Debates of June 2nd, 2025

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I think the Prime Minister has made it clear there will be only a few named projects that will be fast-tracked. The remainder of the projects will be under the scrutiny of the process we have followed in the past, so there will be a lot of time for feedback and discussion on anything that is going to affect the environment.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on his election. Like his predecessor, the Hon. Lawrence MacAulay, he has been as strong advocate for the agriculture sector. As a dairy farmer himself, he understands the importance of supply management for Canadian farmers. While my Bloc Québécois colleagues say that supply management is not being adequately protected, our government has taken concrete steps to support it, and I am sure my colleague can speak to that.

Although the Conservatives cut funding for agricultural science, the Liberal government has reinvested and has rehired scientists to support innovation and growth. The Liberals also continue to invest in the Canadian agricultural partnership, standing firmly with farmers. Could my colleague from Cardigan share how confident he is that the Liberal government will keep promoting and protecting supply management?

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I am from the sector of dairy farming, where supply management greatly affects the marketability and profitability of our farms. Our government has been quite clear, and the Minister of Agriculture, a colleague of mine from Prince Edward Island, has been quite clear: Supply management will not be on the bargaining table when we negotiate with our southern neighbours. I am proud of the government's stance on this. The future of farming is going to be climate-smart, tech-driven and farmer-led, and we are here to help, not hinder, the process.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, congratulations; you look good there. I also congratulate the new member from P.E.I.

The member mentioned the operating budget. For the sake of our audience, can he define what an operating budget is and what it represents of the general budget, in dollars and in percentage?

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to answer that question in 20 seconds. However, I have managed a dairy business for almost 40 years, so I know how to budget. An operating budget and a fixed budget is the proper way to manage the finances of this nation, just like the way I manage the finances of my business.

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to stand today for the first time in this historic chamber as the member of Parliament for Vaughan—Woodbridge.

As I am sure was the case for members on all sides, I was in awe when I first took my seat here, a symbol that is at the core of our democracy. The House has echoed with the debates that have shaped our nation, from the early debates around national policy to the conscription crisis of 1917, and from the debates surrounding pipelines in 1956 to the Canadian flag and free trade. I am sure I am not alone in saying that the feeling of awe is instantly met with an understanding of the responsibility that members have to the constituents in the communities they represent.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the residents of Vaughan—Woodbridge for entrusting me to be their representative in the chamber. This seat in the House belongs to them.

Our community is a vibrant riding, where nearly half our residents proudly claim Italian heritage, making our community one of the largest Italian hubs in the nation. Our riding is also made up of growing populations of Vietnamese, Punjabi, Chinese and many others; it is a truly diverse community. From the thriving small businesses on Woodbridge Avenue and Weston Downs to the quiet streets of Islington Woods, and from the growing neighbourhoods of Vellore to the cultural vibrant festivals that light up our summers, Vaughan—Woodbridge is a testament to the enduring Canadian values of faith, family, community and hard work. I am committed to being their champion and giving life to their hopes inside the chamber.

I would like to recognize the most important person in my life, my wife, Maria. Her love and strength hold our family together, raising our beautiful daughters, Abigail and Hanna, and our newborn son, James. As members of the House are well aware, our spouses play a critical role in our work as parliamentarians. They bear an unseen burden of public life, and Maria does so with grace.

I would like to thank my parents, Debbie and Bruno, for their example of always being the adults in the room and for teaching me the importance of responsibility. I would also like to thank my late grandfather Nico for his hard work and persistence, and for teaching me to always be self-reliant. My grandparents immigrated from Treviso, Italy, in the 1950s. They chose Canada, a land of opportunity where one could dare to dream. They worked hard and made this country their own. I am very proud of my Italian heritage.

To every single volunteer of my campaign team, I would like to express my deepest gratitude for their monumental effort and commitment to the principles of our party, a commitment that helped deliver a very decisive victory. Those principles teach us that government's role is not to burden but to enable, yet for nearly a decade, excessive regulation, wasteful spending and punitive taxes have stifled economic opportunity and freedom.

