Debates of June 1st, 2026

Fisheries

[Richard Bragdon, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a certified electronic petition signed by over 1,080 Canadians. The petitioners are calling on the government, specifically the Minister of Fisheries, to halt the proposed closure of the Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility.

The petitioners note that this facility plays a critical role in preserving endangered wild Atlantic salmon populations and supporting local ecosystems. Therefore, they request that the Minister of Fisheries keep the Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility's programs operational and consult with the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick, several of whose chiefs are here in the nation's capital this week, regarding the future of the biodiversity facility. Petitioners want the government to reaffirm Canada's commitment to Atlantic salmon conservation and ensure that all salmon at the facility are released.

Access to Information

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today to present e-petition 7284. This petition, which was signed by 1,160 concerned Canadians, calls upon the president of the Treasury Board to remove proposals in the legislative review of the Access to Information Act that seek to dampen transparency and accountability, such as those altering the definition of “official record” to exclude emails and text messages. The petition also calls on the president to wholly and transparently seek input from the independent Information Commissioner of Canada regarding any proposed amendments in the act.

Pacific Salmon

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, today I am pleased to table several petitions.

Notably, on the salmon allocation policy in British Columbia, British Columbians are fearful that the Minister of Fisheries is going to take their cultural rights away through amending the Pacific salmon allocation policy and removing recreational access for coho and chinook salmon specifically. Therefore, petitioners are calling on the Minister of Fisheries to leave the current salmon allocation policy alone and uphold the cultural rights of all British Columbians to this common property resource.

Human Trafficking

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I would like to present today is on behalf of concerned Canadians who are worried about the state of human trafficking in Canada.

Human trafficking continues to rise, and too many people are being victimized as a result of our weak laws on this subject. Therefore, petitioners are calling upon the Government of Canada to strengthen the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act to address these shortcomings and put an end to human trafficking in Canada.

Agriculture

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, finally, the third petition I would like to present today is on behalf of Canadian organic growers. They are specifically concerned about the policies of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the closing of the research program at the Swift Current Research and Development Centre. If the Government of Canada truly wants to double its exports abroad, attacking the organic agricultural sector will not get it there.

Medical Assistance in Dying

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition in support of Conservative bill, Bill C-218, also known as the right to recover act.

Canadians are rightly concerned about the Liberal government's plans to expand euthanasia to people whose only medical condition is a mental illness. With this petition, they are urging the government to change course, to not expand euthanasia to even more people and, instead, turn to offering more services and more accessible health care.

Canada Post Corporation

[Kurt Holman, Conservative, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition on behalf of 27 signatories in London—Fanshawe concerning the reduction in Canada Post services.

Whereas Canada Post and the Liberals are taking an axe to long-treasured postal services, eliminating good jobs, eliminating door-to-door deliveries, lowering mail delivery standards and possibly closing post offices, and whereas Canada Post offers a public service that needs to be protected, the petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to stop and reverse decisions on the cuts to the postal service.

Climate Change

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

Mr. Speaker, in the petition I am honoured to present today, petitioners note that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has pointed out that the impacts of climate change disproportionately hit those portions of the world that have contributed least to the problem in the global south. Particularly, the petitioners point out that the damage that will be done will also reverberate to Canada and that climate impacts through extreme weather events and loss of food production will contribute to 100 million more people living in poverty globally by 2030.

The petitioners ask that the Government of Canada ensure that the limited amount of global finances should be expanded so that we can do more as an industrialized country that has contributed to the problem. They ask that the Government of Canada focus on adaptation measures, at least equally with other measures, to reduce emissions.

Agriculture

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to table this petition today, which is signed by residents of Parksville, British Columbia, and created by Jasmine Tomczyk of Parksville.

The petitioners highlight that healthy soil, clean water and biodiversity are essential to food security, climate resilience, national sovereignty and the long-term sustainability of Canadian agriculture; that regenerative and agro-ecological farming practices can rebuild soil health, increase biodiversity, recharge aquifers, reduce erosion, capture carbon and prevent pollution from entering rivers, lakes and oceans; that regenerative food systems strengthen farmer livelihoods, support community well-being, enhance climate resilience and improve individual and public health; and that many farmers want to adopt regenerative practices but face financial, technical and transitional barriers without adequate public support.

Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to develop and fund a national regenerative agriculture strategy that prioritizes soil health, biodiversity, water protection and climate resilience; that provides long-term funding, incentives and technical assistance to support farmers transitioning to regenerative and agro-ecological practices; that integrates soil health, water protection and biodiversity outcomes into federal agricultural programs and climate policy; that expands farmer-led research, extension services and knowledge sharing on the regenerative practices suited to diverse regions of Canada; that strengthens policies to reduce soil erosion, pesticide use, agricultural runoff, nutrient pollution and plastic waste affecting freshwater and marine ecosystems; and that supports resilient and democratic local and regional food systems that improve food security, rural economies and community well-being.

