Debates of Sept. 15th, 2025

(Return tabled)

Question No.279—

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

With regard to the construction of the fighter squadron facilities in Cold Lake and Bagotville, as mentioned in paragraph 2.19 of the Auditor General of Canada's report titled “Delivering Canada's Future Fighter Jet Capability”: (a) what is the total amount spent on the construction of these facilities in Cold Lake and Bagotville to date; and (b) what are the details of all contracts, including (i) the start and end dates, (ii) the companies, (iii) the file number, (iv) the nature or description of the work, (v) the value of the contract, (vi) whether the contract was sole-sourced or awarded through a competitive bidding process?

(Return tabled)

Question No.280—

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

With regard to special warrants used for all grants and contributions during the dissolution of Parliament in 2025: (a) for each instance a special warrant was used to authorize grants and contributions, what was the (i) date the special warrant was issued, (ii) department or agency that received the funding, (iii) total amount of funding authorized, (iv) description of the grant or contribution program or initiative; and (b) for each grant and contribution program or initiative identified in (a), what (i) were the specific recipients of the funds, (ii) were the individual amounts received by each recipient, (iii) was the purpose of the funding?

(Return tabled)

Question No.281—

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

With regard to all special warrants approved during the dissolution of Parliament in 2025: (a) for each special warrant approved due to "a payment is urgently required for the public good," as claimed by the government, what is the (i) date of the approval, (ii) department or agency that received the funding, (iii) specific amount approved, (iv) detailed explanation or justification provided for why the payment was urgently required for the public good; (b) for each special warrant approved for this reason, what are the details of all expenditures made under its authority, including the (i) date, (ii) amount, (iii) vendor or payee, (iv) description of the goods or services; and (c) what is the total amount approved via special warrants, broken down by department or agency, specifically for payments urgently required for the public good, during the dissolution of Parliament in 2025?

(Return tabled)

Question No.282—

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

With regard to the former residence of the Consul General of Canada in New York, located at 550 Park Avenue and currently listed for sale: (a) on what date was the property listed for sale; (b) what is the listing price of the property; (c) what is the total amount paid in condominium fees since January 1, 2020, broken down by year; (d) how many property showings have taken place since the property was listed, and what are the dates of each showing; (e) what are the names of the real estate firms contracted to represent the Government of Canada in the sale of the property; (f) what is the total amount spent to date in relation to the sale of the property, including legal, administrative, real estate and staging costs; (g) were there any maintenance or renovation expenditures on the property since January 1, 2020, and, if so, what are the details, including the (i) amount, (ii) date, (iii) description of the work, (iv) vendor; (h) have any offers been received on the property to date, and, if so, (i) what is the date of each offer, (ii) what is the amount of each offer, (iii) was the offer accepted or declined; and (i) what were the moving costs incurred by the government to relocate to the new residence?

(Return tabled)

Question No.283—

[Michael Ma, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

With regard to Treasury Board Vote 5 - Contingencies for the 2024-25 fiscal year: what is the total amount allocated and expended under Vote 5, broken down by department, agency and Crown corporation, and for each department, agency and Crown corporation, what is the (i) purpose, (ii) total amount, (iii) date of the expenditure?

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Return

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Youth Unemployment

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I wish to inform the House that I have received notice of a request for an emergency debate. I invite the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to rise and make a brief intervention.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Canada faces a deepening youth unemployment crisis, and I am rising today to request that the House of Commons hold an emergency debate on this crisis.

Parliament has not sat since June, and in that time we have had three new reports from Statistics Canada that underline the dire situation facing Canadian young people. The unemployment rate has gone to 7.1% overall. For youth, it has hit 14.5%. Clearly, youth unemployment is already at recession levels, and it continues to get even worse.

Incredibly, about one in five returning students was unemployed this summer. In August alone, the drop in jobs, if we combine employed and self-employed, was 109,000. Effectively, that is 109,000 fewer jobs. This was in just one month. That is an emergency, and that emergency calls for an emergency debate.