I am guided by the principles of individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government and the rule of law. These principles are not abstract but are the foundation of a society where every Canadian can flourish, free from government overreach and empowered to shape their own destiny.

As a former executive in the steel industry, I have seen first-hand how bureaucracy strangles workers and small businesses. I am here to fight for them, cutting red tape, slashing unfair taxes and making government work for people, not against them. The true role of government is to create the conditions to ignite the spark of the Canadian dream, empowering every Canadian to chase after their aspirations, not stifle them with heavy-handed, centralised control of sectors of our economy and with bureaucratic overreach.

My constituents have been clear: They expect their government to deliver results, not rhetoric. On this front, the Speech from the Throne leaves much to be desired. One of the major issues that is top of mind for my constituents is the increase in crime. Vaughan—Woodbridge is a place where families raise their children, neighbours know each other by name and community pride runs deep. The rising crime, fuelled by the government's soft-on-crime policies, is eroding the sense of security that families in Vaughan—Woodbridge and communities across our very country deserve.

In the throne speech, the government could have easily said that it was going to get serious on crime and address the issue by getting rid of failed legislation like Bill C-5 and Bill C-75. It could have committed to introducing mandatory minimums for serious crimes and prioritizing victims over criminals, but it did not.

In Vaughan—Woodbridge, there have been countless examples of car thefts, home invasions and break-and-enters. Business owners and their staff have been held at gunpoint, and there are women like Sara, whom I met in Sonoma Heights and who told me that her daughter constantly feels uneasy about going out at night alone. Our York Region Police officers do an exceptional job and work tirelessly, but the House must give them the tools to keep criminals behind bars. In fact, we have a moral obligation to do so, for safe communities are the foundation of a strong Canada

A key priority for my constituents is the crippling cost of living facing our country. Whether I am chatting with construction workers, visiting Vici Bakery or Sweet Boutique, or am randomly stopped at a local grocery store like Longo's, the message is the same: Life is too expensive, and people, especially our youth, feel they cannot get ahead.

During the campaign, a 17-year-old at Fortinos approached me. He said that he cannot vote but that his future is in my hands. All he wants to do is get married, buy a home and have a family. This not a radical dream; it is the Canadian promise, yet for far too many young people, it feels like a fantasy. The aspirational ideals of home ownership and raising a family should not invoke feelings of frustration and hopelessness, for they are foundational to the social contract in a great country like Canada.

Our youth are our future, and for far too long they have been ignored. Canada must have their back or we risk continuing our brain drain, where young talent leaves our lands for jurisdictions around the world where their money goes farther and where they can have the type of life they wish to have. We must address this issue with haste or we will all suffer in the long run.

The Speech from the Throne proposes implementing a brand new bureaucracy instead of cutting the red tape that has driven up the cost of homes. Despite a new prime minister and cabinet, the plan mirrors Trudeau's $90-billion housing strategy, which doubled prices over a decade and left young Canadians priced out.

Last week, it was revealed that the Prime Minister had overseen the introduction of half a trillion dollars in new government spending without a formal budget, a move not seen for decades outside the COVID period. This represents an 8% increase in federal spending, with a significant portion allocated to bureaucracy, consultants and contractors.

As parliamentarians, our role is to serve Canadians. The government's proposal for a new housing bureaucracy, coupled with half a trillion dollars in new spending without a formal budget, shifts focus away from the needs of Canadians and towards expanding an already massive government. With the current parliamentary session set to break for the summer in less than three weeks, there is little time left to thoroughly debate and scrutinize each significant proposal, leaving critical issues like housing and fiscal responsibility unresolved.

Canadians deserve better. Conservatives are committed to putting Canadians first and would be willing to sit through the summer to ensure that these matters are properly addressed, prioritizing accountability over a rushed agenda. The time for bold action is now.

I close with the words of John Stuart Mill: “The worth of a state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.” Let us build the Canada where Sara's daughter feels safe, where that young man at Fortinos can afford a home and where every family in Vaughan—Woodbridge and across this country can thrive. I am here to fight for them and for all Canadians.

