Debates of Nov. 26th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I thank the hon. member for that information.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

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

Madam Speaker, I think it is important to say that when the member starts to give a false narrative that somehow the Conservatives are not to blame for this filibuster, I think it is really unfortunate and definitely misleading.

Let us be real here. We have had close to 200 speeches delivered by the Conservatives and numerous concurrence reports brought in by the Conservatives, all in an attempt to filibuster the House. The motion we are debating says that the issue needs to be advanced to the procedure and House affairs committee. That is the Speaker's ruling, and that is the motion that was introduced by the Conservatives.

The Conservative Party of Canada, in the self-interest of the leader of the Conservative Party, is playing this irresponsible multi-million dollar game. To try to give an impression, in any fashion whatsoever, that it is not the Conservative Party that is to pay for this particular irresponsible behaviour is wrong, outright wrong.

Would the member not agree, at least, that it is a Conservative motion that we are actually debating, and that it is the Conservatives who put up speaker after speaker after speaker? It is a false argument to try to express anything otherwise.

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

Madam Speaker, that member there is the member who speaks the most in this place, other than the Speakers. For him to criticize people in this place for wanting to stand up and speak on behalf of their communities is pretty nonsensical and pretty unbelievable. What is the government trying to hide? The Liberal government could end this tonight. All it has to do is release the documents. What is it trying to hide?

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am with my colleague from Kelowna—Lake Country. I just wish that the member for Winnipeg North would quit filibustering in here and actually do his job and turn over the documents so that we can get to the bottom of this. We just heard from the Bloc that the extension of hours next week was not the Bloc. We know it was not the Liberals who were extending hours. It was the NDP. We just had in here the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, the House leader for the NDP, saying that they are always here to stand up against corruption, but they are now in with the Liberals once again.

My question for my colleague from Kelowna—Lake Country is this: Does she believe that the NDP got out the scotch tape and pasted back together its agreement? Is the breakup over?

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

Madam Speaker, what we have seen play out is that the NDP leader did this very dramatic speech and talked about the agreement no longer existing with the government, and yet over and over again New Democrats continue to side with the government, vote with it and basically do the will of the government, so it is nonsense.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, Quebeckers and Canadians know they can count on us for help when they are struggling to pay their rent and their bills.

I really liked it when my colleague said she was getting a little tired of repeating the same speech in the House all the time. I have a suggestion for her. She can simply stop repeating the same speech over and over in the House. That might help. I urge them to vote on their own privilege motion. The Liberals must also hand over the unredacted documents.

What does my colleague think of that solution?

On the one hand, they can stop playing childish games and we can vote. On the other hand, the government can commit to being transparent and handing over the unredacted documents.

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

Madam Speaker, I will stand up for my community on how crime is increasing and how people cannot afford to feed themselves. Maybe it does sound repetitive sometimes, but those are the issues that are important to people in my community and to Canadians.

As I mentioned in my intervention, crime is up. Yes, we say all the time that food bank use is up, but guess what? Reports just came out again over the last week or so that as we go into Christmas, food banks are expecting increases again. Yes, these are things we talk about all the time, but they are issues that are important to members of my community, and things are not getting better. The results of this government, of this NDP government, keep leading to costs going up. If things are getting better, then why does food bank use keep going up?

Here we have a government that is looking to increase taxes again on April 1. The carbon tax is going up 19%, which is going to make the cost of everything go up again, and yet the Liberals continue going down this path. Yes, we keep talking about some of the same issues, but it is about the failures of this government, which keeps on the same path. The government has not changed its policies and keeps going in the same direction, which is crushing Canadians' bank accounts.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Madam Speaker, one of the many comments that the Liberal spokesperson, the member for Winnipeg North, made today was referring to the Conservatives as the “far right”. I do not know if he and the Liberals have been looking at the polls over the past year, but it seems like the “far right” is approaching half the Canadian population, and they just seem to be totally disconnected.

The member for Kelowna—Lake Country spoke about food banks and the lineups. I have seen that in my own community, with the demand increasing and the ability to provide decreasing.

I wonder if the member has some comments about what she thinks has happened to the Liberal Party.

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

Madam Speaker, the Liberals have been in government now for nine years, and it is in fact the NDP-Liberal government. We are seeing the results of its policies and legislation play out. It does not matter whether we are looking at crime, whether we are looking at economic policies or whether we are looking at housing; we are seeing the direct results of its policies.