We have been trying to get the government to take this crisis seriously. Before the summer began, we proposed a summer study on youth unemployment at the human resources committee; Liberals blocked that study. When the July numbers came out, we again sought emergency hearings, but the Liberals refused to bring the committee back to work.

This summer, even while Liberals refused this work, I and other Conservative members criss-crossed the country to meet with young people, employers and Canadians of all backgrounds to gather feedback on the jobs crisis. The Liberals spent two and a half more months sitting on their hands.

Now Parliament is back, and the delays must end. Our youth cannot wait anymore. I have talked to young people who have put in over a thousand applications—that is over a thousand applications—and are still looking.

Liberal policies got us here. Liberal policies continue to block economic development. Liberal policies wrecked our immigration system. Liberal policies have created a cost of living crisis. They should stop dithering and start working.

Many Canadians are struggling. Many are asking their employers for additional hours and many are working two and three jobs just to get by, and this is putting further pressure on the labour market. The jobs crisis is biting more and more Canadians.

Parliament is back. Let us finally get back to work. Let us have this vitally important emergency debate. Let us confront this generational challenge so that our young people can work again.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I thank the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan for his intervention. However, I am not satisfied that this request meets the specific requirements of the Standing Orders at this time.

Members' Access to Federal Penitentiary

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, though today I rise for the second time, in my time as a member, on a question of privilege. I do not know that members really relish rising on a question of privilege, because it means something has gone astray in the process.

I rise based on an event that occurred on July 28, 2025. I was with the member for Cloverdale—Langley City, and I visited Fraser Valley Institution, which is a women's facility in the Abbotsford area. The interference amounted, I believe, to obstruction and interference in our ability to fulfill our parliamentary responsibilities. Therefore, a breach of parliamentary privilege ensued.

On July 28 of this year, my colleague and I attended the jail, a correctional facility operated by Correctional Service Canada, in the exercise of our rights as parliamentarians under section 72 of the CCRA, Corrections and Conditional Release Act, which provides that:

Every member of the House of Commons, every Senator and every judge of a court in Canada has the right to (a) enter any penitentiary, (b) visit any part of a penitentiary, and (c) visit any inmate, with the consent of the inmate, subject to such reasonable limits as are prescribed for protecting the security of the penitentiary or the safety of persons.

This tour, or visit, had been arranged with uniformed correctional officers who were representatives of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. However, on arrival, we were informed that we would be accompanied throughout our visit by one of the institution's assistant wardens, Chris Szafron.

Mr. Szafron advised us that he was personally instructed by the institution's warden to accompany us throughout our visit. It is important to note here that Mr. Szafron actually told the member and I that he was not trained in security. He was not in uniform. In other words, he had no use-of-force interventions that could protect anybody, including a member of Parliament. He said he was there because he was told to be there. In fact, it came back that this was a security issue at one point, when we were speaking with the staff through my office. That was my understanding.

I have conducted dozens of penitentiary tours to date, and I have never been informed of a requirement to be escorted by a correctional service executive, and I will pause here to say this: As a member of Parliament, as a human being and as somebody whose job it is to supervise what is happening, which is why the power in section 72 is there, I have never been treated so disrespectfully by anybody in my time as a member of Parliament as I was by assistant warden Chris Szafron. I could not believe the level of disrespect he showed me and the member for Cloverdale—Langley City.

I could not believe the condescension. He was questioning why we were there, what we would possibly have to do there and how he could possibly be getting in the way of us doing our job. I will tell how he was getting in the way of us doing our job. When people see an assistant warden, they do not necessarily want to talk to members of Parliament. They fear talking to somebody. This includes inmates, and this also includes staff members.

We are there for the protection of those inmates. Some people may not believe it, but we actually are. We are there to watch first-hand, and somebody was claiming that they had to shadow us. Is this Wayne Gretzky in the playoffs in the 1990s, where somebody had to shadow him at all times? The reality is that the reason they wanted to do this, in my view, was so that they could get ahead of the next scandal that we would be breaking.

I asked to speak to the warden to discuss this sudden unexpected development. I was informed that she was unavailable. There was nothing going on in the jail that would have precluded this, and I have never heard of a warden unavailable to speak to two members of Parliament. I asked for a supervisor, and we were told he did not have their numbers. This is obviously untenable and just an inappropriate situation, and when I couple it with the disrespect, it does amount to an intimidating environment.

