Debates of June 16th, 2026

Grocery Industry

[Evan Solomon, Liberal, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario]

Mr. Speaker, we are very proud to have tabled legislation that would protect children, privacy and personal information and give us the opportunity to finally act against surveillance pricing and price gouging, making sure that Canadians have an affordable life. We are doing that with a regulator that will enforce that.

This practice has been praised by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which said it is very pleased that this represents “a pivotal step for privacy in Canada” and “I welcome the proposals to recognize privacy as a fundamental right, an explicit recognition of the best interests of children, requirements to conduct—

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie has the floor.

Taxation

[Alexandre Boulerice, Independent, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, frankly, no one can believe that answer.

For the first time in history, a human being is a trillionaire. Elon Musk is worth more than $1,000 billion. Even if he were to spend $1 million a day, it would take him 2,700 years to spend such an obscene amount of money.

There are people here too with colossal fortunes worth billions of dollars. The Liberals are lavishing them with gifts. At a time when people are living on the street and our public services are crumbling, what are the Liberals doing? They are not doing anything.

When will they have the courage to make the super-wealthy pay their fair share?

[François-Philippe Champagne, Liberal, Minister of Finance and National Revenue]

Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House know that every Canadian must pay their fair share of taxes.

More importantly, in response to my colleague, it is important to note that we recently invested $10 billion. We reached an agreement with the Government of Quebec to invest $10 billion in Quebec's critical infrastructure. Specifically when it comes to homelessness, we recently announced an investment of over $150 million so that we can do our part to address this issue.

We will always be there to defend everyone's interests and to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of taxes in Canada.

Presence in Gallery

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

For people across the country, the Canadian Armed Forces recognition program is an opportunity to honour the sacrifices that men and women in uniform make on our behalf.

It is my pleasure to draw the attention of members to the presence in the gallery of five members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are taking part in the Canadian Armed Forces recognition program today.

They are Warrant Officer Marjolaine Fournier, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Michaud, Sergeant Marylène Martin, Chief Warrant Officer René Gagnon and Ranger Tara Gull.

[members]

Hear, hear!

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable—Lotbinière has the floor.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L’Érable—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, during question period, the Leader of the Government in the House made derogatory comments about one of our members. I have to say that any seat one occupies here in the House is just as important as any other, and I would invite him to apologize to all—

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

There has been much slinging of arrows from both sides of the House. Is there another point of order?

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

Mr. Speaker, during question period, I asked a question about the government subsidizing the companies responsible for hiring illegal workers. The minister described it as a conspiracy theory. I wonder if there would be unanimous consent to table Order Paper question response—

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I do not think the member has unanimous consent.

Minister Statement During Committee of the Whole—Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I am now prepared to rule on the question of privilege raised on June 2 by the member for Vancouver East concerning a statement made by the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship during the meeting of the committee of the whole to consider the estimates on May 28. According to the member for Vancouver East, the minister said in response to a question that the processing of study permit applications from Palestinian students in Gaza would be accelerated and that decisions would be completed in the next 10 days. The member noted that this statement does not appear in the Debates, but is nonetheless clearly audible in the video recording.

The member for Vancouver East then stated that information she obtained later from departmental officials and affected stakeholders seemed to contradict that statement. She clarified that her goal was not to determine whether the minister deliberately misled the House, but rather to point out that the situation raises substantial doubt as to the accuracy of the information provided. The member argued that parliamentarians must be able to rely on ministerial statements when carrying out their parliamentary duties. She therefore submitted that the circumstances warrant further examination and concluded that she believes there is a prima facie question of privilege.

In response, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons questioned the facts presented by the member for Vancouver East. He stated that the minister did not mislead the committee but instead provided the most accurate information available at the time she made her statement. Furthermore, in his view, the member for Vancouver East relied not on facts that are in the Debates transcript but on an audio recording that is open to interpretation. He also contended that the matter is a dispute as to the facts based on information from sources outside the House. Finally, he argued that the procedure for questions of privilege arising from proceedings of a committee of the whole was not followed.

First of all, the Chair must begin by considering the fact that the statement in dispute was made during proceedings of a committee of the whole. A number of precedents, including a ruling by the Chair on June 19, 2025, have established that, despite certain constraints that may apply, questions of privilege stemming from proceedings of a committee of the whole must normally be raised in that committee before they can be brought to the Chair in the House.