When we step back and look, we are saying that we are going to address these different issues, whether it is crime, which I talked about quite a bit during my intervention, or whether it is on the economic side. We want to go back to look for the causes and the solutions, as opposed to putting band-aids on a lot of the issues. The government is on a path of being soft on crime. It has gone down a path of inflationary deficit spending and does not seem to be taking its foot off the gas with that.

We are seeing the results of the Liberals' governance. We have seen the mismanagement with the massive conflicts of interest and lack of transparency in the green slush fund, or SDTC, which is what we are talking about here today. After we have had a government in place for nine years or more now, we see the results of its actions play out, which is exactly what we are dealing with now.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member made reference to the fact that there has been a filibuster taking place. What she did not talk about is that there are 180 Conservatives who have taken the opportunity to speak. There are maybe three or four Liberals who have actually spoken on the issue. The Conservative Party wants us to believe, listen to and follow the leader of the Conservative Party. The government wants to be able to recognize and follow the advice from the RCMP, the Auditor General and legal experts.

The question I have for the member is this: Why should we listen to the Conservatives and their AI-produced speeches, more often than not, unfortunately, along with the propaganda that they are giving, versus the RCMP, the Auditor General and other legal experts?

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

Madam Speaker, it is really interesting, considering that member could be called the filibuster king. It would be interesting to see how many times he has risen and spoken in interventions with respect to this exact issue. I would presume that he is probably at the very top of that list; I would be surprised if he were not. It is really a nonsensical question coming from that member, considering that he is the one who continually talks in this House on this topic and, frankly, almost any other topic. He is the king of filibustering and he is the Liberals' spokesperson most of the time.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is always a true pleasure and honour to rise in the House of Commons and speak on behalf of the incredible people of Peterborough—Kawartha.

It is another day, another scandal. It really feels like everything is on fire. It really is heavy right now for a lot of people in Canada. When they watch this House, it is so frustrating for people at home. I assure them it is also frustrating to sit in here and listen to the repeat, the Groundhog Day that it is in here, every day with the same thing over and over again.

Canadians really want one thing. They want an election. It is the only way out of this disaster. This is a disaster. This would be the most consequential election in my lifetime and in many people's lifetimes because, without a doubt, people's lives depend on it. That is not dramatic. That is not being a rage farmer. That is the fact of what is happening on the streets of Canada.

I do not know how the Liberals and New Democrats go home after a week here and go to a grocery store or go out in their community and not hear this from every member in their community. There is no trust. There is nothing in place anymore and all hope feels lost and that is a terrible feeling.

The finance minister calls it a vibe; it is a bad vibe. It is a bad vibe, according to the finance minister, that over two million people are accessing a food bank in a month. It is a bad vibe that one in five kids are experiencing poverty. It is a bad vibe that the number of kids in homeless shelters has tripled in Toronto in the last eight years. It is a bad vibe when we walk down ByWard Market on a Tuesday at seven o'clock and a man has overdosed, dead on the street, and paramedics roll up to revive him, which they tell me they have already done multiple times that week. It is a bad vibe. That is who is in charge of our country right now, so we can bet people are mad. We can bet people are hurt and hopeless. We have a Prime Minister who is vibing to Taylor Swift, exchanging friendship bracelets while the city of Montreal burns. It is a bad vibe. This all comes down to a level of corruption that has to be addressed in this House.

The green slush fund is a fund created by the Liberals that the Auditor General has done an audit on and we are still waiting, pushing and pressuring the Liberals to hand over the unredacted documents from the green slush fund. A whistle-blower came to committee and said they could not take this anymore; could not lay their head on the pillow knowing what is going on in the government and keep showing up to work, because they wanted a moral compass. Therefore, the whistle-blower came and testified at committee and said that this is corruption at its core; this is a billion-dollar fund.

The Auditor General proceeded to do an audit. There were 90 decisions in which the fund had violated its own conflict of interest policies. One out of six projects funded by SDTC, which was $59 million, were not eligible and in some cases did not even support the development of a new green technology.

It is scam and corruption. Over a dozen government departments and agencies either provided redacted documents or simply refused to comply with the order and withheld some or all of their records.

Right now in the House as I am speaking, there is talk everywhere. Nobody is even listening anymore because corruption is normal under the Prime Minister. This is nothing to the Liberals. They are talking and it does not matter because the Conservatives keep speaking and saying the same thing. We will keep saying the same thing because we will fight for Canadians. We are the only ones in this House calling out this corruption. It is absurd and insane, and everyone at home knows this.