The assistant warden dismissed our concerns and interrogated us about the purpose of our visit and what we were looking for. It is not for anybody to get in the way of what a member of Parliament is looking for, not looking for or wishing to see. We need to be able to do our jobs without encumbrance, without somebody shadowing us who could intimidate staff and inmates alike. The fact that somebody did this, showing gross disrespect and unprofessionalism at such a high level, it was as if this person were being congratulated. I wrote a letter to the Correctional Service of Canada commissioner, which took a very long time to get a response, talking about Mr. Szafron's behaviour, and the commissioner did not even address it. It is as though this person did the right thing by being disrespectful to members.

Mr. Szafron admitted there were no safety concerns posed by our visit that were not adequately addressed by the scheduled presence of two uniformed officers. In other words, the assistant warden's presence was surplus to requirements. The discussion with staff and inmates that I had hoped to have, among other things, would have informed my work as the official opposition shadow minister for public safety, including preparing oral and written questions for here in the House of Commons, developing motions for studies at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, and researching lines of questioning of witnesses appearing at committee.

However, the assistant warden's unprofessional behaviour, aggressive tone, authoritarian demeanour and lack of co-operation seriously led me to believe there may well be something at the institution that Correctional Service Canada's senior leadership do not want us to see and did not want us to see on July 28, or they wanted to know what we might see so that they could get ahead of these things. Certainly, the presence of a senior institution executive during our time at the jail put a damper on the flow of conversations we had during that visit.

In short, the assistant warden was there to mind us, and to inhibit and to intimidate the free and candid views of staff and inmates being shared with parliamentarians from the official opposition. That conduct amounts to obstruction and interference with my ability to fulfill my parliamentary duties.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 111, explains that:

A Member may also be obstructed or interfered with in the performance of his or her parliamentary functions by non-physical means. In ruling on such matters, the Speaker examines the effect the incident or event had on the Member’s ability to fulfill his or her parliamentary responsibilities....

It is impossible to codify all incidents which might be interpreted as matters of obstruction, interference, molestation or intimidation and, as such, constitute prima facie cases of privilege.

On February 20, 1984, Mr. Speaker Francis found a prima facie case of privilege concerning allegations that an official in the office of the president of Canada Post informed an employee of Albert Cooper, the official opposition critic for Canada Post, that questions about Canada Post asked in the House of Commons had to be cleared through the president's office or else any future assistance or co-operation with Mr. Cooper would be withheld. At page 1560 of the Debates, the Chair stated:

A threat emanating from any government department or public corporation to withhold information or co-operation from a Member of Parliament would undoubtedly hinder that Member in the fulfilment of his or her parliamentary duties and therefore constitute a breach of privilege. By the same token, an offer of favourable treatment on condition that questions are first cleared with the office concerned would also violate privilege in an equally fundamental way.

I believe that the circumstances in my situation are sufficiently analogous. I would also address an earlier ruling on July 15, 1980, at page 2914 of the Debates, where Madam Speaker Sauvé ruled that a distinction must be drawn between the parliamentary work that members of Parliament conduct and the many political and constituency-related duties we undertake. To be sure, my visit and the interference I experienced fell squarely in relation to my parliamentary duties rather than other categories of an MP's work.

Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, explains at page 222:

For just as the Member is protected for what he does during a “proceeding in Parliament,” so must the Member's parliamentary work or work relating to a “proceeding in Parliament” be alleged to be improperly interfered with before the Speaker may find a prima facie case....

As I mentioned earlier, I had hoped to inform my work this autumn in the House of Commons as the official opposition's lead spokesperson on issues related to corrections, among other topics, and as a member of the public safety committee of the House, work which, indeed, would lead to a proceeding in Parliament. I stress this point because it is an important aspect in distinguishing it from the matter which was before Mr. Speaker Lamoureux when he ruled on April 29, 1971, at page 5338 of the Debates, concerning members' access to penitentiaries, a subject which, at the time, was addressed only through directives of the commissioner of penitentiaries, as the position was then known, rather than through an act of Parliament as it is today.

