homes today than our country did in the 1970s. We are way behind in terms of meeting these needs, and this is because of policies that have been implemented by the government.

We had an incident discussed in question period today, where, unbelievably, the government allowed a Nazi to be in the gallery during a speech given by the President of Ukraine. The government's response to this event was that it is not responsible. It found its fall guy. It had nothing to do with it, when, in reality, we know that it is the responsibility of the government to vet those who are going to be in the gallery for an important event like that. It is responsible for the vetting. It knows this, this is how the process works, and it is denying responsibility. Whether it is in this incredibly embarrassing and wrong incident that happened at the end of last week or whether it is in the approach of the government to policy in general, we see a complete unwillingness by the government to take responsibility.

I asked a question earlier on the issue of the Trudeau Foundation. This is another instance where we see the government's failure to take responsibility. The question I asked at the time was about the fact that the government claimed the Prime Minister has had no ongoing involvement in or interaction with the Trudeau Foundation, and yet a meeting took place in the Prime Minister's Office between deputy ministers and the leadership of the Trudeau Foundation. It boggles the mind that the Prime Minister would try to pass off the fact that, on one hand, he would say he had no involvement whatsoever in this foundation that received very problematic donations and, on the other hand, this meeting would take place in the Prime Minister's own office.

The response we got at the time from the government House leader to these questions about how this happened is that it was just a building. It just happened to be that the Prime Minister's Office was the most convenient location to have it. I think there was a witness at the public accounts committee formerly with the Trudeau Foundation who said the Prime Minister's Office was just a convenient downtown location. Anyone in Ottawa who wants to hold a birthday party needs to know that the Prime Minister's Office is available. It is just a convenient downtown location. That is ridiculous. It is not a convenient downtown location that just anyone can book. It is a relatively small building that is the Prime Minister's Office. It is called the Prime Minister's Office.

Why do the Liberals not stop passing off the blame and start taking responsibility for their numerous failures?

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

Mr. Speaker, the member has some challenges in recognizing what real responsibility is all about, quite frankly. Let us give a few examples.

What I find very lacking in the member's comments are facts. If one listened to the Conservatives, one would think the Prime Minister of Canada is responsible for inflation around the world. One would think so. Back in the days when the Conservatives were posing these questions, Canada's inflation was less than that of the United States. It was less than that of most European countries. In the G20, we might even have been, if not the lowest, very close to the lowest.

The Conservatives completely dunk their head in the sand and say that here in Canada, even thought it is the lowest, it is the Prime Minister's fault that we have inflation. They should wake up, look at the environment around us and realize the facts of reality.

This does not mean that as a government we should not do anything because of our inflation rate and the impact it is having on Canadians. As a government, we did take actions. We recognized the reality of the hurt that Canadians were having. That is why we brought in grocery rebates that affected somewhere around 11 million Canadians to help deal with inflation. The member makes reference to the issue of housing and the speech I had just given. What the member does not tell us is that, if we compare our years in government to the years of Stephen Harper, we will find that the Conservatives failed in every way.

We now have a government that does provide, but that does not mean that we do not recognize the hardships that are out there and the reality of what is taking place. That is why we brought in legislation to ensure that there are going to be more homes built. That is why in 2022 we brought in budget enhancement for housing co-ops, and that is not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars that are allocated to low-income non-profit housing or the rapid housing initiatives.

The Conservatives are very selective with the facts, and they try to twist, turn and bend to be negative and say that the negativity is happening because of the Prime Minister. The last example the member gave was in regard to the Trudeau Foundation.

I have answered questions based on that issue in my capacity as parliamentary secretary. It has been all completely cleared up. The Prime Minister has had nothing to do with the foundation for many years. The Conservatives try to paint this as this hook going here to that thing and this point here going to that point there, and then saying it is corruption. That is garbage, just like the personal character assassination the member just put across the floor when he talked about inflation in groceries and housing is garbage. The reality is that the Conservatives just do not know what direction they are going.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member said that, in my comments, I am throwing all these things out there and really trying to connect the dots to establish that there is corruption in the government. It is actually not very difficult to establish that there is corruption in the government. The youngest of my children could connect that dots that are available.