This is the most consequential time in the history of politics. One in five kids are hungry and there are 1,400 homeless encampments. The YWCA shelter in Halifax says women cannot leave the shelters because there is no housing. What happens when women cannot leave a shelter or get into a shelter? Intimate partner violence on the street goes up. Women are dying. A woman was murdered in broad daylight just weeks ago in Ottawa while she was with her two children. The man got out of the car, slit her throat and she bled out. Do I have the Liberals' and NDP's attention now? I hope I do, because this is so consequential.

We may be sitting in here in our green comfy chairs, but people at home are starving. These are not made-up statistics. This is real life. If we talk to people and maybe visit some of the homeless encampments, we will know what is happening. Food banks are running out of food. The people who used to volunteer at a food bank are now using a food bank. The 2024 hunger report from Food Banks Canada show the shocking statistics of over two million users in one month, 30% of whom are children, but those numbers are low.

I thought about Fleming College that runs a food bank. It would not be registered with Food Banks Canada. I thought about Street Level Advocacy, where Scott Couper gives hot meals to people every single day. He is not registered with Food Banks Canada. Ladies make sandwiches and drive downtown to deliver them. They are not taken into account for that. Those numbers are not even real. They are higher than that.

There is not one area in this country that is functioning. Not one area is doing okay or thriving. It is so sickening to sit on this side of the House and hear the Prime Minister, with the leader of the NDP holding him in power, say it is not the Liberals' fault. No, they are a victim. The Minister of Justice had the audacity to stand in this House yesterday, when he was called out on his atrocious justice laws in this country, and say they delivered bail reform. Yes, they delivered bail reform all right. How about they check the incidence of femicides in this country, of women being murdered in broad daylight, or the 16-year-old girl in northern Ontario who had her arm slashed off by her abusive boyfriend, who, guess what everyone, was out on bail? However, the justice minister delivered bail reform. When we destroy trust, we destroy society. The Prime Minister has no respect, he has no trust and there is chaos on the streets.

People need hope. People need to know that there will be laws put in place to prevent this level of corruption that we have never seen in history. It has become normal. It is so common, it is normal. We have a former minister of employment who misinformed the House of his indigenous heritage, and who took money from the government, much like this green slush fund. He is gone. He is no longer the minister. It is just, let us move on to the next thing.

How many ministers are gone from that side of the House? There is the former minister of public safety who said it was not his fault that Paul Bernardo got transferred to medium security in the dead of night and the families of victims were not notified. He said it was not his fault. It is never their fault. They say that they did not get the email, or they did not read the documents. They drop like flies.

I feel so bad for the MPs over there who actually care about their constituents, because I know there are some. I see their body language in here when the Prime Minister stands up, and they are sick, just like the rest of us, because he gaslights Canadians.

That is the hope I want to tell people at home they need to have, because it is here. The change is coming. Two, three years ago, even when I first got elected, people were still afraid to speak the truth, because they would get cancelled. They were called a racist or a misogynist. If they did not have vaccine status, they were called a leper, divided and shamed and put down. They would be cancelled.

No more. People started to say, “I am not any of those things. I am a good person who wants to just let people live their life without hurting others.” That is all people want in this country, and now they are standing up and they are fighting back against the insane government, the wacko government that has legalized drugs and become a drug dealer.

All people have to do is go outside, two blocks from here, and just walk down the street. People who used to come to Ottawa would know ByWard Market was like the most amazing place. Tell me a tiny town in this country that feels safe anymore. There are not too many. We have headlines of stabbings and shootings on a regular basis in a community like Peterborough, where a man who murdered an indigenous woman might get four years.

People are so stressed. I want to read you some stats, because I think the stats tell the human consequences of bad policy and bad leadership. It is really important to know these numbers, because on the other end of these numbers are real people, real humans and real families.

Children have the highest rate of food insecurity among all age groups in Canada, 24% in 2022. That is 1.8 million children. One third of kids in Canada do not enjoy a safe and healthy childhood. In what country, like Canada, do we not take care of our kids where they feel safe? Two-thirds of Canadians report experiencing abuse before the age of 15. Nearly one in five kids live in poverty. Suicide is a leading cause of death for children aged 10 to 14 in Canada.

Over the past decade, Canada has fallen sharply from 10th to 30th place amongst OECD countries for the well-being of children. Twenty per cent of children and youth in Canada, approximately 1.2 million young people, are affected by a mental health disorder. If they have the courage to ask for help, there is none on the other side of that. Also in this country, under the Prime Minister, health care has been decimated. There are doctors ready to practice in this country, but they cannot.