I had access to Fraser Valley Institution on July 28. That is not in dispute. My question of privilege, rather, concerns interference with my parliamentary work related to proceedings in Parliament. The concept of proceedings in Parliament lacks a clear-cut, black-and-white definition of its scope. Bosc and Gagnon, for their part, explain at page 90 that “there is no statutory definition in Canada.”

In turn, the authors refer to how the concept has been fleshed out in our sister Parliaments.

The United Kingdom's leading authority, Erskine May, explains at paragraph 13.12 of the 25th edition:

The term ‘proceedings in Parliament’ has received judicial attention (not all of it in the United Kingdom) but comprehensive lines of decision have not emerged and indeed it has been concluded that an exhaustive definition could not be achieved. The primary meaning of proceedings, as a technical parliamentary term, which it had at least as early as the seventeenth century, is some formal action, usually a decision, taken by the House in its collective capacity. While business which involves actions and decisions of the House are clearly proceedings, debate is an intrinsic part of that process which is recognised by its inclusion in the formulation of Article IX [of the Bill of Rights, 1689]. Not all proceedings require debate: a motion for an unopposed return, on which there is no debate, is held to be a proceeding (see para 7.32). An individual Member takes part in a proceeding usually by speech, but also by various recognised forms of formal action, such as voting, giving notice of a motion, or presenting a petition or report from a committee.

Farther down in that paragraph, we continue to read that:

On a number of occasions, the House of Commons or a committee has endeavoured to elucidate this very broad understanding. The Select Committee on the Official Secrets Act in 1938–39 argued that ‘proceedings' covered both the asking of a question and the giving of written notice of the question.... After considering the scope of the protection, the committee concluded:

‘cases may be easily imagined of communications between one Member and another or between a Member and a minister so closely related to some matter pending in or expected to be brought before the House that, although they do not take place in the Chamber or a committee room, they form part of the business of the House, as for example where a Member sends to a minister the draft of a question he is thinking of putting down, or shows it to another Member with a view to obtaining advice as to the propriety of putting it down or as to the manner in which it should be framed.’

The conclusions of the committee were later agreed to by the House.

More recently, the UK Parliament's 1999 Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege wrote, at paragraph 12 of its first report, “Proceedings are broadly interpreted to mean what is said or done in the formal proceedings of either House or the committees of either House, together with conversations, letters and other documentation directly connected with those proceedings.” At paragraph 113 of the same report, the Joint Committee assessed that:

Drafts and notes frequently precede speeches and questions, and members often need assistance and advice in preparing them. By necessary extension, immunity accorded to a speech or question must also be available for preparatory drafts and notes...for instance from a research assistant. It would be absurd to protect a speech but not the necessary preparatory material.... This principle must also apply to drafts of speeches, questions and the like which in the event are not used. A member cannot always catch the Speaker's eye, or he may change his mind.

Many of the conversations I had hoped to have at Fraser Valley Institution on July 28 were or would have been directly connected to my potential parliamentary proceedings this autumn. The individuals I interviewed during my visit were providing me with assistance and advice in relation to matters I had under consideration at that time.

I would pause here to note that even previously when I have gone to penitentiaries, when the management did not know I was there, through ATIP I found out that they literally followed me with their cameras to see whom I spoke with. What are they hiding? What are they so afraid of? What are they trying to get in front of or deal with?

Elsewhere, Australia has legislated its parliamentary privileges and assigned the following definition to proceedings in Parliament, in subsection 16.2 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act, 1987:

...all words spoken and acts done in the course of, or for purposes of or incidental to, the transacting of the business of a House or of a committee, and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes:...

(b) the presentation or submission of a document to a House or a committee;

(c) the preparation of a document for purposes of or incidental to the transacting of any such business;

More recently, New Zealand also legislated on parliamentary privileges, following a court decision that related to the extent of parliamentary privilege available to public servants supporting ministers with question period preparation. New Zealand mirrored Australia's statutory definition at subsections 10(1) and 10(2) of its Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014.

