Madam Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in this House, although I have found in my 20 years here that the House has sometimes not lived up to its standards of credibility. People expect us to come here to be their voice, a voice that brings some kind of hope and direction, and I do not see that here most days. Most days, it has become a very dumbed-down and vicious affair.
Today, the Leader of the Opposition is once again demanding an election. We have not really seen much from him, except that he wants the election right now. Yesterday, he wanted an election right then, and the House voted non-confidence in him because there is no trust in the Conservative leader. This is because we have such serious issues facing us as a nation and as a planet, and the Leader of the Opposition is not a serious leader for dealing with them.
We could be here talking this morning about the homeless crisis, which is a devastating crisis. We know that the Liberals have failed multiple times on their housing plans, but what is the plan of the Leader of the Opposition, who lives very well in a 19-room mansion at Stornoway with his own private chef? He attacks municipalities. He ridicules our mayors. When he comes to northern Ontario, he does not bother to meet with any of the frontline people who are trying to solve the housing crisis. He says he is going to go after them and calls them gatekeepers. That is not a plan; that is a slogan.
We talk about the rising use of food banks. The Conservatives wipe crocodile tears every time they talk about hungry children, yet they voted against a national nutrition plan for schools. The New Democrats pushed the government to address and fill the gaps, but the Leader of the Opposition, who has his own private chef, seems to be out of touch with that.
A huge opioid crisis is devastating our communities. What did the Conservative leader and his MPs do? They viciously attacked medical doctors and frontline nurses, to the point that doctors trying to keep people alive have faced death threats. That is not acceptable. It is not acceptable that MPs face death threats from the mob, whom I see Conservatives patting on the back every day. There are people threatening and attacking indigenous MPs, attacking women MPs and attacking racialized MPs, but to attack and threaten medical doctors is not what a leader does. Those are the tactics of the Leader of the Opposition, and he wonders why we do not have confidence in him running our country.
We have a number of huge international crises. With the situation in Lebanon and Gaza, a humanitarian disaster is unfolding, yet the member for Edmonton Manning had nothing to say about the threats facing Lebanese Canadians and the Lebanese people. He had nothing to say about it because if those in the Conservative caucus do not repeat talking points, they do not get a gold star and they sit on the backbench. That is not leadership. We are all brought here to represent our communities. In Edmonton Manning, the Lebanese community is living in terror from the Israeli air assaults, and the member says nothing because he wants to get the gold star from his leader, who lives in the big mansion in Stornoway, by repeating and repeating the same dumbed-down slogans. People's lives are at risk. We are watching—