Debates of Oct. 7th, 2026

Building Canada Strong Act

[Karim Bardeesy, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's speech and his reflections, in particular, on the different capacities that organizations, large versus small, may have in participating in some of the review processes. I wonder if he could elaborate on how the bill would help level the playing field a bit.

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to. I think we can all appreciate, as we have grown in understanding about the complexity of projects, the impact on the environment and the impact on communities, that more federal departments have been brought into the conversation. Those conversations have become more robust. The challenge, however, has become that our organization as a government has presented additional stacking of consultations and demand on the communities that we are hoping to support through these initiatives.

What Bill C-39 would do is bring all that to one table and allow a robust conversation to occur that would take into consideration all the benefits, all the drawbacks, all the challenges and all the opportunities, and do so in a way that would be much more respectful of time. There are many horror stories of people having to be subjected to five or six consultations. Let us get it down to one and make it a better one.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

Madam Speaker, in regard to the interswitching provisions of part 2 of Bill C-39, the whole idea is to give certainty and predictability, yet farmers and shippers, particularly in the natural resource sector, who would depend on that competition created by the interswitching measures, would have it for only 48 months. Does the member believe this should be made permanent? This has been tried under the Harper government. It has been tried under the Trudeau government. Why would we not be putting that and making it a permanent program?

Second to that, many Liberals have talked about the transportation project office as if it were something that would add to this, but like the Major Projects Office, it would not have any authority. In fact, the minister of transport would be given the discretion to open said office. Does the member think that putting forward offices that may or may not happen and putting forward provisions that are simply temporary and, again, subject to good U.S. relations, would be creating certainty and predictability in the transportation sector?

[Corey Hogan, Liberal, Calgary Confederation, AB]

Madam Speaker, I certainly believe it would increase certainty within all those sectors.

What I would put back to my colleague is that, just as under Harper and just as under Trudeau, these rules would be provisional. There are challenges we want to work through in the longer term, and we want to make sure we can get to a transportation sector that is stable and well working. I certainly welcome the member's additional commentary at the committee stage.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Bowmanville—Oshawa North, ON]

Madam Speaker, as we discuss Bill C-39 in advance of its likely going to committee, I want to raise some concerns about how I think the bill would be used to further the current government's airport privatization agenda. I believe that is an agenda that deserves some severe scrutiny, and it is one that I oppose wholeheartedly. Sometimes it is difficult to get people to pay attention in this job to what is going on in Ottawa, but I do hope that, with my comments today, I can encourage Canadians to pay attention to just how bad airport privatization would be for our country and why Bill C-39 is a problem because it would further that agenda.

When I was doing research on this topic, I learned that when I was five years old, the federal government, in the House of Commons, had a debate about airport privatization. Obviously I was too young to pay attention at the time. I was busy watching Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior on television. I learned that it was a Liberal prime minister, the Right Hon. Jean Chrétien, who put an end to the airport privatization deal for Pearson airport at that time. There was a lot of back and forth, and in the record, we can see that ultimately, when he was elected prime minister of this country, Chrétien concluded that airport privatization does not serve the public's interest. I think he was completely correct.

It is interesting to see how much things have changed since then. We are now having this debate again with another Liberal government that is coming to a completely different conclusion from what Prime Minister Chrétien came to. In fact, the current Liberal Prime Minister has actually contracted help from big banks, such as CIBC and J.P. Morgan, to sell off four major Canadian airports, in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.

I believe that the policy idea, the goal that the Prime Minister has set out, is bad news, not just for Canada's national interest but also for workers and for travellers. I am going to use my time to outline why I think that is such a concern and why Bill C-39 is of particular concern for how it would facilitate the selling off of our airports.

I will start with the national interest. Prime Minister Chrétien was correct to say that airport privatization does not serve the public's interest. The federal government is fundamentally altering the way that airports function in our country. Instead of treating airports as critical national infrastructure, which they are; instead of treating airports as necessary for our economy to function, which they are; and instead of treating airports as necessary for connecting people across our country, which they are, the government's current plan is to make airports a profit-seeking venture, a complete transformation from what airports are currently doing across this country today.