[Vince Gasparro, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Vaughan—Woodbridge. As he knows, I have a great deal of respect for him and his journey here. In his remarks, he talked about the increase in our budget and spending. As someone who is from the steel industry, does he not agree with the fact that over 64% of our spending is in the form of capital spending, infrastructure spending, that will use Canadian steel, Canadian wood and Canadian labour?

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member on his election.

What I found interesting about the proposed spending is that not even 24 hours from the time the Liberals said spending would be capped at 2%, it has already inflated to 8%. I just question the fact that the government argues it is going to be different, yet what we see is more of the same.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my Conservative colleague about his speech.

He was talking about economic and fiscal issues. We know that one of the first things this government did when it came to the House was to say that it would lower taxes. Then the government increased spending and asked for more money to run its operations.

No budget has been tabled. We do not know when it will happen, but it seems that it will not be before the summer. What does my colleague think about the government requesting more spending money when it is proposing tax cuts without presenting a budget and without knowing where we are going?

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was an interesting question. Of course, when Canadians look at their budgets for their own households, they realize they have to scrutinize each and every cost item. They have to craft and propose a budget. I always wonder why the government feels it does not have to do the same.

Absolutely, if the government wants to increase spending by half a trillion dollars or, rather, wants to add half a trillion dollars' worth of spending, it should definitely put forward a budget. It is unacceptable for the government not to do so.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his successful campaign. We just celebrated, in Vaughan yesterday, a large Italian festival.

One thing I am sure my colleague will agree with is that our parents and grandparents taught us to live by a budget and to understand that we cannot make a dollar and spend $1,000, yet the government refuses to present this House with a budget.

How can we proceed without knowing what the end result will be?

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, to my colleague, the member for King—Vaughan, we had a fantastic day in Vaughan celebrating the beginning of Italian Heritage Month yesterday with its first-ever Italian festival. Congratulations to the mayor of Vaughan and the city of Vaughan for putting on such a fantastic event.

To my colleague's question, if we want to take the matters of the public treasury seriously, if we want to get serious about budgeting and serious about improving the lives of Canadians, the government must put forward a budget at its earliest convenience, that is, in this parliamentary session. The later it delays, the more things get out of hand, the worse off it will be, the higher the cost of living prices will become and the more out of control it will get.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure members opposite will become very familiar with a program called build Canada homes. Think in terms of Canadian technology, Canadian lumber and Canadian labour, not to mention the benefits that the consumer will ultimately have. By contrast, when the member spoke about housing, he did not seem to realize that Pierre Poilievre, his leader, is a former minister of housing who had six houses built during his tenure.

Why should the Liberal Party give any credibility to Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives when it comes to housing?

[Michael Guglielmin, Conservative, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, members will recall that during the election campaign, Pierre Poilievre talked about how to create the conditions to unleash the housing sector, rather than about adding layers of government bureaucracy that would only exemplify the issue.

Our plan would be to help municipalities create the conditions for development, not add more layers of government bureaucracy.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the people in my hometown of Kitchener South—Hespeler who gave me this opportunity to make a maiden speech today in Canada's House of Commons. May I never forget that this is their seat, and may I faithfully serve them so long as they see fit to keep me in it.

There is no chance I could stand before you today without the love and support of my wife, Simone. She is a brilliant physician and scientist who has now given me the greatest possible gifts: our children, Penelope and Felix. Six months before this election, she nearly died delivering Felix to us. She spent a couple of days in the ICU on life support and today is at home in Hespeler being just the best mom in the world to our two kids. I should be at home with them. They are the best part of my life.

Also, it has been a pleasure and an honour to be a physician serving my community for the last 13 years. When I went door knocking, I knocked on thousands of doors, and one of the most common questions I received was a question I asked myself: Why the heck am I doing this? Why would I go into politics? Do I not like being a doctor and do we not need doctors? The answer is yes, I like being a doctor, and yes, we need doctors, but to fully explain why I had to do this will take about 10 minutes. It has to do with who I am and what Kitchener is, so here I go.