Second, even if the usual procedure were to be set aside, the precedents are clear about requests that the Chair rule on facts presented in the House whose accuracy is disputed on the basis of external sources. As Speaker Lamoureux said in a decision rendered on November 16, 1971, on page 9619 of the Debates:

...the pertinent precedents tend to establish in the main that statements made outside the House, or documents published elsewhere, ought not to be used for the purpose of questioning statements made in this chamber by hon. members from either side of the House.

More recently, Speaker Regan stated the following in a ruling delivered on November 20, 2017, which appears on page 15303 of the Debates:

Members know well that in any case in which the veracity of what a member of the House has said is called into question, the Chair's role is very limited to the review of the statements made in a proceeding of Parliament. In other words, the Chair cannot comment on what transpires outside of the deliberations of the House or its committees.

Even if the Chair could address statements made in committee of the whole in the absence of a report to the House, and had the minister's statement been accurately quoted, something that the Debates do not enable us to determine in this case, there is no basis for concluding that she contradicted herself or that she intended to mislead the House. The situation, therefore, seems to be a dispute as to the facts.

House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, provides the following information in section 3.92:

If the question of privilege involves a disagreement between two (or more) members as to facts, the Speaker typically rules that such a dispute does not prevent members from fulfilling their parliamentary functions, nor does such a disagreement breach the collective privileges of the House.

Disagreements about the facts are common in the House, and the mere fact that a member believes a statement made by another member, minister or not, is inaccurate is not enough to establish that there are grounds to raise a question of privilege. Accordingly, the Chair cannot find that there is a prima facie question of privilege. I therefore consider the matter closed.

I thank all members for their attention.

Admissibility of Government Business No.13

[Jacob Mantle, Conservative, York—Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising this afternoon on a point of order concerning the admissibility of Government Business No. 13, which appeared on this morning's Notice Paper. Government Business No. 13 proposes to lay out a program for the remaining consideration of Bill C-22, the Liberal government's legislation concerning so-called lawful access.

While programming motions are, of course, not unheard of in our Westminster system and in Canada, they have become increasingly fashionable, first under the Trudeau government and now under the current Liberal government. In fact, we have witnessed three of them this week alone. What is troubling is that each successive programming motion has been more and more aggressive than the preceding one. Government Business No. 13 introduces a novel feature not seen in previous programming motions: a retroactive deadline for the submission of committee amendments. Subparagraph (a)(ii) states:

if the committee has not completed the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill within 30 minutes of the beginning of the meeting, all remaining amendments that were submitted to the committee by 4:30 p.m. on June 15, 2026, shall be deemed moved, the Chair shall put the question forthwith....

The point, as is clearly evident, is that the deadline set in this notice was yesterday at 4:30 p.m. Therefore, if adopted, Government Business No. 13 would only allow the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to consider amendments that were filed yesterday. The Liberals' proposed deadline for committee amendments for Bill C-22, therefore, possibly preceded its notice of Government Business No. 13. It certainly preceded the publication of the notice, which comes out at about, as I understand it, two o'clock in the morning.

What is more egregious, or perhaps as egregious, than the proposal to ram through the House such a sweeping piece of legislation with significant consequences for the privacy rights of Canadians is that, if adopted, members will also be left with no ability to put forward any further suggestions on how to improve Bill C-22 or strike the right balance between public safety and privacy, because the motion itself prevents and precludes any report stage amendments by members.

Let me draw everyone's attention to paragraphs (b) and (c) of the motion. Paragraph (b) reads, “the bill may be considered at the report stage at any time following the completion of paragraph (a)(iv) of this order, and, when the order is read, it shall be deemed to have been concurred in, as amended, at the report stage”. There would be no amendments because the deadline for amendments is retroactive and there is no ability for amendments to be brought forward at report stage.

Let me contrast this with Government Business No. 12, which was the immediately preceding programming motion. That concerned Bill C-30 before the Standing Committee on Finance, and the House adopted it on Monday night. There was a committee deadline in that motion, but it was for 24 hours after notice had been given of the government motion. Members in that case at least had the time to put forward their best and last ideas, knowing that, regardless, the Liberal guillotine was at hand.