The International Air Transport Association has been clear in warning of the dangers of privatization, because of how it shifts the way that airports function. It has outlined in its studies of privatization across the world that it produces bad outcomes for a country's ability to preserve airports as critical national infrastructure. I would like to quote from some of its research. It states, “The primary focus of airports should be to support local and national prosperity as an economic catalyst.” However, the IATA goes on to say, “in private hands, shareholder returns take top priority.” That is the danger of the current Liberal Prime Minister's airport privatization agenda. By putting shareholder interests at the centre of how our airports operate, it is fundamentally changing the nature of how these very important economic, cultural and political institutions behave.

The IATA goes on to say, “When [airports] are privatised, the public entities...wash their hands about this infrastructure”. That means that the record in studies done around the world is that once privatization occurs, governments tend to stop caring about making investments themselves and preserving the integrity of the infrastructure. They stop taking responsibility for making sure that maintenance is good or that the public interest is being served.

In the context of what is happening in Canada right now, multiple organizations have warned of what the government's agenda is going to do to airports in this country. The Air Line Pilots Association of Canada has echoed warnings of the dangers of airport privatization, warning that the federal government's privatization agenda opens up the country's largest airports to foreign private investment that poses significant risks not only to the independence of the country but also to the operation of the facilities, including safety risks.

The reason the Air Line Pilots Association raised that point is that it shares what Prime Minister Chrétien said, which is that airports have a duty to serve the good, and they will no longer do that if shareholder interests take primacy. The association also said, “Canada's airports are important national assets, and the government must ensure they continue to prioritize the public interest, safety, and the needs of Canadians—not the interests of private investors and shareholders.”

The reason that all of this is very important to keep in mind when we take a look at Bill C-39 is that it is a violation of the direction that the government set last year. In passing the Building Canada Act, the government set out a definition of what constitutes national interest for infrastructure projects. That definition included a very important line from the government's legislation, which said that it strengthens Canada's autonomy, resilience and sovereignty. It is very clear that airports are essential to that. With that context in mind, it makes absolutely zero sense to sell off our airports in this country, because that does not serve the national interest, even taking the government's own definition of that concept at face value.

Where does Bill C-39 come in to facilitate this? To advance the airport privatization agenda, the Liberal Prime Minister is exploiting the concept of national interest to change labour laws in our country. Through this legislation, the Prime Minister seeks to make it easier for airport privatization to move forward. Bill C-39 would hurt the collective bargaining power of airport workers, and the federal government would use this bill to ensure that private interests face lower labour resistance as they seek higher profit margins in their takeover of this industry.

The reality is this. We are in a scenario where the Liberals have a majority government. There is only so much that the opposition parties that occupy seats in this House are able to do, but one of the important lines of defence in ensuring that our airports do not become something we are not proud of is ensuring that unions are able to actively negotiate and fight for their own interests. This legislation would completely put them at a disadvantage. This legislation would, in fact, give the government the ability to railroad unions in its effort to hand over our airports to private interests. That should be of concern to all Canadians.

Unifor, which represents 17,000 unionized airport workers, has taken issue with some of the changes to labour law in this legislation. Specifically, Unifor has pointed to section 107, which would give the federal government, in particular the minister of labour, new powers to end labour disputes and force binding arbitration. Under section 107, the minister could direct the CIRB to end a strike or lockout, which would put unions at a disadvantaged position for negotiating and would limit their ability to hold private interests accountable.

The Air Line Pilots Association of Canada has also pointed out how its members would be affected by this type of privatization, citing potentially negative outcomes for “runway maintenance, de-icing capacity, staffing” and other safety measures. From a national interest standpoint and a worker standpoint, Bill C-39 would facilitate an agenda that threatens to bring harm and risk to our country.

Lastly, with the remainder of my time, I want to talk about travellers, the people who are worried about how expensive it is to fly anywhere in Canada right now. Members know how hard it is to travel across this country, especially with the affordability crisis the way it is.

The International Air Transport Association, academics across the country and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have all found constantly, over and over again in their studies, that privatization only makes air travel more expensive, not less expensive. In fact, in Australia, they have found that since privatization occurred there, travellers and airlines have paid $1.6 billion more to travel around their country than they would have if privatization had not occurred.

For the good of our country and the good of people who are trying to see their families, we should oppose this agenda.

