Debates of Dec. 2nd, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

However, hon. members will allow the Chair to speak.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I do appreciate that. If they are going to keep standing up to interrupt the member, I would at least ask that they cite the point of order they are raising and apply relevance to their point of order.

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

Actually, that is a rule that applies to everyone. Before asking for a point of order, it is important to mention which standing order the member is referring to.

To the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre, it would perhaps be good not to accuse other members of being what the hon. member was accusing them of.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am going to go back to my point that the member did not allow me to finish. Then, the member for Winnipeg North, instead of learning from an expert, a descendant of the Red River Métis, heckled him during his response when he could have taken the time of reconciliation and truth to learn; it is shameful. At a time when the Liberal Party members should be standing in solidarity, if they are really serious about reconciliation to protect indigenous people from the stealing of our identities, it is unfortunate that they double down and heckle. They are not going to take away my voice.

What has occurred is disgusting for a number of reasons. This member has used indigenous identity potentially for financial gain. The sad part about people like him, like Buffy Sainte-Marie, like the many academics who have received scholarships, grants and bursaries using our identity to get millions of dollars in research grants, is that they financially benefit, but they do not have to deal with the kinds of things that we do as indigenous people. We have to deal with the intergenerational impacts of residential school. We have an ongoing genocide against indigenous women and girls so severe in the Winnipeg that I fear for the safety of my nieces taking taxi cabs there. In the midst of this debate, when the Liberals have an opportunity to give space to indigenous voices, they disrespect that.

However, it is not not just the Liberals. For weeks and weeks, I have had to listen to the Conservatives also usurp indigenous identities for political gain. It is disgusting, and I will tell members why this is so grotesque.

In a Conservative government, Prime Minister Harper said that murdered and missing indigenous women and girls was not on his “radar”. It was the current member for Carleton who said to residential school survivors when settlement agreements were being reached that they did not need the money, they needed to learn the “values of hard work”, like being a slave in the residential schools doing tasks every day was not hard work and being taken away from their families. However, he then fundraised with residential school denialist think tanks and lifted up his friend, Jordan Peterson, a misogynist, a transphobic and a residential school denialist, as protecting, in public, time and time again, freedom of speech. Well, we have laws in this country; we have the Criminal Code. Inciting hate is inciting hate, which has nothing to do with free speech.

Time and time again, the leader of the Conservative Party has fraternized and even fundraised with folks like Frontier Centre, a residential school denial think tank, for the Conservative Party of Canada. He was fundraising with Frontier Centre when he came to Winnipeg when we had just discovered the tragic news that potentially there were women in the Prairie Green Road landfill; women who we are currently looking for. However, he did not go to see the families. No, he decided instead to fundraise with residential denial think tanks.

The member for Saskatoon West likened indigenous people to criminality, saying that the person in question was more likely to offend because of his racial background, and then doctored Hansard to suit his political benefit. I get kind of sick and tired as a representative from a place that has been likened to ground zero for MMIWG, and when I come from a family that has had to deal with the intergenerational effects of child welfare systems and institutionalization, to hear Conservatives, people who have voted unanimously time and again against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, showing deep concern for the latest identity fraud by the Liberals.

There was a point of order when I had not even started talking. It reeks here of appropriating indigenous identities for personal benefit and gain, whether it is the Liberals and members trying to get loans, or the Conservatives' utilizing our trauma and our historical experiences so they can hold up the House forever on our backs. I wish they had fought so hard for residential school survivors. I wish they had fought so hard to get supports for the families of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls. I wish they had fought so hard for our land, territories and resources, not when it suited their economic and political interests but to uphold our human rights, which they have voted against time and again in the House. They voted against Bill C-15.

If we are going to get to the bottom of the matter, if we are going to reconcile in this country, then people need to do some inner reflection, like the members who felt it necessary to heckle me and like the Conservatives and members of the Liberal Party whom I have had to listen to time and again call us “our indigenous people”, as if somehow we are pets in this place.

Let us do some reconciling here. Let us tell some truth bombs about the level of baloney and racism on the backs of indigenous people that I, my other indigenous colleagues, and our family members and communities have to endure. It is political drivel. If we want to reconcile, we need some answers today and we need the behaviour to stop.