We are spending more on servicing the debt in this country than we are on transfers to health care. The economy is the foundation of this whole problem, and that is why we are in this discussion right now. The government forgot, or maybe it knew the whole time, that it does not have any money. It has taxpayer money. It has Canadians' money.

The Liberals take that money; they do not have any accountability, and they waste it. They give it to their friends and their family, or they try to buy votes with a $250 cheque that only some people get. No, they cannot give it to the people with disabilities or the people who really need it.

This is a quote from the Prime Minister:

One of the fundamental challenges around affordability is they would love to say, ‘Well, you know what? We just need more money. Can you send us...an extra thousand dollars a month?’ As soon as you do that, inflation goes up by exactly that amount.

Those are the Prime Minister's words, yet we have an inflationary crisis. We have an affordability crisis. I wonder why. Does he believe that budgets balance themselves, that he can buy Canadians' votes and that he can just spend, spend, spend and print more money as though he is playing a game of Monopoly?

The Prime Minister will just increase the carbon tax to try to make up for that revenue and that money he is spending, hoping it will be fine. What does the carbon tax do? It puts a tax on every single thing Canadians use and drives up the cost of living even more.

I want to come back to the finance minister's saying that Canadians are just not in the right vibe. They are just not in the right vibe when they go to the food bank or when one in five kids is living in poverty. It is just not a good vibe. There is nothing serious about the government. I actually implore people not to give up hope.

I watched Gladiator with my parents and my kids on Friday night. It felt so relevant; people rioted out on the streets, and they had these emperors who were destructive and narcissistic and did not care about the people. There was a man fighting for the people, and there were people fighting with that man fighting for the people. People should not give up hope. We are holding this line.

Pressure builds diamonds, and I know it feels like Groundhog Day. I am living it too. However, there is a Canadian gladiator here to bring it home, to make life affordable and to restore the hope of the Canadian dream. I promise it is coming. We will get an election, hold the Liberal-NDP government to account and restore the hope of Canada.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently. I will be honest with you. I wanted to stand up and just ask relevance as to this artificial indignation of a speech that this individual, this hon. member, just delivered. We are on a subamendment to a question of privilege related to SDTC. We did not hear any of that come from the hon. member, yet they say they have respect for the chamber.

She refers to kids starving, yet the Conservative Party of Canada refuses to support a tax-free, means-tested Canada child benefit that is lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty. They voted against a national food program that the chamber advanced. Can we guess what? Premier Ford, the Conservative Premier of Ontario, just signed on; his province is the third to do so. He said he can get behind this. The only people who cannot get behind Canadians seem to be those in the Conservative Party of Canada.

Therefore, when she refers to not one area of this country functioning, I will just say quickly that I will always fight for constituents in Waterloo. That member and the member who spoke before her have been told that they cannot actually support their municipalities and fight for housing, and that is why there are parts of this country that are dysfunctional. In Waterloo, I will fight for constituents, both those who agree with me and those who do not.

Today, we are referring to this question of privilege. The Speaker's ruling states, referring to the paragraph before, “I believe the best way for this to be achieved would be to follow the usual course for a prima facie question of privilege, that is, a referral to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.”

Does the member agree with and support the Speaker's ruling?

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what is so bizarre to me when they make this argument, saying that we voted against this and we voted against that, is that we are not the government. We are the opposition. Every single policy that Liberals have passed has failed. Thank God we voted against it, because it does not work. Some of the things they say are just bananas.

I love reading the comments from people who are watching live online. Sheri Erickson actually had a question for the member there too, asking “why the Liberals think they are above the law”. Tom Good asked, “[W]hat is [the Prime Minister] afraid of?” Josh Holland asked, “Why should we take CRA seriously when our leaders keep abusing us like this?”

We will keep holding the line. We will hold the member, the Prime Minister and the opposition leader to account until they restore affordability, reduce the corruption and account for the missing $400 million.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP supports the motion. We want to get to the bottom of the SDTC issue, as when NDP MPs were instrumental in getting to the bottom of the WE Charity scandal and the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Of course, we remember all the Conservative scandals, in which Conservative MPs simply refused any transparency at all. The ETS scandal was $400 million; the G8 scandal was a billion dollars. As for the Phoenix pay scandal, we are still paying for it today, $2.2 billion. Anti-terrorism funding was $3.1 billion. In addition, of course, there were the Senate scandals. I could go on and on.

The Conservatives have been filibustering their own motion. However, there is an important issue around Trump tariffs that the Conservatives did not even want to bring forward tonight. The member for Windsor West and the NDP provoked the emergency debate on the Trump tariffs.