My family's story is typical in Kitchener. My dad's family came to the region when it was still called Berlin, Ontario. They came from present-day Germany before it was called Germany. One hundred years later, when war with Germany broke out, my Grandpa Strauss, like so many other Kitchener Germans, enlisted with the Scots Fusiliers because one's last name and mother tongue were not of much matter when it was time to stand on guard for our true north, strong and free. We only have a Canada today because Canadians from all over the world put Canada first in this way. They staked their lives for Canadian values, which are enshrined in our anthem as truth, strength and freedom.

Conversely, my mom came as a Romanian refugee from Communist Yugoslavia in the 1960s. When my dad was away with the air force, we would speak Romanian in the house. I grew up hearing from my grandparents, in that language, that they were poor back home, but I had no idea how poor until about 10 years ago, when I travelled with my grandfather to his tiny village, now on the border between Serbia and Romania. Fully half of the homes there were boarded up. It was overrun by stray dogs and weeds. We went to the house my mom was born in. It had two rooms and dirt floors and was about 400 square feet. There was a bedroom with four beds in it and a kitchen with two beds in it. Nine people slept in those six beds. As I stood in what I am sorry to call a shack, the enormity of what Canada had given my family hit me like a ton of bricks.

My grandfather is one of the smartest, hardest-working people I have ever met. When he came to Canada, he spoke zero English, had a grade 6 education and had two small daughters with him. After six months of working in a factory for $1.09 an hour, he was able to buy a five-bedroom house in downtown Kitchener for $20,000. That house is now worth $1 million. I do not have to say that that opportunity no longer exists in our country today.

My 28-year-old brother-in-law recently graduated from the University of Waterloo in mechatronics engineering. He has no hope of buying that house on his engineer's salary. Where did that opportunity go? I do believe that my grandfather has the answer to that question. He had to do three years of military service in Yugoslavia, and he always told me he loved the army life. It did not strike me until a couple of years ago to sit down and ask him, if he loved the army so much, why did he go back to farming in the village? He said, “Because, Matthew, you cannot get promoted unless you join the party”, which was the Communist Party. I said, “Well, you were an ambitious man, Grandfather. Why didn't you join the party?” He replied, “Because, Matthew, if you are in the party and they say this is black”, pointing to the white tablecloth, “then you have to say it is black, even though it is white.”

English is my grandfather's fifth language. I promise he has never read George Orwell's 1984, but this is exactly the “two plus two equals five” scene. I think about this scene a lot when I am told that men can get pregnant. When the truth becomes illegal, everything breaks. If one cannot say what is wrong with the tractor or the levee or the hospital or the passport office, one can never fix it, and it will stay broken. Not willing to give up speaking the truth, my grandfather went back to the village. After a few years, though, the farms were all socialized, and eventually the starvation got so bad that they had to make a break for it.

I have stories of our health care system in universities going back 13 years ago and all the way up to last fall, when my bleeding, postpartum wife spent six hours cradling a two-day-old baby in the emergency room while not being seen by a physician. When I told the triage nurse I was going to take my wife to another hospital in the next town over, he said, “That would be great. Thank you. There is no place for her here.” If people go to one of our ERs and are treated like cattle, like my wife was at that time, they have no recourse. They would be really delighted if people took their business elsewhere.

When farming is socialized, we get bread lines, and people died of starvation while standing in Soviet bread lines. When health care is socialized, we get lines in the ER, and I promise that people have died and are dying in waiting rooms and emergency rooms across this country right now.

One may think that I am being overwrought and seeing the ghost of communism where it does not exist. However, I would note that we just spent 10 years with a prime minister who, when asked which government in the world he most admired, stated it was the basic dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party; a prime minister who released a statement lionizing brutal communist dictator Fidel Castro when he died; a prime minister whose answer to every social problem, dental care, child care, pharmacare, school lunch, climate change, etc., was always more socialism, more central planning, more top-down pronouncements and less freedom to make choices for ourselves and our families.