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

Madam Speaker, since the last federal election, which was about 18 months ago, Canadians have been genuinely concerned about Trump, trade and tariffs. They have been on the front burner virtually from day one, and Canada needs to be able to adjust as we build a team Canada approach that involves many different stakeholders, led by the Prime Minister.

The member opposite went down to the United States, and he had a meeting that upset a lot of Canadians. He told Canadians, as a mouthpiece, many would suggest, of President Trump, that we needed to stop having a “hissy fit”. I am wondering if the member would take this opportunity to provide clarity on that and apologize to Canadians for making that statement on behalf of President Trump.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Bowmanville—Oshawa North, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is shameful for the member opposite to suggest that I speak for anyone but my constituents. I have fought very hard for a better relationship between us and the United States at a time when I believe the governing party is exploiting bad relationships between the two countries for its own political benefit.

The conversation we are having today is a perfect example. I just spoke for 10 minutes about the Liberals' airport privatization agenda, and instead of responding to any of the legitimate concerns Canadians are noting, they want to draw attention to the United States. This is their political strategy in a nutshell: advance policies that under no other circumstances would have public support, but hope that if they fearmonger enough, they will get their agenda done. I am not falling for it.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to say hello to the people of Rimouski-Neigette—Mitis—Matapédia—Les Basques, whom I represent with pride and dignity. There were some things I found interesting in my colleague's speech, particularly when it came to the privatization of ports and so on. Bill C‑39 seeks to do just that. The government even announced that it wants to privatize airports. That is certainly not in our national interest.

I would like my colleague to speak a bit more to the fact that the government is taking advantage of a crisis that should be temporary to implement measures that will be permanent and that will have harmful effects, particularly for the public interest.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Bowmanville—Oshawa North, ON]

Madam Speaker, what a fantastic question that was from my colleague. He precisely pointed out what is going on, which is that we are facing a temporary crisis and the government is using it to bring in permanent measures and changes to our country.

The airport privatization issue is a perfect example. We have had very little public discussion about this and very little conversation here in the House of Commons, yet we are seeing massive changes being done to our country under the guise of responding to the current crisis. We will deal with the consequences of these decisions for generations, and that is exactly why we have to be vocal and oppose them every chance we get, even when the Liberals point a finger at us and smear our good reputations.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for talking about how the government tries to distract from core issues.

The member spoke a lot about workers' rights and the fact that in Bill C-39, the government has proposed a number of changes that seem to be running roughshod over many workers' concerns. Under section 4.2 of the Department of Justice Act, the Minister of Justice is legally required to table a Charter of Rights and Freedoms statement for every single government bill. This means the Department of Justice should weigh in and tell Parliament and the Canadian people exactly what its legal opinion is of the measures that are in Bill C-39. We have not seen that published on the government's website. The special committee that is organizing very soon to study this legislation has not received it.

Does the member believe the government needs to start being transparent with Canadians as to what its plans are in regard to the Charter of Rights and fulfilling its responsibilities under the law to Parliament?

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Bowmanville—Oshawa North, ON]

Madam Speaker, transparency is such a great word, and absolutely we need more transparency here. Unifor has raised concerns about how this bill would impact the constitutional rights of unionized workers. I would love to see the government produce an analysis of how this bill would affect the charter rights of Canadians.

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is my first time speaking to legislation since we came back in the fall, so I would like to take the opportunity to welcome the pages, who are from all over the country, to this House. They are in for a spectacular year. I myself sat where they are in 1991, but do not do the math.

We congratulate the pages.

What an honour this is and what a full-circle moment it is to welcome the pages and to be here speaking to legislation that is transformative in this country.

I also want to thank everyone in Guelph for the conversations, meetings, site tours and community events over the summer. It is a real honour to represent Guelph in this House. As we approach Thanksgiving, I am so grateful for the privilege, the responsibility and the honour of serving my community and this great country at this historic time.