Where are the Conservatives? Why is the NDP doing all the heavy lifting, forcing this emergency debate tonight that the member for Windsor West will be speaking to and, immediately after, the member for Edmonton Griesbach?

Why is the NDP the one that is actually standing up for Canadian workers in the House?

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know the Speaker wants me to give only a brief answer, but I actually have about 20 pages of scandals and corruption here from the last nine years under the Prime Minister, who has been propped up by the opposition leader.

There is no respect for Canadians from the opposition leader, that party, as they continue to prop up the government. I say shame on them; this is the same government that says it was what made sure it got a $250 cheque to Canadians, except for people who are on disability and seniors. It is always winners and losers with the government, but we should not worry. They will tear up their marriage agreement, but only for a minute. They are going to get back together right after that.

U.S. Tariffs on Canadian Products

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The House will now proceed to the consideration of a motion to adjourn the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration, namely the U.S. tariffs on Canadian products.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

moved:

That this House do now adjourn.

Madam Speaker, I would like to start by saying I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach. I thank him for seconding this motion; we are very glad the Speaker recognized the issue as an emergency for Canada. The motion relates specifically to the incoming president of the United States, who has threatened a 25% tariff on Canadian workers and businesses. That would create significant economic chaos when it comes to our capabilities to provide well-paying jobs for Canadians.

I will start by noting that this type of bullying tactic has been used in the past before. At different times, Canada has had to respond appropriately to these measures. With regard to this particular tariff that is noted, it also puts us in the same position as Mexico; the Mexican government has indicated that it would respond even more forcefully than what we have seen from our Prime Minister and some of our premiers right now. Specifically, the Mexican government has talked going line by line back against the United States.

Here we are, having to compete as a North American region against the world. We have one partner with which we have engaged in a free trade agreement, both traditionally and continually, with our latest agreement still being on the paperwork and being worked on right now. This will undermine not only our domestic jobs and workers but also those in the U.S. and Mexico, because we all work toward trading and prospering together. It will further undermine our capabilities to compete with other parts of the world, where we have seen some of these practices cost jobs.

Right now, Canadians are feeling the pinch. They are certainly feeling very stressed as we go into this winter. Paycheques are getting smaller, when it comes to the inflation that has taken place. There is uncertainty with regard to pensions and benefits with the rising costs, and that is one of the reasons the New Democrats have pushed hard in the current Parliament and have been proud to get programs such as dental care and pharmacare. These are backstops that are huge and controllables that should have been done before to make us more prosperous and, more importantly, healthier and more capable of productivity in the workforce.

That is one of the big differences, as we have seen successive Conservative and Liberal governments do massive corporate tax reductions that did not see the economic prosperity that we would like to see. We saw all that wealth disappear, much of it even going to the United States, where they tax on worldwide profits. We have actually done massive subsidization of our industries and other foreign industries. That has cost us significantly, whereas dental care and health care are actually reasons to invest in Canada, and they make the controllable expense go right to the individual worker. Therefore, the workers and their families get the benefit of better health, better training and, more importantly, more contribution to society.

As we know, in regard to our relationship with the United States, we are actually in a trade surplus. They are one of the few nations that we actually have a trade surplus with, and that goes back to historic trade agreements that actually were negotiated. In brief, we had an auto pact. It was a significantly improved-upon situation in which we were the leaders in automotive manufacturing in the world, often placing first or second at different times. When we lost that capability, because we entered into our first free trade agreement, we saw the Liberal government not challenge a WTO challenge from Japan at that time, which broke that up. We have since disappeared back into eighth or ninth place with regard to automotive manufacturing and assembly.

That was not even a trade concern of the U.S. at that time, but it was of our other partners. We saw the Liberal government basically stand down on Canadians for that. Now, those eventual repercussions have come to the point at which we are doing significant incentives for automotive manufacturers, similar to what they are doing in the United States, Mexico and other places. We have an integrated market, which is certainly going to be affected by a 25% tariff, or even a 5% tariff if it comes to that.

I would also like to note that we have seen the Conservatives, in the past, not do their due diligence in protecting Canadians. In particular, with the softwood lumber industry, we actually won a WTO challenge against the United States, and we were rewarded with billions of dollars in money. We then had the Stephen Harper government abandon collecting it, with the actual effect it had on our economy.

With regard to this particular threat from Donald J. Trump, historically, we also saw tariffs and other types of issues brought on Canadians during his first term in office, so we need to take this very seriously. I give the premiers and the Prime Minister credit for at least getting together right away, and I do want to acknowledge that.