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

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre deserves all our respect and our deep appreciation for her championing and for her work on behalf of indigenous women and girls, yes, but I would also say for marginalized people, class struggle and the recognition that we are in an unfair society at many levels. I wanted to speak my deep gratitude and to ask her this: What can those of us who are settler culture MPs do to be better allies?

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things I have struggled with is this. I have to say that I am really proud to be part of the NDP, which has respected my voice as an indigenous person, understanding that maybe sometimes my voice might be different. I have a deep respect from our leader and my colleagues, who have supported us and who understand that human rights are human rights, not just when it suits our political and economic interests.

Human rights for indigenous people are up for debate every day in the House, whether it is the ability to make racist statements and doctor Hansard or to vote against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. I think a good first step we can make as legislators is to uphold the rule of law.

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

Mr. Speaker, as a Métis citizen of Métis Nation British Columbia and Golden Ears Métis Society, I must admit that what the former Liberal minister has done has really undermined indigenous people throughout Canada. It is a shame because, as was mentioned by a previous speaker, 1,100 companies that identified as indigenous were delisted, so we see the amount of fraud for economic, social and political gains as being very harmful, and we are seeing that right across the board. I know that there was one lady, a former judge, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond. She was highly respected and yet it came across that she was also just using indigenous identity to advance herself.

I wonder if the member would agree with me just how much this issue has hurt the indigenous people.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, what has happened with the member for Edmonton Centre is disgusting, but what is equally disgusting for me is the way the Conservatives are also hijacking indigeneity and indigenous identity for political gain. I know this for all the reasons I cited. The Conservatives were against the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. They are voting against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the current leader is fundraising with residential school denialists and buddying up with Jordan Peterson, who is also a residential school denialist—

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I take this as an attack upon me personally. My family attended residential schools and, as a Conservative—

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

That is debate. We will go on.

Continuing with questions and comments, the hon. member for Shefford has the floor.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague and I serve together on the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, and we have had the opportunity to work together for some time now.

I will try to be brief. What bothers me today is that all these false indigenous identity claims are being used to obtain funds that could be going toward reconciliation efforts and nation-to-nation dialogue.

As my colleague knows, study after study at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women confirms the need for programs to support indigenous communities, particularly to help indigenous women who are disproportionately affected by resource development in western Canada. My colleague is well aware of this, because she was the one who proposed this study to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. We also need red dress alert programs. Funding is also needed to promote the economic empowerment of indigenous women and girls and to implement the recommendations of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

I would like my colleague to comment further on the problem of funding.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has been a tremendous ally who shows the kind of support I have had on the status of women committee and from women in the House of Commons who have worked across party lines. I would like to commend my hon. colleague for her support, especially for things such as the red dress alert and the connection between increased violence against indigenous women and girls around resource-extraction projects. I would like to thank my colleague for that support.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam. I know that he has some prepared remarks on this particular subject.

I am going to spend a little time talking about why I think we are debating this today. It is important, just to bring everybody back to the same place, to read exactly what we are debating. This is a concurrence motion, a motion that came from the committee and that the Conservatives have tabled today. The motion reads:

That the committee report to the House that the MP for Edmonton Centre appear before the committee for two hours independently by Friday, December 6, 2024, immediately following the completion and reporting back of C-61 to the House, and that the report is tabled by the Chair in the House as soon as possible and no later than Monday, November 25, 2024.

The Conservatives then further amended this to say that it would return from committee by January 27.

That is what we are debating. That is what three hours of House time has been seized with, to debate whether or not the former minister, the member for Edmonton Centre, should go and appear before committee on this particular day for this allotted amount of time and have it be reported back to the House.

That is what the Conservatives chose to do. The reason I bring this up is that, like so many times throughout this fall session when we have debated these issues, specifically these procedural tactics, Conservatives are doing this time and time again. I find it very discouraging, because there are so many other things that we could be talking about and so many other issues that we could be discussing. Instead, we revert back to the Conservative go-to of character assassination and trying to drag people through the mud. That is the only way this Conservative Party feels as though it can ever get elected, not to present its ideas to Canadians but rather to, repeatedly and ad nauseam, try to create and inflict maximum personal damage on individual reputations.