Guelph is the fourth-largest exporter to the U.S. per capita. This means we engineer, we make things and we ship things primarily by road and rail. Did members know that the city of Guelph is one of the few municipalities that owns a railway? In the 1880s, businesses in Guelph were frustrated with the freight rates and service provided by the Grand Trunk Railway, which held a monopoly on rail transport in the city, so local merchants and civic leaders decided to build their own. They believed competition was essential for economic growth, and they created the Guelph Junction Railway to connect Guelph to the growing Canadian Pacific Railway network, providing local industries with an alternative route to markets across Canada. Now, 142 years later, the GJR owns approximately 38 kilometres of track. It connects with both Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the CN network, serving local manufacturers and industries.

As Guelph heads into our bicentennial year, I want to celebrate those early industrialists and civic leaders who I think would agree with the building canada strong act. They wanted to give themselves more certainty. They built a stronger, more resilient and more independent economy.

Everyone in Guelph I have met and have been working with for the past 18 months, including some of the largest employers in advanced manufacturing, agri-food, clean tech, packaged goods and consumer products, wants predictability and certainty. I heard this all the time when I was on city council. Of course, it is at a micro level, but people will tell us that they want faster processes, because sequential approvals and multiple reviews, and sometimes a change in municipal or provincial government, can derail a project. It definitely increases costs. It can delay a store opening. It can threaten the viability of an entire project. A lot of money and time can be spent in this churn that is not productive, and it is magnified when multiple jurisdictions are involved. This is what Bill C-39 seeks to address.

We are in a trade war with our largest trading partner, which is something the opposition has sought to minimize repeatedly. We did not ask for it. We do not deserve it. It is illegal and it is unjustified, yet here we are. We will not be complacent. We will have our own plans.

We cannot control what other countries do, but we can take down our interprovincial trade barriers, which the federal government has done and provinces are working on. We can control our own processes and regulations at home to get big things built, people working and goods to our own projects and to an expanding list of international markets. We can make sure federal reviews and decisions are completed within one year of a proponent submitting a completed comprehensive application, while upholding Canada's rigorous environmental standards and respecting indigenous rights. We can and we must do so. How? It is by removing duplication and conducting reviews and consultations concurrently rather than sequentially. We can accelerate these processes. In fact, already since December 2025, Canada has achieved co-operation agreements with seven provinces to advance a one-project, one-review framework to reduce existing duplication between federal and provincial assessments.

To be clear, the building canada strong act would make no changes to federal environmental standards. It would be a change in process. All factors would still need to be taken into consideration, including climate impacts, species at risk, ecological and nature implications, and more. I know this is really important to folks in Guelph.

Let us remember that major projects, like electrification, massive hydro and wind projects, and critical mineral extraction and processing, also support our climate goals. They support Guelph businesses like Hammond Power, which makes the transformers that keep our industries humming and is key to cleaner energy and transportation, and Hitachi Construction Truck Manufacturing, which makes a partly electrified 150-tonne rigid-frame mining truck using Hamilton steel and manufactured in Canada by highly skilled workers.

Canada's new government has set an ambitious vision of major projects, electrification, nuclear, a defence industrial strategy, homebuilding and massive investments in infrastructure. Who is going to build all this? Who is going to fabricate the steel we need, make the moulds and build the ports, roads and towers? Canadian workers are. This government is so invested in our skilled tradespeople that we are investing $6 billion in the team Canada strong initiative. Working with unions, we have set a goal to recruit, train and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal trades by 2031 and to support them financially along the way.

We are a government that believes in labour, and we consulted with labour on this bill. Bill C-39 would modernize the federal labour framework and strengthen protection for workers in federally regulated industries. Changes to the Canada Labour Code will strengthen collective bargaining by helping parties address issues earlier, reach negotiated agreements and resolve disputes, while fully protecting the right to strike.

Section 107 has been in the Canadian Labour Code for nearly 50 years. This bill would create guardrails around its use, adding transparency and predictability while ensuring that it is reserved as a last resort tool for exceptional circumstances in which both parties have reached an impasse. Any decision to invoke section 107 would require the federal government to demonstrate significant national, economic and social risks.

The government will also be adding new health and safety officers to increase inspection capacity by 70%, hiring new staff at the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to clear the backlog of complaints by workers against employers and cracking down on worker misclassification with more inspectors. Together, these changes will ensure workers are treated fairly, are protected on the job and have greater income security, and they will promote stable labour relations. This is important to the workers, to their families, to people in my riding and to all Canadians.