The reality is that we, as members of Parliament, have to know what is going on, and the presence of management, especially when there is an acrimonious relationship that is well documented between guards or correctional officers and their managers, or with inmates who may not want to be anywhere near a manager, inhibits my ability to speak with that person. We need to be able to do that completely in private and to completely respect it. The uniformed correctional officers have always been completely respectful in that regard, giving us the ability to do our job.

It is no surprise that Mr. Szafron acted the way he did. I have watched the work of Commissioner Anne Kelly, who did not even respond fulsomely to the letter, and we have seen that we have been stymied, that I have been stymied in doing my job as a critic and, more concretely, as a member of Parliament, just as anybody on the government bench would be permitted to do. At the end of the day, we need to do our job without harassment and without anybody following us and watching what they can see so that the government, be it the Minister, be it Commissioner Kelly or be it Mr. Szafron, can know what we are up to.

In summary, the assistant warden of the Fraser Valley Institution, at the instruction of the warden, who would not talk to us, if not more senior management in Correctional Service Canada, obstructed and interfered with my ability to prepare fully for proceedings in Parliament this autumn. That amounts, in my view, to a breach of the established privilege to be free from obstruction, interference, intimidation and molestation.

Should you agree, Mr. Speaker, I would propose a motion to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I thank the member for his intervention, and I will come back to the chamber after studying what he has said today.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-3, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (2025), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Citizenship Act

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join the discussion and the debate about Bill C-3.

This morning the bill was debated, and I listened intently to the debate back and forth, which was primarily from Conservative members. I actually did not even hear, from the members who stood, about the purpose of the bill, why we are here and the remedy that Bill C-3 is proposing. Let me start with that. Why are we here, and what is Bill C-3 all about?

First, Bill C-3 is a piece of legislation attempting to correct a wrong. It is attempting to make Canada's citizenship laws charter-compliant. In fact, Canada's citizenship laws have not been charter-compliant for decades. Why is that? It is because we have a set of archaic immigration citizenship rules.

Somewhere along the way through the history, and more specifically pertaining to the piece of legislation before us, in 2006, the Conservatives, under the Harper administration, saw fit to take away citizenship rights for those who are the second generation born abroad. The Harper government took away the rights of Canadian citizens who are the first generation born abroad to pass on their citizenship to their children who were also born abroad. If an immigrant who became a Canadian were to have a child outside of Canada, they could not pass on their citizenship to their child. That citizenship right was stripped away for Canadians by the Conservatives.

As a result, many people had to separate themselves from their families, and some children were even born stateless. Canada is a global country. We go abroad to work, to study and to travel, and, guess what, as life would have it, sometimes we fall in love. Sometimes we marry people abroad. Sometimes we have children abroad. If this happened to a second-generation born-abroad child, they would not have Canadian citizenship rights.

The matter was actually challenged in the courts. The Ontario Superior Court ruled that it was in violation of charter rights, and the government had to remedy that. In the last Parliament, there were several attempts to try to fix this. In fact, Senator Yonah Martin brought in a Senate bill to try to fix it. Through much debate, much effort and much collaboration, I, as the immigration critic for the NDP, raised the matter and worked with the government to bring forward amendments to fix the bill and fix the charter violation, and we did.

We went through a whole series of discussions, lengthy debates and committee work, and we came through with a number of amendments, which passed, but then the bill never had third reading in the House. Why is that? It is because the Conservatives filibustered the debate and used a whole bunch of rules and tactics that delayed that debate, and it never came back.

In the midst of all of that, I said to the government that if it wanted to make sure Canada's citizenship rules were charter-compliant, it needed to bring forward a government bill. It agreed. Conservatives, by the way, at the time actually said that if the government brought forward a bill, they would support it.

The government brought forward a bill, and what happened? There were more games played. The Conservatives again filibustered the House, and Bill C-71 was never actually passed.

Here we are again, with Bill C-3, for the third round, still trying to fix the situation where the judge ruled that Canada's citizenship law is unconstitutional. It is not charter-compliant. The court had to give the government multiple extensions to fix the situation. This is why we are here today.