As New Democrats, we believe we are going to have to exercise our full strength on this, but that group meeting right now is insufficient to deal with the process and the crisis in front of us. We want to see labour unions, civil society and others included later on. There needs to be a war room and an actual strategy with measurables, which would involve more than just the leaders of the provinces and the Prime Minister, or a small cabal of the Liberal cabinet undertaking some of those issues the government believes are important, to deal with this. Sometimes the government has not supported the right elements to actually deal with these situations.

When I asked for the emergency debate today, only the NDP raised the issue that Trump had specifically identified the border as not being adequately resourced, or at the very least that the U.S. was having problems coming from Canada and Mexico. There is no way we would ever want to assent to the argument that the Mexican border and the Canadian border are similar, but there has been a history, which has been going on for a number of years, with the U.S. politicizing the border.

On the Canadian side, we saw the Harper administration cut over 1,100 CBSA workers, which it fired. It even fired the ones who were doing some of the work that stops gun and drug smuggling, along with a number of different things. We have not replaced those officers. In fact, we are short 2,000 to 3,000 workers right now, and they would need to be trained. We have been pushing for that.

We want to see a number of different things get done. We want to start identifying the tariffs we can actually push back on. The Harper administration actually put tariffs on Canadian companies because it did not know what it was doing. A good example is Dainty in my riding, which mills rice. It was going to get an extra tariff from the Harper administration, which would have cost it more jobs, to retaliate against the U.S. We need to start inventorying all these businesses and organizations on which there will be effects to figure out how we would do a retaliatory tariff. We need to be very sharp regarding that, and we want to prepare our challenge right now, before the president-elect takes office, because we only have a matter of months to get our situation in order.

The New Democrats are calling for a comprehensive approach that would not just be determined by government figureheads, but would involve union representation of the workers whose jobs would be threatened. It is very important to have an approach that is inclusive because workers will also be able to give us the best evidence on how we unravel some of the investments in the threats.

We also want to make sure, and this is something we have been saying for a number of years, that we stop other countries from using the environment and labour as a subsidy in our trade relationships. We finally did get this into the new agreement, but the government has not been forceful enough, and we have seen China, Mexico and other places use a practice of undercutting and depressing Canadian worker wages, making sure we do not see the successes we should when we compete in a fair way. We need to be more responsible with that.

We need to also diversify our interprovincial trade. For goodness' sake, we are still seeing problems with that. It happens all the time. Second to that is getting into other markets because, as I noted at the beginning of my speech, Canada is pretty much at the end of almost all the trade agreements. We have deficits and not surpluses, so we need to have a better strategy there.

As I conclude, I want to again call for the practical things we can control, that we can actually engage in, and doing a full strategy—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member is quite over time.

The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby is rising on a point of order.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, this is a fundamentally important debate on the Trump tariffs, which could have a devastating impact on Canadians. Why is there only one Conservative MP in the House?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member knows he cannot make references to the presence or absence of members in the House, so I would like for him to avoid doing so.

[Louis-Philippe Sauvé, Bloc, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Madam Speaker, on the same point of order.

The member for New Westminster—Burnaby is the House leader for his party. He should know that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I appreciate the comment.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

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

Madam Speaker, I admire the member for Windsor West enormously. Of course, his riding is ultimately on the border, on the front line of tariffs and disputes about getting goods across our border.

I would be very interested to know if he has any comments on this: Donald Trump has framed this as Canada being weak, saying we do not guard our border against the floods of immigrants and fentanyl going into the United States. I wonder if the hon. member for Windsor West has any observations on the failures of the U.S. border letting guns and drugs into our country.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, there have absolutely been a series of political advancements that have been used against Canadian trading elements for a long period of time, with no real significant push-back from the Canadian government. As I mentioned in my remarks, the former Conservative government cut 1,100 officers and also got rid of some of the teams that worked specifically on gun and drug smuggling, so that affected the border in two ways. On top of that, there is an order in council that would allow our border officers to help the RCMP. The government has been sitting on that since 1932 without acting on it.

When I was in Parliament before, during another House session, we worked to get our officers armed, equivalent to those in the United States in many respects. We wanted to avoid practices that could be used against us as a weapon in saying that were weak on our border.

Lastly, we still have deficient marine resources in the Great Lakes. We have deficient supports, as we need 2,000 to 3,000 officers. That is the bottom line. Having those would deflect some of this unfair criticism.