I will mention that Government Business No. 12 was not subject to a ruling, so I am not attempting to draw it as an authoritative precedent, but only as an example for the Speaker's consideration.

We have a government that is fascinated with all the ways it can censor Canadians. With Government Business No. 13, the Liberals are now verging into the territory of erasing the rights of members. That is what makes Government Business No. 13 so utterly offensive. The idea of a retroactive deadline is, I believe, entirely unprecedented and, therefore, I would like to go back to several first principles to lay out my initial opposition to this bill.

I will note that I am raising this at the earliest opportunity I can, having simply seen the notice this morning and raising it as quickly as possible. Therefore, I would beg the Speaker's indulgence to provide further arguments should my hon. colleagues across the way also provide theirs.

I will turn to the first principle, Standing Order 1, which we do not often quote in this place. However, I think it is necessary when we are talking about something that is unprecedented and novel. It states:

In all cases not provided for hereinafter, or by other order of the House, procedural questions shall be decided by the Speaker...whose decisions shall be based on the usages, forms, customs and precedents of the House of Commons of Canada and on parliamentary tradition in Canada and other jurisdictions, so far as they may be applicable to the House.

I would also draw the Speaker's attention to Standing Order 13, which, of course, gives you the ability to rule on whether or not any motion is in order in this place.

Beauchesne’s Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, sixth edition, observes at citation 12:

Parliamentary Law is something quite different from the ordinary Civil Law or Common Law. Parliamentary Law is based on centuries of tradition and precedents which have marked the evolution of parliamentary freedoms from the time that the first Parliaments were governed under the Divine Right of Kings to the stage of parliamentary sovereignty which we have now acquired.

One of the House's earliest clerks, Sir John Bourinot, in Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, second edition, at page 258, reiterated one of these most essential principles, which has evolved over the centuries. He said:

The great principles that lie at the basis of English parliamentary law have...been always kept steadily in view by the Canadian legislatures; these are: To protect the minority and restrain the improvidence and tyranny of the majority, to secure the transaction of public business in a decent and orderly manner, to enable every member to express his opinions within those limits necessary to preserve decorum and prevent an unnecessary waste of time, to give full opportunity for the consideration of every measure, and to prevent any legislative action being taken heedlessly and upon sudden impulse.

I know the Speaker will be aware of this general principle, but I draw him again to the section that refers to protecting the minority and restraining “the improvidence and tyranny of the majority”. That principle is reinforced again by our present-day Clerk, with his own comments at paragraph 5.1 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, fourth edition, which says:

...over the years, the ideal of “protecting the minority” has adapted to the modern dictates of an efficient legislative body.... Nevertheless, it remains true that parliamentary procedure is intended to ensure that there is a balance between the government’s need to get its business through the House and the opposition’s responsibility to debate that business....

Sir George's principles are also quoted authoritatively in Parliamentary Procedure in Québec, third edition, at page 49:

The rules of parliamentary procedure as a whole, then, must reflect these principles and create a balance between them. Procedure is thus at the service of noble ideals that ensure the highly democratic nature of the parliamentary institution. Even though they may sometimes be considered superfluous, the fact remains that the rules of procedure are extremely important for parliamentarians and for the functioning of the institution.

While Bill C-22 contains some measures that law enforcement agencies have asked Parliament for, part 2 of the bill and, indeed, certain sections of part 1 raise serious concerns regarding privacy, civil liberties, government powers and other issues. The government's own charter statement acknowledges this. Moreover, major Canadian industries and technology companies, including Google, Meta, Apple and others, have raised serious questions about encryption provisions, the requirement to collect and store the personal information of Canadians and the powers contained in part 2 for the minister to issue secret orders to companies.

The powers and the scope of this bill should be carefully considered, defined and targeted. This requires the balancing act that I referred to earlier. Parliament needs to get this right. Doing that requires time, patience and studying the procedures of this House, but Government Motion No. 13 would prohibit that.

Perhaps support for the legislation within the caucus of the Liberal Party has been declining more swiftly than we thought, after hearing from witnesses and stakeholders, and, therefore, a renewed urgency is upon the Liberals. However, that is no excuse to push this bill through the House on the very last week of its sitting.