It does not even have to be an elected official. The Conservatives will stop at nothing. They will go after renowned Canadians, as we saw last spring. They will go after just about anybody that they think they can get a little political gain out of. That is what we are seeing today, again.

The member for Edmonton Centre, who was a minister, stepped back. He defended himself and said that the allegations against him were not true. He stepped back and said that he wanted to clear his name, wanted to take time to do that and would step back from the ministry in the meantime. That is exactly what he did.

However, it was not enough. It is an honourable way to approach this, but that was not enough for Conservatives. They need to absolutely go after this until they have drawn as much blood out of this situation as possible. I find it so discouraging, and I believe that the majority of Canadians do too. We have to ask ourselves, “What do they not want to be talking about?”

Some fairly substantial bombshell allegations have been dropped recently. The member for Calgary Nose Hill is being implicated in a recent CBC story about having been pressured by foreign diplomats to abandon Patrick Brown's leadership campaign in a leadership race that eventually elected the current Leader of the Opposition to that position. Here is something even more remarkable. Not that long ago, the member for Calgary Nose Hill was in a committee room, she was approached by the media and she jumped up and ran out. There is a video of it all over the Internet right now. She jumped up and ran out.

By the way, this is the member who, not too long ago, referred to herself, and I have to find it here in the story, as a seasoned politician and a seasoned communicator. That is what she said. Those were her words. However, she could not handle the heat of the media coming up to her in a committee room. She got up and she ran out of the committee room. When I see something like that, the first thing I think of is that somebody is trying to hide something.

The member made some comments that are in the story. She said she left the Patrick Brown campaign of her “own volition”; she was not pressured. She is “an experienced politician, [a] seasoned communicator”, and she knows how to handle herself. She certainly does, because she handled herself very well in that comment alone. She skated right by the main issue.

The issue is not whether or not the member for Calgary Nose Hill changed her mind as a result of a conversation. The issue is not even, believe it or not, whether or not she was coerced by a foreign diplomat. That is not the issue either. The actual issue, and what she completely neglects to say because of her incredible communications skills that she rightly points out she has, is that she neglected—

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

The hon. member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake is rising on a point of order.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, while I understand and appreciate that there is a decent amount of latitude given to us here in the chamber, what the member is talking about is not the issue at hand, about the member for Edmonton Centre and his egregious claims of indigenous identity to try to get government contracts. Therefore I believe this is a call on relevance.

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

I thank the hon. member for the input.

I will caution the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands to tie it back in as best he can to the topic at hand.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I assure you that I will be coming back to it in a moment, but I cannot say I am surprised that a Conservative would try to silence me when I am making the comments.

The issue is not whether or not the member for Calgary Nose Hill was influenced, or whether or not she was able to stand up. The issue—

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

There is another point of order by the hon. member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Again, Mr. Speaker, we are here to discuss the member for Edmonton Centre and a concurrence motion that was moved by the INAN committee with respect to him. I know that the member for Kingston and the Islands would like to talk about anything else, as he always does, but it is not relevant to the debate at hand.

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

As I said previously, I will ask the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands to tie it back in quickly.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I tried to, but I was given only 10 seconds before I was shut down again by a Conservative.

The issue is that the member for Calgary Nose Hill has neglected to inform us whether or not she was approached by a foreign diplomat. That is foreign interference. That, not what the end result of it was, is what the Canadian public deserves to know.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it was far more than 10 seconds. I am trying to give the member some time, but he refuses to bring his speech back to the debate at hand.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member needs to be a little patient. Let me explain why.

The motion that the Conservatives have amended calls for the member for Edmonton Centre to go before a standing committee. If the member is patient enough, she will hear that there is merit for the member for Calgary Nose Hill to also go before a committee. We can draw the comparison. The member's speech is absolutely relevant in terms of drawing that comparison. She might not like the comparison—

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

That is descending into debate.

I will say again that relevance is important in the chamber, that we want to be talking about the issue at hand, which is of course the report, but ultimately I know that the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands will at least say three words to connect it, just as the parliamentary secretary just did.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will do that right now. I did start my speech by talking about exactly what this report said. I read out the report. To the parliamentary secretary's point, as he kind of gave away where I was going with this, this is exactly it. This is a committee report that is calling for a minister to appear before a committee.