Bill C-39 would also formally designate strategic trade corridors, remove bottlenecks and establish a transportation project office to coordinate federal permitting and advance priority transportation projects within one year. Guelph is a manufacturing hub. Advanced manufacturing is Guelph's largest employment sector, accounting for $4.5 billion in exports every year. Getting raw material in and finished products out faster and more predictably improves productivity, reduces business costs and makes Canadian business more competitive. This includes logistics and shipping companies such as PDI and Traxxside, which use the Guelph Junction railway, and multiple trucking companies.

Since last spring, Canada has signed 20 new economic and security agreements. We want to export to the world. To do that, we need modern border crossings, including ports and trade digitization. When I spoke with people from UPS operations this summer in Guelph, they told me that digital trade processes will reduce costs for exporters, improve supply chain resiliency and help small and medium-sized enterprises participate in international markets. These small and medium-sized businesses sometimes get lost in the conversation on major projects. They seem far from Guelph, but these faster supply chains and trade corridors are for small and medium-sized businesses too. They account for approximately 99% of all employer businesses in Canada. There are 444 CFIB members in Guelph alone.

I am so excited. I am so proud to be on the industry committee and the transportation committee at this moment in time. It is an awesome intersection. This is the most ambitious reform to how Canada builds in a generation. We are modernizing regulatory approvals, maintaining rigorous environmental standards, upholding indigenous rights and ensuring workers are treated fairly.

We can all work together to build Canada now, keep Canada moving and ensure Canada is strong for all.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

Madam Speaker, the member is a member of the transportation, infrastructure and communities committee with me, so it is wonderful to see my colleague here today. She talked a lot about trade infrastructure and the need to get things done, yet the Minister of Transport and her colleagues keep talking about this transportation projects office as though it is a real thing. Bill C-39 would only give the minister discretion to start an office. I may not be opposed to a single window, as I think that might be a helpful introduction, but this particular new project office would have no formal authority, meaning that it could not grant a permit or force another part of Transport Canada to speed it up.

Why is there all this rhetoric about getting trade infrastructure done when they have an office that does not exist, is discretionary by the minister and does not have any authority? While I am on this topic, why the heck is there not a deadline, as there is in section one of the bills, to force these big transportation projects to get done quickly?

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, I believe my colleague from Calgary Confederation began to address it. First of all, when we are talking about linear infrastructure, it can take some time to assemble the land, to do the engineering, to get the partners onside, etc. That may be why. I would encourage my hon. colleague to support the bill and get it to committee, where we could have a more fulsome discussion.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Madam Speaker, earlier, we were talking about infrastructure to promote international trade. I pointed out to my colleague from Halifax that division 3 accelerates pipeline construction. If we take a closer look at where our oil exports go, we see that most of them go to the United States. In fact, 91% of our oil exports go to the United States.

The government is scrapping environmental laws so it can send more oil to the United States to shore up that country's energy security despite the ongoing trade conflict. That makes no sense to me, especially since oil companies are largely owned by American interests.

Does my colleague agree that it makes absolutely no sense to scrap environmental legislation in order to supply more oil to the Americans, who are the main beneficiaries?

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, first, I would remind the House that no environmental legislation will be amended and that all existing requirements must be met. Second, thanks to oil and gas pipelines, our exports will not necessarily be going to the United States anymore; they may go to Asia and Europe instead. Given the geopolitical situation in Europe, our allies are very eager to access Canadian energy to heat their homes.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her excellent speech. I am very happy to know that there are so many manufacturers in Guelph. I come from a region that has many as well. For example, Quebec City is home to 27 industrial parks, and Beauce also has a large manufacturing sector.

My colleague spoke at length about predictability. Having worked in banks and lent money to businesses, I know that all banks need predictability. All businesses and businesspeople need it, too.

What does Bill C-39 contain that will help provide the predictability everyone keeps talking about, encourage investment and strengthen our supply chain?

[Dominique O'Rourke, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Madam Speaker, as I said in my remarks, since December 2025, Canada has already entered into co-operation agreements with seven provinces, in order to advance the “one project, one review” approach. I do think Bill C‑39 contains many initiatives that create certainty for business owners, workers and investors.

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

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address the House this evening, as always.