It may be useful to recall the words of Speaker Milliken in a ruling he delivered on March 29, 2007, at page 8136 of the debates. He said:

...neither the political realities of the moment nor the sheer force of numbers should force us to set aside the values inherent in the parliamentary conventions and procedures by which we govern our deliberations.

The political realities of the Liberal government, facing increasing and growing scrutiny on this censorship agenda, are no excuse for what the Liberal House leader is proposing through his notice this morning.

As I said, Mr. Speaker, Government Business No. 13 has not yet been proposed, but I wanted to raise this matter at the earliest opportunity to provide you sufficient time to consider it. Should you wish us to raise this point of order when the motion is moved, we will do that as well.

As your predecessor said, also on March 29, 2007, at page 8137 of the debates:

Unlike the situation faced by committee chairs, a Speaker's decision is not subject to appeal. All the more reason then for the Chair to exercise its awesome responsibility carefully and to ensure that the House does not, in the heat of the moment, veer dangerously off course.

In our submission, Government Business No. 13 would do that. It would see this House go dangerously off course, all in the service of a bill that would therefore be denied the careful and detailed scrutiny it requires.

Let me finish by quoting citation 18 of Beauchesne's Parliamentary Rules and Forms, fourth edition:

We use the words “House of Commons” very often without pausing to reflect upon what those words mean. The word “Commons” means the people. This is the house of the people; sitting on both sides of this house; and on both sides of the Speaker are representatives of every constituency of Canada. Collectively those of us who meet in this Chamber represent all Canadians. That is our responsibility! That is our duty. Our rights are important only to the extent that those rights represent the rights of the people themselves. If the traditional rights of the members of this House are released, limited or arbitrarily curtailed in any way, it is not our rights that are of concern. What is vitally important is that in that curtailment of rights—there is a limitation of the rights—of the people themselves. The freedom that we have here to shape and guide legislation, no matter on which side of the House we might sit, is part of the very freedom which we cherish here in this country of ours. It is here in the House of Commons, to which all the people of Canada must look for just laws properly considered and properly made, that Canadians in every part of Canada must look for the greater part of their freedom and for the assurance of that type of government which will be itself an expression of the freedom which has come down to us through so many generations of sacrifice and tremendous efforts.

The retroactive committee amendment deadline proposed in Government Business No. 13 is offensive to the rich and deep tradition of parliamentary law. It is compounded by the inability of members to move motions at report stage, effectively preventing them from providing any more input into this bill. It cannot be in order that a bill provides a deadline retroactively, known only to the government members and utilized only by the government members, unbeknownst to any other member of this House until that deadline has passed.

As such, it is my submission that Government Business No. 13 is not in order and, therefore, the whole of the motion should be equally called out of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to respond to the point of order raised by my colleague, respecting the effect of the programming motion related to Bill C‑22 in the context of our collective and individual privileges.

I submit that the matter is a question of whether the House has the ability to regulate its proceedings that appear to restrict the privileges of the House. I can state categorically that the House does have the powers to limit and, in some cases, waive its privileges. Page 65 of the fourth edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice states:

As a collectivity, the House of Commons has privileges that enable its members to fulfill their constitutional duties....

The two most dominant rights or powers are the right of the House to regulate its own internal affairs and the power to discipline.

The programming motion that would govern the consideration of Bill C‑22 seeks to achieve to set a procedural process for the disposal of the bill. The House is no stranger to innovative and constructive ways to dispose of business before the House and in committees. During the pandemic, the House adopted motions that would have normally been seen as a restriction on the privileges of members and the House more generally. Indeed, the exclusive power of the House to regulate internal affairs is the cornerstone of the architecture of parliamentary privilege. The ability to regulate and control its own debates, agenda and proceedings relating to the legislative and deliberative functions is one of the most important privileges that the Constitution bestows upon Parliament.

I submit that the exercise of these powers is central to the matter before the House. The House can give direction to committees, which are creatures of the House. The House can decide, by a majority of the voices, to structure the legislative process for any given bill. This is precisely the case with the proposal before the House. Therefore, I conclude that the matter is clearly within the House's powers to regulate its internal affairs in respect of the legislative agenda.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have an official cake for the Prime Minister—

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

No. That is out of order.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is more than just out of order. The member has brought cake into the House of Commons, which is incredibly disrespectful of the rules of this House.