Questions Passed as Orders for Return

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

Mr. Speaker, if a revised response to question No. 943, originally tabled on April 27, 2026, and the government's responses to Questions Nos. 1056, 1057, 1058, 1059, 1060, 1061, 1062, 1063, 1064, 1065, 1066, 1067, 1068, 1069, 1070, 1071 and 1072 could be made for orders for return, these returns would be tabled in electronic format immediately.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

[For text of questions and responses, see Written Questions website]

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The Economy

[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. Leader of the Opposition to rise and make a brief intervention.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I am requesting an emergency parliamentary debate in response to the Statistics Canada report published on Friday, which shows that the Liberal Prime Minister is the only leader of a G7 nation steering his country into a recession. We have learned that Canada's economy has contracted over two consecutive quarters. That is the official definition of a recession.

However, that is not all. Canada has lost 112,000 jobs this year, 45,000 of them since this Prime Minister entered office. We have the second-worst unemployment rate in the G7, one-third higher than unemployment in the United States. The number of people missing mortgage payments has increased by a third in one year. That is the highest level in the world. Furthermore, Canada has the highest household debt of any G7 country.

If this were only a result of global factors, Canada would not be the only G7 country and the only North American country in a recession. These are Liberal effects because this is a Liberal recession. It is an emergency for ordinary Canadians. For the single mother who has to return items as she goes to pay at the grocery checkout because she has no more money left, it is an emergency. It is an even bigger emergency if she drives to a food bank that has run out of food for clients. What about the father who has to go home to tell his kids he has lost his job and has to sell the home? It is an emergency for young couples who cannot buy a home and build a family. Those are the human consequences of this Liberal recession.

The Prime Minister has been silent since Friday when this news became public. This is the man who is supposedly a banker, an economic genius, yet he has nothing to say about the fact that he led the country into a recession.

I therefore call on him to be here in the House of Commons so that we can have a genuine debate on how to reverse this Liberal recession.

I am rising today to ask the Speaker to declare an emergency debate on Friday's Statistics Canada report that shows that the Liberal Prime Minister is the only G7 leader to take his country into recession. The agency revealed that Canada's economy has now shrunk for two quarters in a row. That is only true of Canada.

It is not just the one data point, though. The economy has shrunk three of the last four quarters that the Prime Minister has been in power. Investment has dropped five quarters in a row. We have lost 112,000 jobs in the first three months of this year alone, and we have had 45,000 net job losses since the Liberal Prime Minister took office promising to create jobs. We have a one-third increase in mortgage delinquencies, the highest level in 17 years, as Canada's households are, by far, the most indebted in the G7, and three million Canadians will have to renew at higher mortgage rates over the next two years.

We cannot blame global effects when it is only Canada that is in recession among G7 nations, nor can we say that we are in an especially difficult position vis-à-vis the Americans because we are in North America since our friends in Mexico are also not in a recession. It is only this country, under the Prime Minister, that faces this Liberal recession.

One might say the economists should be concerned about the word “recession” and ask if it really is an emergency in the lives of Canadians. For that single mother who has to return items as she goes to pay at the grocery checkout because she has no more money left in her bank account, it is an emergency. It is an even bigger emergency if, later that day, she drives to one of the one in four food banks in Canada that has run out of food. What does she do then? Does she start calling friends and family and asking if they have any surplus food in their fridges? What about the father who has to home tonight to tell his kids he has lost his job and has to sell the home? For him, just like for that mother, this is an emergency.

The Prime Minister could not be bothered to say a single thing about this emergency since he learned of it on Friday morning. He has been in hiding. He refuses to take a single question from the media or in the House of Commons, and today, once again, he is banning the media from asking him questions, expecting they will just cover photo ops of him wandering around a construction site. That is not good enough. This is an emergency in the lives of people who have empty fridges, empty stomachs and empty bank accounts, and they expect the Prime Minister, who promised that he was a great economic genius, to get in here and explain how he managed to be the only leader in the G7 to cause a recession.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The Leader of the Opposition knows, because he has been here a long time and I have mentioned it many times, that we cannot suggest that any member of this House may not be here. I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he was not meaning to do that. He may continue.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is the Prime Minister's duty to stand up, look Canadians in the eye, explain how he managed to become the only G7 leader to take his country into a recession and tell us how he is going to reverse the Liberal policies that put us into this mess. We as Conservatives are here to be collaborative and to provide solutions: to repeal the antidevelopment laws that have suppressed our energy sector, to take all taxes off homebuilding so our young people can afford to buy a home and to cut taxes on energy, including the tax on gas for the rest of the year, to save Canadians 25¢ a litre, $20 a fill-up and $1,200 by Christmas.