The fact is that all one has to do is consult with not just a report, but the various reports, prepared by the Ethics Commissioner, that in fact demonstrate the corruption of the government. We do not have to rely on political parties. We can go to the various non-partisan officers of Parliament.

The member said other countries experienced inflation. I will say other countries that have pursued inflationary policies have also experienced inflation, just as the Canadian government, in pursuing inflationary policies, has caused inflation.

He talked about Stephen Harper on housing. I think it is objectively demonstrable in the numbers that there has been a close to 100% increase in six years, from 2015 to 2021, after Stephen Harper was in office, so whatever the government is doing, it is not working. There has been a massive increase in housing costs that we cannot just blame on exogenous factors. It is not the war in Ukraine that is causing the house of pricing to go up.

When will the government take responsibility for its failures?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day I would rather listen to what the Ethics Commissioner has to say than members of the Conservative Party. There are a number of members in the House who believe in this whole tin hat theory and conspiracies galore. Ultimately, they put things together and they just do not make sense. Then they get upset if I do not agree there is corruption. I do not see any form of corruption in any of the topics the member has raised this evening; what I see is a lot of fishing rods being cast into the water, a lot of stargazing and wishing, and connections that are just not there.

As the Conservatives focus their attention on the personal character assassination of the Prime Minister, he, the government and my Liberal colleagues will continue to focus on the needs of Canadians.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, again we find ourselves here today talking about the very foundation of our country, that is, our democratic institutions. What we have seen over the last several years under the Liberal Prime Minister is the steady erosion in the trust Canadians have. Why is that?

The question I put to the government that was insufficiently responded to as it provided no answer, a non-answer, it deflected it, as it often does, was with respect to the Communist dictatorship in Beijing having paid $140,000 to the Trudeau Foundation. What did it get in exchange for that? Direct access to the current Prime Minister and his brother.

The parliamentary secretary who will respond tonight will say that the Conservatives want to make this about the Prime Minister himself. This is about Canadians. This is about Canadians who deserve to have confidence in their democratic institutions. What have we heard over and again? What has the House said over and again? That we need a foreign agents registry. We need to know who is operating in this country. There need to be consequences for individuals who operate outside the law in an attempt to further the efforts of our adversaries, like the dictatorship in Beijing.

It is important that our allies are able to have confidence in us, just as it is important for Canadians to have confidence in our democratic institutions. We look at our Five Eyes partnership, NATO, NORAD and the G7. There are new alliances forming around the world with some of our traditional allies, like the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, as examples. Who is missing from that partnership? We are, and they do not miss us because they cannot trust what is happening under the Liberal government.

Our reputation on the world stage continues to take hit after hit, as we saw as recently as Friday when, through either the willingness or incompetence of the Prime Minister, we had a Nazi in the gallery of this place, recognized by the Chair occupant when the government had a responsibility to protect Canadians, our reputation and our guests, including a war-time president from another country we are supporting. The embarrassment that Canadians and parliamentarians have felt over the last few days after Friday's failure by the Prime Minister is going to continue to erode the confidence of our allies, just like the confidence of Canadians is eroded in our democratic institutions.

Canadians deserve better. That is why we need a foreign agents registry. We need it now. The Liberals dithered and dragged their feet on having a public inquiry into foreign interference. Let us have that foreign agents registry so we can restore the confidence of Canadians in our democratic institutions. Will the Liberals do it?

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

Mr. Speaker, the government has taken steps towards a foreign interference registry office. It is already fairly well established that we are moving forward with regard to that.

I am going to go back to this, because whether it is this member or the member who spoke prior to him, the members are very critical on foreign interference, and they make a personal attack on the Prime Minister. Let me reverse it. The foreign interference the member is making reference to is with regard to China. There is a report that came out while Stephen Harper was the prime minister and when, I believe, the current Leader of the Opposition was the minister responsible for democracy. They knew about it. What did they do? Absolutely nothing. They completely ignored the issue.

The issue does not go away, and now it has resurfaced in a different way. The Conservatives are blaming the Prime Minister for not taking action, yet as a government, we have actually improved our democratic system. Do members remember that the current Conservative leader tried to take away the authenticity of the voter identification card as a tool to allow people to vote? That leader and the Conservative Party are trying to say that it is the Liberals who are taking away from democratic institutions.