I would suggest that the member apologize to the House for disrespecting it in this way.

[The Speaker, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That is a prop, essentially, so it is not permitted.

The hon. member for Drummond.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to inform you that the Bloc Québécois reserves the right to respond at a later date to the point of order raised by the member for York-Durham.

The House resumed consideration of the motion in relation to the amendment made by the Senate to Bill C‑9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places), and of the amendment.

Combatting Hate Act

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saint‑Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton.

The combatting hate act has been before this House for nine months. During those nine months, we have had extensive debate in this place, in the other place and at committee. This bill is important.

I want to take members back to what started the process of amending our hate laws in a way that is broader than the way they have been amended in the last 30 years.

In the spring of 2024, in my own riding of Mount Royal, the Jewish community centre, the Montreal Holocaust Museum and The Jewish Public Library were surrounded by demonstrators. They were surrounded by demonstrators yelling hateful things. They were surrounded by demonstrators carrying signs, some of which supported terrorist organizations. However, the police failed to arrest people. They failed to stop what was a demonstration that descended into illegality. They said at the time that they did not have clear enough instructions or clear enough rules related to when a demonstration outside of a community centre, a school, a temple, a church or a synagogue has crossed the line.

The combatting hate act makes clear that these buildings deserve special protection. It creates new intimidation and obstruction offences related to protests outside of community centres, places of worship and schools that make it clear that these buildings deserve special protection. It makes it clear that a person cannot intimidate someone from entering that building to hear a speaker they want to hear, to worship as they want to worship or to attend their classes. It makes it clear that a person cannot obstruct people from entering or leaving the building, which is what happened that night in March 2024. At the time, I called for this change to the criminal law.

I said that, because the police told me that they were unable to take action, the Parliament of Canada has a duty to act, to rewrite existing criminal laws so that they are clearer and so they provide more tools to police officers.

The same thing happened with respect to Mr. Charkaoui. He said things that were absolutely hateful in the streets of Montreal, but the prosecutors did not take action.

We ended up in a situation where the House set up a committee. I asked for the justice and human rights committee to study anti-Semitism. We did, and in December 2024, we put out a unanimous report, on most issues. Yes, there was dissent, but the dissent was not on the vast majority of issues, including the intimidation and obstruction offence. However, that has not stopped what the Prime Minister called the “crisis of anti-Semitism” that has overwhelmed the western world, including Canada, where over 70% of religious-based hate offences are against the Jewish community, which makes up 1.2% of the population, and where a Jewish Canadian has a 19 times greater chance of having a hate crime committed against them than the average Canadian.

I want to point out that two weeks ago there was an attempted arson attack on a temple in Westmount, Temple Emanu‑El, where I joined the Minister of Canadian Identity, former senator Marc Gold, and the Secretary of State for Youth to support the community at services. This law has a stand-alone hate provision, which can be used alongside the arson charges that gentleman will face, to make sure the person who is charged will face more jail time than previously.

We also have provisions in this bill to say that when people fly terrorist symbols, the Nazi hakenkreuz or the SS bolt, or now the noose, which was added by the Senate in its recent amendment, in a way that inspires hate against a community, they would now easily be charged by the police.

The bill offers greater protection for minority communities across this country, and for majority communities, by the way. It offers greater protections to Christians as well, who are a majority. It delivers protections to all religious faiths. It delivers protections to the LGBTQ+ community, the indigenous communities and other communities that face hate. Why would anyone be against it? Why would anyone be against this bill?

The only argument I have heard to date against this bill, the number one reason I have heard, is that the law is not being enforced and we should just enforce the existing law, as if the federal government was responsible for the enforcement of the Criminal Code. This is something that is in the hands of the provinces. The decisions on whether to charge people are made by local municipal police, in most cases, and provincial prosecutors, not the federal government. The argument that we should not give police the tools they say they need to prosecute these crimes, because we should just tell them to do what they are supposed to do, does not wash, because it is essentially saying that the federal government should do nothing.

We have the ability to write the Criminal Code, and we are doing so. With this bill, when it is enacted, and with the new bail and sentencing reform bill, which just received royal assent, we can now, as the Minister of Public Safety confirmed, go to the provinces and territories, have a PT meeting with the provinces and territories, and say that we need to act together to train police and prosecutors. We need specialized hate crime prosecutors across this country, to be named by the provinces. We need, most importantly, to have prosecutorial directives or other measures, where police are told by the provincial attorneys general how they should prosecute these crimes. It should be consistent across this country. The passing of this flurry of justice bills is an opportunity for us.

