Dan Albas

[Petitions, February 25th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I am putting forward a petition on behalf of concerned Canadians who want to see Bill S-204 supported. They have concerns about international trafficking in human organs and want to see the government take swift action to make sure that Canadians cannot travel abroad, utilizing perhaps criminal behaviour, to receive organs harvested without consent. The petitioners would like the government to put an end to this, at least from the Criminal Code side.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, February 21st, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to reiterate the importance of the farmers and the plight they face right now and the frustrations they have trying to get their products to market.

There are many different small businesses other than farmers that are suffering. I wonder if the member could also include some other groups that he also is aware of. I know in my great province of British Columbia right now outside the different ports, whether it be the Vancouver port or other important ports like Ridley Terminals, there are vessels waiting right now that literally cannot move on and bring Canadian goods to market.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, February 21st, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I want to bring it back to Bill C-3 for a moment.

Bill C-3 is a new approach that would combine a current panel that gives oversight to the RCMP and extend that to the CBSA. I am not convinced that this will be a successful effort, but does the member believe it is worthy of being given a shot?

[B.C. Film Industry, February 21st, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, a very exciting thing is happening next week in my riding, and more precisely in the community of Merritt. What is so exciting? The dinosaurs are coming. More accurately, next week Jurassic World 3 will be filming in the area.

We should never overlook the importance of the B.C. film industry and the significant contributions that film productions create for local economies. In the 2018-19 fiscal year, Creative BC reported that 384 productions contributed $3.2 billion to British Columbia's economy alone. This is great news for British Columbia, and in the case of Jurassic World 3, it is terrific news for Merritt.

I should also mention that the production had a casting call for local citizens. According to the casting call, they are looking for people to play dinosaur food.

Please join me in recognizing the community of Merritt for being the perfect place to feed dinosaurs.

[Business of Supply, February 20th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's contributions to this important issue. However, I am a bit confused. In the motion itself, it says, “and condemn the radical activists who are exploiting divisions”.

In British Columbia, we saw an instance where ministers, the press, the public and workers of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia were unable to attend to the throne speech. An injunction was sought by the speaker of that legislative assembly, which is enforced now by a court order.

It seems to me that the government consents that some court orders need to be followed and others do not. Does the member, who says that she supports the RCMP no longer enforcing the injunction put in place by the B.C. Supreme Court on the Coastal GasLink area, also agree that there should be no power for the RCMP to enforce legislative assembly?

Further than that, a citizen's arrest was what the radicals who decided to block the premier from leaving his house to attend the budget meeting wanted to do. In this bill, I am opposing people who are taking it upon themselves to threaten elected members, threaten the rights of the press and threaten the rights of the public to get to their places of work.

Will she condemn that kind of radical protester who seeks the citizen's arrest of a provincial premier?

[Relations with Indigenous Peoples, February 18th, 2020]

Simplistic is what you called it.

[Relations with Indigenous Peoples, February 18th, 2020]

Yeah, it's listening to other views, isn't it?

[Business of Supply, February 18th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, it is important for us to always be mindful that ultimately governments serve the people, and if the people are not being served, then we need to come here and deliberate that. I take the criticism that this should have been done a long time ago. Absolutely, it should have been, but ultimately, we have an opportunity here to examine and debate it.

I am personally open to listening to all sides of the debate. As I said in my speech, I think there are some competing interests here and perhaps this should be studied by the human resources committee, as a first step, but mindful that some members want to go farther and faster. I just believe that whatever we do, Parliament should deliberate, educate itself and then proceed with the right course and a good recommendation to government.

[Business of Supply, February 18th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, the simple argument in response is that the Liberals have been proposing a whole bunch of different changes and have not made this change to an existing program. That is part of the problem I think we have as a society, but more importantly, it shows up in the Liberal government time and time again. Rather than try to consolidate and examine the current benefits that exist for supporting Canadians in their time of need, the Liberals tried to move into other areas that were never designed for the EI system.

I am not saying that those things are not important, but let us get back to the basics. Let us focus on whether or not a program delivers what it says it will do to make sure that it is supporting Canadians because, quite honestly, money is getting tight. The government may pretend that money is not getting tight, but Canadians know.

As I said, there is a competitiveness cost. We are also talking about our constituents. We should be trying to look at how we can get the greatest value for money, but we have to start by looking at what we are doing now before we start adding on all sorts of new benefits.

[Business of Supply, February 18th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that we are able to talk about these issues. When I spoke to the CEO of the largest private employer in the area of west Kelowna, I asked him about competitiveness and he told me it was not Belgium or Spain that he was worried about competing with. It was the former eastern Soviet bloc countries where the labour is very adequate, costs and regulations are extremely low and there is a high availability of fibre supply. They have seen investment shift from some of those northern countries in Europe over to the eastern bloc countries. They have brand new state-of-the-art lasers and robotics which enable them to compete anywhere.

This is what we need to be mindful of and not just Belgium and Spain on certain things. I talked about the U.S., but we should also be worried about some of the competition arising from the eastern side of Europe.