This member, like the other member, really and truly reflects what the Conservative Party has been attempting to do, as I have been saying for years now. The Conservatives' interest is not in substance but, rather, purely in character assassination. That is what we saw again today. Both members made reference to last Friday and tried to put the blame squarely on the Prime Minister and the PMO, even though the Speaker was very clear.

I was here. Those members were here, listening. The Speaker said he was the one who did the inviting and the introducing. Are Conservatives suggesting that any time a Speaker brings someone into the Speaker's gallery, they would have to be vetted through the Prime Minister's Office or the PCO? What are they suggesting should have happened? Are Conservatives trying to surrender control of the House of Commons and the floor of the House to the government of the day? Is that what they are implying? What role does the Speaker have, being elected by 337 members of the chamber and having a Speaker's gallery? Are we going to start putting limits on that?

We have to be very careful and follow the advice. What took place on Friday does not have to be a political issue. All of us should be united, not trying to set fire to an issue on which we should be trying to build a consensus and demonstrate leadership. However, the Conservatives are again more concerned about character assassination. That is the real reason why they are attempting to manipulate this situation. I find that somewhat sad and pathetic.

We continue to work very closely with the Five Eyes. In fact, we are the government that brought in Canada, in terms of the Five Eyes and having that apolitical, non-partisan standing committee of the House.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are asking for the Prime Minister to take responsibility.

I will address a number of things the parliamentary secretary said. First of all, are we going to surrender control of the House? It is the exact responsibility of the Prime Minister. It is the government to whom the Parliamentary Protective Service reports on operational matters. It is responsible for the safety of this place, members in this place and guests in this place.

Do the Liberals want to talk about eight years ago? They have been doing nothing. Instead of taking responsibility, they want to blame a prime minister from eight years ago. What is sad and pathetic is that instead of actually addressing the issues, they have the member who sits next to the parliamentary secretary trying to take secret films in here to see who is clapping loudly enough for what guests in this place say.

The Liberals should spend as much energy as they do trying to catch someone out with “gotcha” politics as they do on actually keeping Canadians safe and giving Canadians the ability to keep a roof over their head, to be able to feed themselves and to be able to heat their homes, but they are doing none of it. Why?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is just not true. We can look at some of the initiatives that we have actually taken.

I ran out of time when I talked about the Five Eyes. Members will remember when we had a parliamentary standing committee of the highest security clearance, as other Five Eyes countries did. This is something the Conservative Party opposed in government and even in opposition, yet our other partners in the Five Eyes have that. It allows that critical information to flow in an apolitical fashion. Individual members of Parliament from all political parties in the House can participate on that special committee, so that they can look at issues like foreign interference if that is what they want. They can call all forms of security agencies to come before it. That is action, which is something we have not seen from the Conservative Party in over a decade.

Emergency Preparedness

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am resuming a question I that initially asked in question period on May 29 of the former minister for emergency preparedness. I have to say that I mentioned in my question at the time that I thought he was working very hard and doing quite an exceptional job. However, my plea tonight to the hon. parliamentary secretary, and through her, to our new Minister of Emergency Preparedness, is to please take steps to establish a national climate emergency task force.

What the former minister for emergency preparedness was doing, and what my question on May 29 pertained to, was the extraordinary wildfire situation across Canada. This situation was current, at that time, and it continued through the summer to this day. We were seeing wildfires across the country, and we continue to do so. The efforts really led a lot of us across party lines to call for a national force to fight forest fires force and a national water bomber fleet. In other words, they should not just be federal. However, in terms of preparedness for what we are going to see and what we see more all the time, we need federal government leadership. However, provinces, territories, local governments and especially first nations governments need to be at the table sharing lessons learned and moving forward together. There has never been an issue that demands of us a non-partisan, shared response of all hands on deck as the climate emergency does.

On June 18, 2019, as I mentioned in my question back in May, in this chamber, we passed a motion that we are in a climate emergency. However, the government has never acted as though we were in an emergency. We are literally in it every single day, with fires, floods, permafrost melt and extreme weather events of all kinds, from tornadoes to extreme windstorms to derechos. Nevertheless, we really do not have the response or the resilience to respond to these events when they occur to save lives.

