Mr. Speaker, I am sincerely grateful to the people of York Centre, to my supporters and to my colleagues. This is an honour of a lifetime. I thank them so much.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I rise in the House for my inaugural address with humility to share my unique story in the hope that I do not go back to the future.
I clearly remember the Communist Soviet Union. I lived there until I was nine. Those of us who come from the eastern bloc are afraid. Please, do not dismiss us.
I will begin by asking a question: How many bedrooms are in members' home? Are there more bedrooms than people? Why? It is because we have a housing crisis. Why do people need so many bedrooms? “How many bedrooms?” is the precise question the Red Army asked my great-grandmother after the Bolsheviks barged into my family's home in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1918. It turned out my family had too much house, so the Bolsheviks settled in two more families. That was the hell that were communal apartments in eastern Europe.
We already have a vacant house tax in Toronto. Some folks in Vancouver are talking about a vacant bedroom tax, and we are already asked how many bedrooms we have on the national census. Let me draw a scenario. An article in The Globe and Mail claimed that there is no version of reality where housing supply can meet the rising demand. After the Prime Minister's “build Canada homes” fails, because we cannot trust the government with our dry cleaning, imagine what is going to happen when people have no place to live and the federal government declares housing a national emergency. We all have to do our part. People who own large homes should do their fair share. Why do they need all these extra bedrooms? Why not redistribute housing?
I am not saying this will happen, but who knows anymore? My fear is the new phenomenon we are seeing in Canada called collectivism. It is accelerating, and it is exactly the path that Venezuela and so many other countries took, slowly, step by step.
Everything is the biggest crisis ever now. We have a new crisis every week. The problem is that at a time of crisis, even when collectivism is well intentioned, it is just a step away from Communism. There are no limits to where collectivism will go, because the bigger the crisis, the bigger the government's solution, especially from the Liberals. They are determined to save us from everything. They will fit a square into a circle, even if they break the toy. Of course, mainstream media will applaud and tell us that it is working. Then, all of a sudden, we do not recognize our country.
Do members know what else? In the Soviet Union, people were not allowed to listen to foreign radio like the BBC or the Voice of America. They were not allowed to read western newspapers or books. They could not even pass around photos of supermarkets, so Soviets would not start asking why people have eggs in Europe but Soviets do not. That is why people called it the Iron Curtain.
The Prime Minister talks about there being too much disinformation out there on U.S. platforms. What is he going to do? Is the Prime Minister going to censor Twitter? Is he going to put me behind the Iron Curtain again? Freedom of speech is the greatest right of them all, because through freedom of speech, we defend all other rights and all other people. However, freedom of speech is not just the right to utter speech; it is also the freedom to hear speech. When the Prime Minister threatens my ability to read Twitter, I am worried. Am I going back to the future again, like the Beatles song Back in the U.S.S.R.?
It does not matter how people voted; they do not want censorship in Canada. It is not up to the heritage minister, who calls himself a proud socialist, to decide what is true and what is not true and what is safe and what is not safe. The Liberals, like all radicals, think they know what is good for us. That is the difference between Liberals and Conservatives: Liberals want to tell people what to do; Conservatives say, “You do you.” In fact, communists use the word “disinformation” to come down on free speech. I say to just have the decency to call it lies. They can accuse me of lying. I dare them to.
The best way to combat lies is not censorship, but more information and better information. Throughout history, those who impose censorship are always the bad guys. Unless speech violates the Criminal Code, let Canadians hear all opinions and make up their own minds. That is democracy. The Communists also lied very well. They lie about everything. My grade 1 gym teacher said, “You don't need herring on your bread. Bread and butter is good enough. Maybe they have herring in America, but that is because America didn't fight in World War II.” What a terrible lie. Germany even lost World War II, but they have herring in Germany.
Ironically, the Prime Minister also has difficulties getting his facts straight. He says one thing in English and another thing in French, one thing out west and another thing in Quebec. He had nothing to do with Brookfield's move to New York. He just signed the letter to the shareholders.
Now the Prime Minister refuses to table a budget, because he plans to rewrite the books: New books, everybody. He will override well-established public sector accounting principles. He will take out capital dollars because they are not real dollars: We do not pay interest on them and we do not add them to the debt. Abracadabra and boom, Canada's operational budget will balance itself.
I started out as a commercial and bankruptcy litigator. The first thing to be asked when entering a distressed company is “Show me the books”. When the books are hocus-pocus, we can bet there is malfeasance. When we hear about a company doing a big accounting revision, the stock is dumped. Separating capital and operational expenditures never worked. It has been tried, and it failed.
The Prime Minister should be honest about his government's failure and fess up to the gazillion-shmuzzillion dollar deficit. He should not cook Canada's books because, mark my words, it will undermine confidence in our country and it will bankrupt our nation. Please, do not cook Canada's books.
After the Soviet Union, I lived in Israel until age 15. I lived in the Holy Land during the first intifada. Now I apologize, colleagues, but this is important. When a Hamas terrorist assembles a suicide vest, they pack it with as many nails as possible, and this is true, so when the suicide vest goes off, it blinds as many people as possible and cuts as many limbs as possible. I watched Tel Aviv bus No. 5 blow up on TV every other week. That was the first intifada.
Now they chant “Viva viva intifada” in my riding in north Toronto. I am back to the future, again. I am here to alert my fellow Canadians and everyone in this room, beware of the intifada, beware of jihad coming to Canada. There is no Zionist occupation in Syria, but more than a million people were killed in a civil war. In Yemen, in the last decade, almost half a million people were murdered. In Rwanda and Sudan, millions of Muslims were murdered, with no Zionists in sight. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood is murdering Black Muslims in Sudan right now. It is a real genocide, and not a word from the Liberals. That is why many Muslims come to Canada, to escape jihad, to escape that hell.
It is shameful that the word “intifada” is now chanted in Canada, even though I am a free speech guy. Jihad is incitement to violence and it is dangerous. Beware of jihad picking up steam in Canada. That is the historical perspective I bring to this Parliament.
Wait, I have another historical perspective. It is Canada. I am exhibit A for the Canadian promise. We landed at Pearson when I was 15, on September 5, 1995. We came directly to Sheppard and Bathurst in the heart of York Centre. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the middle of the night. I looked out the window and I saw Earl Bales Park. Across the park, on the other side, I saw Yonge Street lights and towers. It was beautiful. I was in love from day one.
We did not have a cent to our name. I remember what true poverty was like. My father sold ice cream on those yellow bicycles. My mother was an unemployed teacher, but Canada has given me every opportunity to study, to work and to succeed, because all one ever needed to do to succeed in Canada was work hard and be nice to people. That is it. Now I am elected to the House of Commons by the same community that welcomed me as an immigrant.
Dreams come true, but not in this Canada. Before the Liberals, dreams came true all the time for many Canadians. Now a quarter of Canadians cannot afford food. It is shameful. That is why I am here, and that is why our Conservative team is here to help Pierre Poilievre—