When I was growing up, I had four siblings. Members will be shocked to know that, as my desk often is today, my room was very messy growing up. My parents would, from time to time, insist that I clean it and then conduct a thorough inspection to ensure the room had been cleaned. I mastered the technique of cleaning my room. It involved picking up all my stuff and moving it into my sister's room across the hall. Following the inspection, I would move the items back. I say this to demonstrate to members that I know well the difference between getting something done and feverishly moving things around in order to create the impression of activity and results when nothing is actually changing. That brings me to the bill before the House today, Bill C-39.

The government is very fond of describing itself as a new government, of all the same people, more or less. Nonetheless, we are starting to get a bit of a sense of the character of this new government of the same people. Frankly, they are a bit slippery. They pride themselves on their slipperiness. I will give some examples. A year ago, before the House, we had the Build Canada Act, which was supposed to be transformational. It was going to make it so much easier to build things, and it was going to be transformational. It created the Major Projects Office. It did not create major projects, but it created a Major Projects Office.

It was so successful that a year later, the Liberals decided they needed a new bill. This is not the Build Canada Act; it is the building Canada strong act. The sequel is always a little worse. The bill would have even more offices. We would have the transportation projects office. We would have a national transportation council. We would have all kinds of new bodies and offices.

I hate to imagine what the name of the bill will be this time next year. Maybe all those watching CPAC at home can send their suggestions in to the Prime Minister. Maybe it will be the “build Canada even stronger act” or “the build Canada the strongest yet act”. It will keep going as long as they have a chance, with the proliferation of new offices.

However, the reality is that they are calling Bill C-39 the building Canada strong act. It is the building Canada strong act in more ways than one. It is the building Canada strong act instead of the building Canada strong reality, because the government is continually talking about how this is really going to be the big one that actually gets it done. The government is just going to create five or six more offices. It is going to have more councils of different bureaucrats, and that will be the game-changer for now.

We can see the political utility of this. It is to constantly be putting in the window this new sense of engaging in feverish activity. The government is putting in place more instruments and more mechanisms. As I hope the anecdote I shared at the beginning established, that feverish activity is not the same as results.

Generally speaking, we need fewer offices, not more offices. We need less bureaucratic intervention, not more bureaucratic intervention. We need government to get out of the way so that major projects can move forward. We do not need to add to the number of offices and bureaucrats. We need to simplify the process.

We very much support the principle of one project, one review; of having efficient timelines for all projects to move forward. The approach the government takes is cherry-picking: “Okay, this is a major project we like and we are going to give it special treatment.” The approach was better than nothing in the midst of the regulatory pile-on that Canadian companies have dealt with for so long, but we favour an approach that simplifies the approval processes for all companies, large and small, for all kinds of projects, and we favour processes that are focused on results. It is time to have a government that actually focuses on the results instead of the appearance of activity, and that asks to be measured by the results that are produced.

Increasingly, what we hear from Canadians is the challenging results in their lives. We are going to see job numbers later this week, but already, even before the escalation of the trade war with the United States, we had a significant increase in job losses. There was another big increase in youth unemployment last month. We continue to hear from people whose businesses are struggling as a result of overtaxation and over-regulation. Again, we need simplified processes. We need policies that actually deliver on the promises of this legislation.

Canadians, in general, welcome a certain change in tone that we have seen from the Liberals. At one time in the past, the Liberals were more explicitly antidevelopment. Now they talk in ways that sound like they are more supportive of development, but what really matters are the results. Again, we see the slipperiness of the current government, putting forward big acts with big names and repeatedly doing that year after year, but we are not seeing the results. Canadians will not long be fooled by a slippery government. They will demand a reality in this country that flows from the big claims and the big rhetoric.

We saw another demonstration today of the slipperiness of the government, in bizarre and tragic terms. We had a colleague from the Conservative Party put forward an excellent bill to protect Canadians by ending the possibility of MAID for those with mental health challenges. The government, on the one hand, said it agrees with the principle of ending MAID for those with mental health challenges, and then almost universally voted against the bill. The Liberals voted to kill a bill that would have done something that they said they wanted to do, but they said that if they did it, they would do it with their own legislation, which has yet to be drafted and which would be paired with another further expansion of MAID, an expansion that raises all kinds of significant concerns at a time when Canadians are increasingly alarmed by the extreme and dangerous nature of the MAID regime in Canada. The government hears those concerns and is therefore trying to pretend that it is responding to them, while at the same time voting against a bill that would actually address the issue. It is a slippery government that is saying one thing but trying to bury the reality in the midst of what it is saying.