The zenith of all this top-down control came during the pandemic. The members opposite went full communism. They locked Canadians down in their homes. They ruined weddings, funerals, Easters, proms and Christmases. They closed the borders. They kept mothers from children and brothers from sisters. They deprived this House of its ancient rights, spent $600 billion of taxpayer money with no budget and doubled our national debt to pay healthy 16-year-olds to sit in their basements. Then, as now, they did all of this in the name of crisis management.

Physicians, professors and journalists who spoke out against these abuses were hunted down. They had their licences and their jobs threatened. I know this because it happened to me at Queen's University, where I taught. Jane Philpott herself, one of the only two cabinet ministers to speak truth to Justin Trudeau's power, informed me in her dean's office that the reason the administration had to harass me was that I “criticized the government”. That is a direct quote.

Of course, Prime Minister Trudeau and his commissars were immune from all of this. He could attend gatherings of greater than five if it suited his political purposes, like a George Floyd protest in Ottawa, and he did. The Liberals claimed unto themselves the power to censor the news, to violate free speech in the name of fighting misinformation, while they promoted misinformation. They gave luxurious contracts to their friends in academia to promote their misinformation and gave hundreds of millions of dollars to mainstream media to promote government narratives. These three institutions, government, media and the academy, have important roles in society to regulate each other. However, under the federal government's bribery scheme, they have ended up, like the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker out to sea, stewing in each other's bathwater.

When ordinary, everyday Canadians came here to Ottawa complaining that their charter rights to bodily autonomy, assembly and free movement were being violated, every member of the Liberal caucus voted to trample their rights further. They violated section 2 and section 8 of the charter in imposing the Emergencies Act. It is not me saying that, but Justice Mosley of the federal court. They trampled on the charter rights they claimed to revere, and then they laughed about it. The current Minister of Transport, in particular, laughed about it.

If we cannot speak truth to the Liberals' power, everything will continue to break. That is why I had to come here; I refuse to be a cog in their broken machine. I hope it is the case that this darkness left with the former prime minister, and I beseech the new Prime Minister to turn to the light, to defend those values enshrined in our anthem: truth, strength and freedom. I read his book. It is called Values, and freedom, I am sorry to say, is not among those therein discussed.

The repackaging of the Liberals' socialist plans in banker socks might fool some of the people some of the time, but it is not fooling the multicultural communities in Kitchener South—Hespeler. The Romanians, Albanians, Polish, Ukrainians, Serbians, Croatians, Lithuanians, Venezuelans, Chinese, Somalis and Ethiopians with lived experience of socialism, and who know what they are seeing, do not like it and sent me here. They came here for freedom, and not just any freedom but our specific, embodied Canadian freedoms.

These freedoms are ours, but they are not merely ours, and they are certainly not ours to discard. They were fought for at Runnymede and encoded in the Magna Carta. They were fought for in the English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution and enshrined in the Declaration of Rights. They were fought for in the world wars and enacted in Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights. They were fought for by both my grandfathers, by all of our grandparents, and embodied in all of us here.

The answer to the question of why I came here is that I am here to speak truth to power on behalf of the people of Kitchener South—Hespeler. I will be happy to go back to being a physician and professor once I can practise in truth and freedom again and once we can all live in truth and freedom again. May God keep our land glorious and free.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member opposite for demonstrating so fully why the Liberal Party was re-elected as government for Canada.

Canadians are reasonable people. They believe in facts, science and a government that seeks to make their lives better. With regret, what I heard there was a great deal of nonsense. Talking about health care, I am not sure whether the member should have run for provincial parliament rather than the federal Parliament.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a common misapprehension that the federal government has no role to play in health care. Of course it does. The Canada Health Act is a federal document. The Public Health Agency of Canada is, of course, a federal agency. When we see similar problems from Victoria to St. John's, Newfoundland, it tends to be the case that there is a single explanation under it all, and in this case it is indeed the federal government.

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

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the hon. member for Kitchener South—Hespeler. There are a lot of new members in this place, and I wish to welcome everyone and wish them good luck in their work here on behalf of their constituents.

I do want to ask the hon. member if his position is that our health care system should be abolished and that the Canada Health Act should be repealed, representing socialism.

