Charlie Angus

[Global Food Insecurity, June 16th, 2022]

Madam Chair, I am really concerned about the situation where food and hunger are being used as a chip in Putin's war against the people of Ukraine, and now the world. It speaks to a larger destabilization that is happening. We are just learning about the Colorado River. With 80% of it going to agriculture, it feeds 40 million people, and the climate crisis in the southwest is now going to have severe impacts on agriculture. We depend on that agriculture as well. We have Putin blocking the ports, using food as a hunger weapon, and we can see increasing destabilization from climate change.

I want to ask the minister what steps Canada will be taking in the long term to ensure food security and to ensure that we can actually respond to this destabilizing global reality that we are living in 2022.

[Taxation, June 16th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, people in northern Ontario often drive an hour to get to work, yet rising gas prices is putting serious pressure in working-class families. Big oil made $100 billion in profits in the first quarter. That is triple what they made last year.

As the finance minister is hanging with the über-rich at the Empire Club, the Liberal government does nothing as working-class Canadians are held hostage at the pumps.

When is the government going to tax these obscene oil profits and put the money back in the pockets of working-class Canadians?

[Judges Act, June 16th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, and I want to go back to some of the comments she made at the beginning of her speech.

We have seen some horrific judgements that women who suffered sexual assault have faced in the courts, with judges who have had some horrific opinions, not judgements but opinions, on the women. However, Rona Ambrose did come forward about the need to have judges properly trained so they actually understood these files in reference to sexual assault and abuse against women.

I would ask my hon. colleague if she feels that the mechanisms within the bill would allow us to address some of the serious problems we have with judges who just do not understand the sexual assault culture facing women.

[Criminal Code, June 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I am always absolutely fascinated by the member for Kingston and the Islands, but I have not been able to follow the last 10 minutes of his speech, so I do not think the Conservatives are correct in saying this may not have anything to do with it because it has been very hard to get a coherent message of what he is actually saying.

[Criminal Code, June 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, in a younger life, my wife and I lived and worked with men coming out of prison, and we worked with people on the streets.

What we saw was the enormous amount of public money that gets wasted when police sit all night in an emergency ward with people who should be in detox or when people were jailed over the weekend. There is a failure to deal with the mental health issues we see in people on the street and in marginalized communities.

We talk time and time again about fixing this, but it always thrown at us that we are being soft on crime or that we are hugging the thugs. I would like to ask the hon. member about the larger sociological issues of a society that treats people as disposable, locking them away in places such as the jail in Thunder Bay, without the support networks to actually get people off their addictions and back into civil society?

[Criminal Code, June 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, in our region we have seen an unprecedented level of civil problems because of the opioid epidemic in downtown areas, particularly in communities like Timmins, North Bay and Sudbury, where people are afraid to go downtown. When we have community meetings, the police have been really clear in saying that they cannot police their way out of what has become a massive medical crisis. People's lives are falling through the cracks here.

Would my hon. colleague agree with me that we need to take a medical treatment approach to the people who are on the streets and find a way to start to address this crisis that is not only killing people by the thousands but is making our streets increasingly unsafe?

[Climate Change, June 14th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, internal documents show that the government knew the Prime Minister's net-zero reduction plan had net-zero chance of meeting its emissions targets. Well, what a surprise. I remember when the Prime Minister went to COP26 and promised the world that he was bringing in an emissions cap. Then he came back to Canada and promoted massive oil increases through Bay du Nord and TMX.

The planet is on fire and generations of Canadians will pay the price for his inability to deliver a credible plan on a just transition or the emissions cap. Does the Prime Minister not understand this?

[MPP for Timmins, June 3rd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I pay tribute today to a colleague, leader and personal friend, Mr. Gilles Bisson, and thank him for 32 years of incredible service to democracy and to the people of Ontario and the city of Timmins.

There are a million stories one could tell about how many people Gilles has helped over the years, of the countless fights he has taken on and won and of his fierce love for northern Ontario. Let us go back to when he was a young miner in the gold mines and he was meeting immigrant mining widows whose husbands had died of emphysema and lung cancer. They faced a solid wall of denial from the companies, the government and the medical institutions. Gilles took on their fight and helped change the compensation laws of Ontario forever. That is the passion he has carried through his whole career.

I congratulate George Pirie, our new MPP, and I will work with him on many of the issues that face our region, but there will never be a political legacy in the north that is as enduring or inspiring as that of Gilles Bisson.

I ask my friend to take some time. I look forward to drinking his homemade wine at the lake this summer.

[Shannen Koostachin, May 31st, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to pay tribute to an extraordinary youth leader, the late Shannen Koostachin of Attawapiskat First Nation, who died 12 years ago tonight in a terrible highway accident in northern Ontario. Shannen was only 15 at the time, but in her short life, she launched the largest youth-driven children's rights movement in Canadian history.

Shannen had never seen a real school. Children on her reserve were being educated in deplorable conditions, but Shannen stood up and challenged the negligence of the Canadian state. “School should be a time of dreams,” she said. She said that very child deserves the right to go to a safe and comfy school.

Shannen never lived long enough to see the beautiful Shannen’s dream school in Attawapiskat, but since her death, youth from across Canada have carried on the Shannen’s Dream campaign for equal education rights. Shannen has been recognized as one the 150 most important women in Canadian history. That is a powerful legacy for a girl who just wanted to go to a real school.

On this anniversary, we remember and miss you, Shannen. I miss you, but we know your spirit lives on.

[Business of Supply, May 17th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am more likely to say that my hon. colleague probably did not understand the difference. I withdraw the word “lying”, but the fact that the Conservatives would use this on—