Our vision in the Conservative Party is for action that is genuinely pro-development; that unleashes the potential of this country's economy, of its people and of its natural resources; that creates review processes that are clear and are simple. Our vision does not use these kinds of moments as excuses for the greater proliferation of bureaucracy and administration, but zeroes in on the changes that would actually produce results.

There is some of the rhetoric around Bill C-39 and some of the stated objectives that we can certainly get behind, but I will believe it when I see it. We will believe it when we are no longer seeing year after year of bills with nice-sounding names that promise this is going to be the one that does it, and yet we never actually see those results. People want to see major projects and big investments built, and able to move forward in this country as used to happen in the past. They want to see jobs, opportunity and prosperity flow from that. That is what we are going to be fighting for on this side of the House as we move this bill forward, as we study it at committee and we scrutinize the provisions to try to push the government to actually deliver on the promise.

[Steeve Lavoie, Liberal, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, I quite liked my colleague's anecdote about his messy bedroom. I think there was a bit of disorder going on in his thoughts this evening, because he talked about everything but Bill C-39. He even talked about another bill that had nothing to do with Bill C-39 when he was talking about streamlining and results. Those things are found in Bill C-39.

My question for my colleague is, will he commit to reading the bill in detail and returning to the House to speak to Bill C-39? I think he will find answers to many of his questions.

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

Madam Speaker, I think the member was maybe not listening too carefully. He maybe listened to the anecdote at the beginning and then prepared his question before hearing the rest of it.

I do acknowledge that the stated aspirations in this bill are, in many cases, aligned with things we have been calling for for a long time. The question will be the results. I look forward to the study that is going to happen on this bill at committee and the constructive work the Conservatives will do to put forward amendments to try to deliver on that promise.

However, when I see the government emphasize that we are going to have more offices, councils and more processes, that again seems to be that push toward feverish activity instead of results.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to talk about the slogan “build Canada strong,” which the government repeats ad nauseam. Do they think they can build Canada strong by undermining accountability and weakening assessments? There is a fixed deadline for all projects, regardless of their scope. Within one year, the project developer must submit all assessments. Previously, the deadline was a maximum of three years. Now, they are cutting corners. I would like my colleague to explain this to me. Is this how they strengthen things, build something more solid, when, in reality, they just want to speed things up?

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

Madam Speaker, what we need in this country is project reviews that are appropriate, accessible and timely. We should expect and look for simplicity and timeliness. I think we can achieve effective reviews that are meaningful and invite the engagement of those who need to be heard from, within clear, reasonable and defined timelines.

I think sometimes there are those who just do not want to build things and who try to create these review processes that are complex enigmas that nobody can ever get through. The goal is to have a fair process that is timely and gets to results.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC]

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate what the Conservative shadow minister for employment has done, not just in this speech but across Canada, where he has been speaking to young people. In our discussions, I mentioned to him that Kelowna has had the highest unemployment rate in the country for four months standing. He was recently at UBC Okanagan speaking to young Canadians who want to participate in the economy.

I was wondering if he would enlighten the House a bit about what some of the students are thinking, because youth unemployment is much higher. I would like to hear what he believes would be good for not just these students, but for this great country.

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

Madam Speaker, I was recently at UBC Okanagan, which is, I believe, either in my colleague's riding or very close to it. I have been now in six provinces, at many university campuses, asking students in public areas, as they go by, the question, “Are you better or worse off than your parents' generation?” That has been a starting point for lots of great conversations about economic issues, but also cultural issues and some of the different ways in which young people perceive their lives as having been affected and changed by various changes in our society.

Overwhelmingly, the concern about being able to afford a home and being able to find a job is driving a sense that young people have that they are worse off than their parents' generation. Starting out in life, pretty fundamental core things are whether someone can afford a home or find a job. That is much more difficult for young people today than it used to be as a result, in many cases, of the government's policies.