Obviously, as Greens, we want the government to do those things that are required to avoid levels of climate crisis to which we cannot adapt, but that is another debate. We really need to take steps to reduce our emissions dramatically, but we also need to prepare for those levels of climate events that we can no longer avoid from what is baked in.

An example is the question of heat domes. We know that the federal government response in the national adaptation plan says that we will continue to have Canadians die in heat domes until 2040. Why is that? It is because the government has decided that, in a bureaucratic approach, the only way to save lives in a heat dome is to make sure that every Canadian has access to an air-conditioned space. That is about as far as it goes. However, 619 British Columbians died in four days in 2021. All those lives could have been saved with emergency measures that are easy and affordable.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to express my sorrow and sincere condolences to the family and friends of the four firefighters who lost their lives in a crash last week in northern B.C. This brings to eight the number of firefighters we have lost in Canada in the direct line of duty this wildfire season. They died protecting their fellow Canadians. We, as a nation, need to recognize the sacrifice.

I would like to provide an update on what has been happening on the ground. These past weeks, the wildfire risk, while still present, has greatly diminished across the country, but this summer, over 6,000 wildland fires burned more than 17 million hectares of land in Canada, the equivalent of roughly twice the land mass of the province of New Brunswick.

More than 200,000 Canadians were forced to flee from their homes, and too many of them now have no home to return to. Particularly this year, we have seen the dire effects of climate change destroy communities and livelihoods. I join the member opposite in her call for action on climate change. I know she stands with our government in support of the urgent need to address this challenge.

This summer, once again, our government responded “present” when provinces were confronted with challenging situations they could not face alone. During this year's wildfire season, the Government of Canada received and approved 11 requests for assistance, RFAs, related to wildfire situations in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Alberta, Ontario, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.

Through these RFAs, we deployed Canadian Armed Forces through Operation LENTUS to provide support in a wide range of roles, including personnel for planning, coordination, basic firefighting, airlift resources and engineering support.

Multiple federal departments were also engaged in assisting Canadians, like Employment and Social Development Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, the RCMP, the Canadian Coast Guard, Health Canada, Parks Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, to make sure all hands were on deck to help Canadians through this difficult time.

I have just provided an overview of our immediate response to the emergency situations under way across the country this summer.

When the smoke clears, we can see the damage that has been done, and we know that we will face a long road back to normal. That is why disaster financial assistance arrangements are so important.

When a disaster costs a province more than it can bear, the federal government can cover up to 90% of the costs, including uninsurable damage to principal residences.

When disaster strikes, Canadians can rest assured that the federal government will be there to help them through the response and recovery. As the member opposite said, we have to work in lockstep with our provinces and territories, and indigenous communities to address our new reality.

I look forward to working with the member of Parliament for Saanich—Gulf Islands on making sure that Canada is ready and able to respond.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend, the parliamentary secretary, and I congratulate her on this new role.

This is the last place in the world we need partisanship. Everybody in this place will know that I have been talking about the threat of the climate crisis for about 40 years. I have watched it and had a front-row seat to failure after failure.

We need to avoid the worst of the climate crisis. The government's steps so far do not get us there, but we also need to be prepared to save lives now. I want to stress that we need to have a real, functioning working group of multi-party, multi-jurisdictional efforts in a national climate change task force that share lessons learned.

This includes lessons learned from areas like near Williams Lake and the heat dome. If people had gotten into a cold bath with ice, their lives would have been saved instead of waiting for an ambulance to take them to a hospital, but they were dead on arrival.

We know we need to do more and we need to learn from each other.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I echo what the member opposite has said. The reality is, with climate change and the impacts, we have seen unprecedented wildfires this last season, and they will continue. That is why our government designed Canada's first-ever national adaptation strategy, a whole-of-government action plan to increase the resilience of Canadian communities and respond to the impacts of climate change. Thanks to this strategy, we are making major investments in forest fire prevention, flood mapping and disaster-resistant infrastructure projects.

By working with our provincial, territorial and indigenous partners on regional vulnerabilities and engaging in active risk mitigation, we will permanently increase our country's resilience and develop our disaster response capacity to better protect Canadians in this new climate reality.

I would like to thank the member opposite, and I look forward to working with her in lockstep on making sure Canadians are safe.

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

The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:01 p.m.)