If the first-generation born-abroad Canadians decide to go abroad and have a child, they cannot pass on their Canadian citizenship to their child at all, and, of course, they run the risk of rendering their child stateless.

The Bjorkquist decision held that the second-generation cut-off violates section 15 by discriminating against first-generation born-abroad women more particularly, stating:

[The cut-off] disadvantages pregnant first-generation born abroad women who are living abroad when they get pregnant by placing them in the position where they have to make choices between their careers, financial stability and independence, and health care on the one hand, and the ability to ensure their child receives Canadian citizenship on the other.

Women's reproductive autonomy and family planning are extremely time-sensitive, and the Conservatives' legal impediment to exercising this freedom comes at a human cost to women, parents and children. This is the reality.

An estimated 170,000 women born abroad in the age range when people often start a family are being affected by the current law. As reported, the justice said in her June decision that “these are not ‘theoretical or minor constitutional violations’ but ones that could lead to ‘children being stateless.’”

She went on to say:

They can lead to women having to make choices between their financial health and independence on one hand, and their physical health on the other. They can separate families.... They can force children to stay in places that are unsafe for them. They can interfere with some of the deepest and most profound connections that human beings both enjoy and need.

That is why we are here today. This is what we are trying to fix.

What I heard the Conservatives talk about was the connections test, that somehow these Canadian citizenship rights are deemed not to be rights. They somehow treat it that one has to earn one's citizenship back. However, if people are Canadian, they have Canadian birthrights that are being passed on. These are not immigrants per se, trying to get their citizenship through an immigration process. These are their birthrights. The connections test in this remedy is that they have to establish and show they have a connection to Canada. The substantial connections test in the legislation requires they have some connection in Canada, having been here for 1,095 days nonconsecutively, because people travel. They move and work abroad. Therefore, they have to show a connections test of 1,095 days nonconsecutively.

I have heard the Conservatives say that there should be a criminality test. Would they apply a criminality test to Canadians who were born in Canada to say that if they commit an offence, they will lose their birthright of being Canadian? No. We have the judicial system that we can go through to deal with that. If there are criminality issues, a person would then go before a judge and the process would follow as it should.

It is time for us to fix this problem once and for all. Canada's immigration citizenship laws should be charter-compliant to respect the rights of women and women who have children abroad and to respect the rights of all Canadians who travel abroad. We are global citizens; we work and travel abroad. It is time that we honour all of our rights as equal in Canada.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have listened throughout the debate today on what is a very important piece of legislation. I know, in the past, the member opposite has been very supportive of individuals who should have their citizenship today. In fact, that is universally felt. There are people who should be Canadian citizens today but are not, because the House of Commons has not co-operated in getting the legislation passed.

I wonder if the member could provide her thoughts on the mandate that all politicians of all political parties were given, which is to have a higher sense of co-operation on the floor of the House of Commons. Can she provide her thoughts on being able to see this ultimately passed to committee?

[Jenny Kwan, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, I have been championing the work of the government and want to say to the government that we need to make sure Canada's immigration and citizenship laws are charter-compliant.

I have carried this file for more than a decade. The Conservatives first brought it forward in 2006, so it has been 16 years that our charter rights have been violated. I am asking the government and urging the government to fix this, working through a Senate bill and working with the government on a government-introduced bill. We are here again doing that.

It is incumbent on all members of Parliament to work collaboratively to honour the rights of all Canadians and to treat each other respectfully and equally. All Canadians are Canadians, period.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I just heard the member for Vancouver East talk about championing the government's bill, and it made me think back to the last Parliament, in which the party of which she is a member continually, on issue after issue, championed the government's legislation. In fact, the NDP always supported it. It sounds as though, even today, its members have not learned much, and they are still continuing to blindly support the legislation being put forth by the government, even though their party does not really even exist in the House anymore.

My question for the member is, how is that working out for you? Why do you continue to support the Liberal government? How did that work out for you?

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Just a reminder before I go to the member for Vancouver East that questions are asked through the chair; the member is not asking my opinion.

The member for Vancouver East.