These are real solutions that we could be using in order to rescue people from the Liberal recession, but it is going to take an emergency debate to wake up the Liberal Prime Minister from his slumber and get him to do his job.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I thank the hon. Leader of the Opposition for his intervention. However, I am not satisfied that this request meets the requirements of the Standing Orders at this time.

Remarks by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to raise a question of privilege regarding the misleading remarks made on Friday, during question period, by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

Friday morning, the government's statistics agency, Statistics Canada, released data on the gross domestic product, or GDP, for the first quarter of 2026, confirming that Canada's GDP had declined by 0.1%. That decrease follows a 1% contraction of economic output over the fourth quarter of 2025.

The definition that economists generally accept is that there is a recession when there is negative GDP growth, that is, the economy has shrunk for two consecutive quarters. In reality, this is the third of the past four quarters to show such a contraction for the Canadian economy. I will put it simply: Canada is in a recession.

This topic naturally raised concerns during question period on Friday. It will no doubt continue to do so in the coming days and weeks as we, the Conservatives, continue to put pressure on the Liberal government to submit a plan to get Canada out of this recession, which it is responsible for.

In response to my questions about this recession, the parliamentary secretary replied, “Mr. Speaker, let us be clear: Canada is not in a recession.”

To be honest, I was bewildered by the parliamentary secretary's refusal to acknowledge this reality and I asked him about this specific point. The Liberal parliamentary secretary maintained his position, replying, “Mr. Speaker, I will say it again: Canada is not in a recession.”

The parliamentary secretary did not stop there. In fact, he added insult to injury by saying, “Statistics Canada has never said that we are in a recession.”

I would respectfully submit that the parliamentary secretary has deliberately misled the House with his comments.

To mislead the House intentionally is a well-recognized ground for contempt of Parliament. Our authorities, including paragraph 3.16 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, lay out a three-part test for establishing when a prima facie case of privilege can be found in such cases.

First, the statement must, in fact, be misleading. As I just discussed, the Statistics Canada data quite clearly satisfy the consensus definition of when a country's economy has entered into recession. Of course, there is nothing technical about seniors who have to visit the food bank, unemployed Canadians fretting over how to make their next mortgage payments or hard-working parents worrying about how they will feed their kids next week.

As for the second part of the three-part test, that the member making the statement knew at the time that the statement was incorrect, I think we should recognize that the individual making the statement was not just some parliamentary secretary who happened to be in town on Friday and was available during question period to read a note prepared by someone else, who knows nothing.

The parliamentary secretary, the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, is a highly respected economist. He served as finance minister for the Couillard government in Quebec and he balanced the budget. He is a serious guy.

To be frank, that is why I was personally very disappointed and even surprised and saddened to see that this man of great experience unfortunately failed to recognize the facts.

Before being elected as the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, the parliamentary secretary worked as the chief economist and chief strategist at Laurentian Bank Securities. He served as the Quebec finance minister and was appointed to the board of directors of the Bank of Canada by Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister Freeland.

In other words, this parliamentary secretary knew very well that two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction is the very definition of a recession. I believe that he was fully aware that he was not providing correct information when he denied that we are in a recession.

In fact, as a leading economist at a bank, he was used to frequently commenting on economic trends.

For example, in an October 29, 2009, La Presses article about how 71% of Quebeckers are living in the past, the parliamentary secretary acknowledged that a recession is indeed defined as two consecutive quarters of contraction. He said, “It is a definition that is primarily used in the financial sector”.

Turning to the third part of the test, that the member must have intent to mislead the House in making the statement, one must look at the context of the exchange. The parliamentary secretary was rising in question period to stickhandle questions about that very day's economic headline, obviously an embarrassing story for the Liberals, whose very premise of forming the government was anchored in the supposed promise offered by the Prime Minister's résumé.

The parliamentary secretary was doing his best to defuse a political crisis for the Liberal Party leader.

Beyond that, I think it is also important to look at the additional exchange I had with the Liberal parliamentary secretary, in which I insisted on this point: “Is my colleague familiar with Statistics Canada? It just so happens that it is part of the Government of Canada. Statistics Canada states that Canada is in a recession”.

Even if, in a world where anything is possible, the parliamentary secretary genuinely misspoke in his first response, the issue was clearly and specifically brought to his attention. Still, he responded by doubling down.