I also want to address some of the misinformation I heard earlier today in the debate. First, one member talked about parents being worried about what they can say at the dinner table. Private discussions are not covered under the wilful promotion of hatred provisions under section 319 of the Criminal Code. To have members tell people that they have to worry about what they say at their dinner table is knowingly false. It is not true.

Second, there were claims that the government would go out there and charge people, that somehow one minister's comments would lead to a government that could go out and say that people should be charged. However, we live in a system where independent prosecutors, working with police, make these decisions. They are not influenced by what a government person tells them to do or not to do in any individual case. The only way for the government to have its view is prosecutorial directives that apply to an entire class of people, which would come from the provincial attorneys general, not the federal one usually. I am kind of shocked to hear these claims that are so far out of reality that it diminishes what we are trying to do in the law.

Finally, let me be absolutely clear. We also inserted a provision for greater clarity, to make clear that this is not the case, but we should not have had to do that, because it is obvious that this is not the case. People will not be charged because they read, quote or preach the Bible, the Quran, the Torah or any other holy book. This is entirely made up. It is negated by the Charter of Rights. It is negated by the “for greater certainty” provision in the bill.

This is a really important bill. As a member of the Jewish community who has felt this hate, I know that every major organization in my community supports this bill. It is a really important bill to get hate off our streets, to make sure criminals get off our streets and to make sure there is deterrence. I would call upon everyone to support this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, first, I would put to the member that the Orthodox Jewish community and the religious leaders within the Jewish community are overwhelmingly opposed to the removal of the religious exemption. I would encourage the member to take their concerns seriously.

Moreover, the idea that a statute that denies religious freedom and attacks freedom of speech is not a big deal because the charter protects religious freedom is not great comfort to most people. It may be that this law could be found unconstitutional, if a person who is charged then addresses the issue of religious freedom through the courts and eventually gets a remedy for that, but that is a long and difficult process for an individual to go through. It would be better if we did not pass laws that violate religious freedom in the first place, therefore not requiring that kind of charter action.

Why is the member proceeding with this in light of those obvious concerns, especially from the Orthodox Jewish community?

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the organizations that speak for the organized Jewish communities, all of them, support the bill, whether it is CIJA, B'nai Brith, the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, the numerous groups that Mark Sandler has assembled in Toronto or the Canadian Women Against Antisemitism. I do not know of any major Jewish organization in the country that does not support this bill, so I do not believe that to be true. Most of the Orthodox Jewish rabbis I know support this bill, so I do not believe that is true. There may be some who do not, just like there are some in every religion who do not, but the vast majority of Canadian Jews have been asking for this bill and want this bill.

As to the question of religious freedom, there is nothing in this bill that would thwart religious freedom. We removed a defence that has never successfully been used in Canadian history.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was thinking along the same lines as my colleague from Mount Royal. I congratulate him on his speech. Indeed, the Bloc Québécois's call over the past several years to remove the religious exemption from the Criminal Code has finally been included in Bill C-9, which we are debating today.

Like my colleague from Mount Royal, I have never heard any group representing the Jewish community speak out against this request from the Bloc Québécois. On the contrary, it is seen as yet another tool to protect Jewish communities, which have been particularly targeted by hate crimes over the past few years and even in recent days. Once again, we are witnessing extremely troubling acts of anti-Semitism in our society .

I would like to know what my colleague thinks. In fact, he just touched on the answer a bit in his response to our Conservative colleague, but I want to know what he thinks the repeal of this exemption will mean for the sense of security among Jewish communities in Canada.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that this will foster a sense of security for all communities, because no one wants to be the target of hatred.

It is true that CJA-Québec said that it supports the Bloc Québécois and the proposal that it put forward a few years ago. We saw what was happening on the streets of Montreal and the fact that no prosecutor was taking action due to the potential use of this religious defence.

If individuals promote hatred on the street, they should not be able to use their beliefs to justify hatred against groups. It is also very important to say that this defence has never been successful in a Canadian court since the law has been on the books.