I actually think that Canadians and our social democracy have done a wonderful job of combining free enterprise and a system that works for all Canadians with the best elements of being concerned with the greatest good for the greatest number and not allowing market forces to drive up the cost of health care. The U.S. health care system, for example, delivers higher costs and worse results in health care.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this would take more than 30 seconds to discuss. The worst health care system in the OECD is, in fact, the American health care system. I am sorry to say that the Canadian health care system is a close second. If we look at France, Germany, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand, all across the world other developed nations are able to blend the free market and public insurance, which I favour, in ways that are more appropriate than in our system.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie South—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of the things that the hon. member was relaying are things that I heard throughout the campaign, particularly from those who grew up in eastern European countries, where they saw the rise of socialism, the incremental loss of rights and freedoms, media propaganda, Internet controls, what we can see and say online, and then, eventually, the confiscation of firearms from law-abiding people. What I heard in my riding sounds very similar to the arguments that he heard in his riding. I am just wondering if he could comment a little bit more on that.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, I heard such things. My best friend's dad is from Czechoslovakia. He escaped during the Prague Spring. He told us that he felt bad for us, that he never experienced anything under the Soviet Union like he did under the Liberal government during the pandemic. Those are his words, not mine. Likewise, while I was door knocking in my community, I met a Romanian woman who was literally packing her bags to go back to Romania because of these infringements on her basic freedoms.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by saying that you look good in the chair. I look forward to working with you.

It is an honour and a privilege to represent the good people of the riding of Waterloo. I want to welcome my colleague, and friend, I hope, who is also representing Waterloo region.

Today, we are dealing with an amendment to the Speech from the Throne. I do believe that the speech was really well received. When we talk about our families and where people come from, I would like to hear from the member whether he foresees anything in the speech that was not a good vision for Canada. Does he believe that we can achieve that vision for Canada, and does he believe that, regardless of party stripe, we will be able to work together?

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by assuring the member for Waterloo that I consider her a friend. She is my parents' representative in the House now, as they have moved up to Waterloo, and she does a good job at it.

I listened to the throne speech. I read the throne speech. I found it platitudinous. The goals that are in there are great, but I saw no details on how to get there. Most of all, there is no budget.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.

I would like to use my time to review the Speech from the Throne. I will not hide the fact that the Bloc Québécois is extremely concerned about the direction the Liberals are taking. They have literally abandoned the fight against climate change, when they should be doing so much more. During the election campaign, the Liberals confirmed that they planned to abandon much of the previous government's climate action plan. They abandoned consumer carbon pricing without replacing it with anything. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that it was a very bad idea to axe this tax.

The government also sent out $3.7 billion worth of vote-buying cheques to all Canadians, except Quebeckers, despite the fact that Quebeckers had paid $800 million as compensation for abolishing a carbon tax. The tax no longer existed, but the government still wanted to compensate for it.

On top of that are the oil and gas pipeline projects. The previous government had promised to eliminate oil and gas subsidies, but now the Liberals will not say a word about it. I would remind the House that $30 billion in subsidies was paid to the oil and gas industry in 2024, for a total of $75 billion over five years.

The Liberals also floated the idea of eliminating the emissions cap for the oil and gas sector, the most polluting sector in the country. They also proposed to weaken environmental assessments to make it easier to get pipelines approved. That was before the election. Since the election, the frenzy of environmentally irresponsible behaviour on the part of both the Liberals and the Conservatives has continued.

Right now, severe wildfires are burning in Manitoba. There are close to 70 fires, and thousands of people have been evacuated. The government seems to be brushing that aside in favour of the development and continued expansion of Canada's oil and gas sector.

The throne speech also mentions that there are major challenges with regard to climate change that are generating uncertainties across the continents. Let me stress the phrase “climate change”, because that is the only reference to climate change in the throne speech. Simply put, climate change has disappeared from Mr. Carney's narrative.

To solve the climate crisis—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I remind the member that he is not allowed to name the Prime Minister. Members must be referred to by their titles.

The member from Repentigny.