It is clear that the parliamentary secretary knew full well what he was doing when he made such a calculated statement in the House of Commons, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

To sum up, the Liberal denial that Canada is in a recession was misleading, the parliamentary secretary making the claim was well positioned to know it was misleading, and his objective in making the comment was clearly to mislead the House in order to protect his fellow economist the Prime Minister. As such, I believe there is a prima facie case of privilege here. Should you agree, I am prepared to propose a motion to refer the matter to the procedure and House affairs committee for its deliberation.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, A second Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 2

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is with pleasure that I join the debate today on Bill C-31, part of the budget implementation act.

This budget is from November 4, 2025, so it seems a bit weird talking about a budget when we are in a different year already. Nevertheless, there are some comments I would like to get on the record about the budget.

Obviously, we cannot talk about the budget implementation act without discussing the current economic situation we have in Canada. Canada is the only G7 nation that is in a full-fledged, Liberal-led recession. How did we get here? Over the last 10 years, and I have been in the House since 2019, time and again I have seen the Liberal government bring in legislation and regulations that curtail growth and development in our energy sector. Whether it was Bill C-69 or the shipping ban off the west coast, all of these have led to less investment and development in our country. This is the actual end result of an anti-growth, antidevelopment Liberal agenda.

We see that our country has shed 112,000 jobs in the first three months of this year. That is 112,000 people who had to go home to their families and talk about how they were going to pay the bills that month. These are not just numbers but Canadians' lives we are talking about. The Liberals have an obsession with not admitting there is a problem. The first step to addressing any crisis or issue is to admit there is an issue. That has not happened with the Liberal government. It tries to keep the grand illusion time and again.

The Liberal Prime Minister is just another Liberal. He is an illusionist. It is all an illusion about what the economy looks like to him and how he wants to continue to make it appear to Canadians. As he said himself a couple of weeks ago, affordability has never been better in Canada. I have not heard from one single constituent of mine in Regina—Lewvan over the last couple of years that affordability is on the right track. The Prime Minister keeps trying to mislead Canadians by saying that.

When we go to the grocery store, which I know the Prime Minister does not, we see people grabbing things off the shelf, looking at the price and then putting them back. We see people rolling their shopping cart past the meat counters, looking at the price of meat and not buying it because they cannot afford it. That is a literal everyday occurrence for people who are trying to get by in Regina—Lewvan right now.

I want to talk about some things that are not in this budget implementation act that we now see the Liberals bringing forward. The new streaming tax was not in this budget. They did not tell Canadians they were going to tax their streaming services in the budget of November 4, 2025.

Also, the sovereign debt fund was not in the budget we are talking about. I do not know where the Liberals are going to find the billions and billions of dollars to put into the debt fund, which would put Canadians even more in debt, with larger deficits, which would then cause inflation to be even worse, especially food inflation.

Selling airports was also not in the budget last year. There was a conversation around selling off airports across Canada to keep giving out more money. I do not know who would want to purchase the airports, but I bet it is probably someone the Prime Minister knows, maybe even a company he knows quite well, possibly Brookfield. Are Brookfield airports all across Canada a possibility that the Liberals did not talk about in the budget last year?

One thing that is very close to our hearts in Saskatchewan that was definitely not in this budget is that the Snowbirds are going to be grounded. The fact that the Liberals had someone from Saskatchewan at the cabinet table who did not fight to keep the Snowbirds in the air is absolutely appalling.

They are an iconic symbol to this country and have been around for 60 years, but under the Liberals, the Snowbirds are going to be grounded until, they say, 2030. The government has never met a deadline, so I am very scared as to how long the Snowbirds will be grounded. That is something that each and every member should listen to their constituents about. I know people are reaching out and saying that this is something that should never be done. Our Snowbirds should be in the air, flying, because they are a national symbol of hope and an iconic symbol. I hope this wrong-headed decision will be reversed and we will keep our Snowbirds in the air.

I am going on to some of the other things that we have seen in the last couple of days. I just saw this, a new food bank report. After 11 years of the Prime Minister's Liberals, life has become completely unaffordable. Food Banks Canada released its latest poverty report card, warning that “Something fundamental has shifted in Canada”, after finding that one quarter of Canadians are food-insecure. Can members believe that in our country, with all of our farmland and all of our agriculture, 25% of Canadians are food-insecure?

We have the Liberals standing up here in question period. I would submit that question period is probably my most frustrating hour of the day, every day. We sit here and we ask questions about how Canadians are going to be able to afford their next meal, how Canadians are going to be able to pay for rent. Some people are employed, yet they spend 120% of their income on food and rent. Day after day, we sit here and ask questions on behalf of Canadians, and the Liberals get up and tell Canadians they have never had it so good. That is actually what they say every day.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!