Guy Lauzon

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 17th, 2019]

With regard to government expenditures on gala, concert or sporting event tickets since January 1, 2018: what was the (i) date, (ii) location, (iii) total cost, (iv) cost per ticket, (v) number of tickets, (vi) title of persons using the tickets, (vii) name or title of event for tickets purchased by, or billed to, any department, agency, Crown corporation, or other government entity?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 17th, 2019]

With regard to international trips taken by the Prime Minister since January 1, 2016: (a) what are the details of each trip, including (i) dates, (ii) destination, (iii) purpose; (b) for each trip in (a), how many guests who were not members of the Prime Minister’s family, employees of the government, or elected officials, were on each trip; and (c) what are the details of each guest in (b), including (i) name, (ii) title, (iii) reason for being on the trip, (iv) dates individual was on the trip?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 17th, 2019]

With regard to ongoing or planned government IT projects over $1 million: (a) what is the list of each project, including a brief description; and (b) for each project listed in (a), what is the (i) total budget, (ii) estimated completion date?

[Members Not Seeking Re-election to the 43rd Parliament, June 4th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of hard acts to follow.

I want to start by telling parliamentarians of this wonderful, blessed life that I have had. I am a very fortunate man.

I have been blessed in many ways in my life of 75 short years. Two of my blessings have been the wonderful wives that I have had. My first wife, Carol, was a superb mother who lovingly raised our two children, Jeffrey and Lonna Lea, to be the most incredible parents that anyone could ever have. I am the proud grandfather of seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. It is hard to believe that a young man like me could be a great-grandfather.

After my wife, Carol, passed away in 1988, it was a barren time but my two children and I became very close friends. The bond grew closer and closer. I stayed widowed for 17 years until a wonderful lady by the name of Frances came into my life. We met in October of 1999.

I had never been part of any political party, belonged to a political organization or even attended a political meeting at that time, but somehow I was inspired to put my name in as a candidate for the Canadian Alliance Party of Canada in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. Believe it or not, I spent about two months on the road with my brother, Ed, and my wife, Frances, or “constant companion” as the press used to refer to her. We used to have a dog and pony show where we would go to small communities around the riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, put an ad in the paper, have a meeting where eight or 10 people would come out and listen to Guy give his wonderful speech, and then we would sell two or three memberships. Eventually, we sold enough memberships to win the Canadian Alliance nomination in 2000.

I did not know a thing about campaigning, but in 2000, we came within 2,900 votes of being successful. However, I got the bug and from then on I decided I wanted to be a member of Parliament.

I was dating Frances at that time and date nights became church suppers and every social event that was going on anywhere in Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry where there were more than a dozen people. That was our date. I would take Frances there and spend the big money, and we would have a church supper, have great pie and those kinds of things, and then I would take her home. However, that was successful. I did that for four years and, believe it or not, in June 28, 2004, I had the good fortune to be elected the member of Parliament for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.

Everyone in the House knows, but cannot express to other people, how exhilarating it is to be elected a member of Parliament, but it is also so humbling. When I realized that my peers had said “Guy, we trust you”, it was the most humbling, wonderful experience that I have ever had. The past 15 years and four re-elections since have been a true blessing.

I served as deputy whip for a period and also as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture. I had the distinct honour to act as the national caucus chair for the Conservative government for eight wonderful years. I will be forever grateful to Prime Minister Stephen Harper for honouring me with the great privilege to serve my colleagues, the Conservative Party of Canada and the Conservative government, as well as to serve him.

How do I thank the great constituents of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for the best 15 years of my life? Personally, I feel totally inadequate to express the sincere gratitude that I have in my heart for the hundreds and thousands of supporters and volunteers who have trusted me with the great honour of being their member of Parliament. I will be truly grateful to the wonderful constituents of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, and I will continue to serve them in any way possible.

I want to thank my staff past and present. Currently, Francine, Denise, Sue, Nicole, Adrian and my almost full-time volunteer, my wonderful sister Claire, provide the best service any constituency office across Canada can provide. I challenge anyone to top that.

I also want to especially thank my executive assistant, Eric Duncan, who was with me for nine years. He drank the Kool-Aid and now is a candidate for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry in the October election. Eric was my caucus coordinator during the eight years I was caucus chair. I am sure he will serve the constituents of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry very well. As a matter of fact, I am starting to refer to him as the new improved version of Guy Lauzon, and younger I should say. He is only 31-years old.

Staff is so invaluable. Ninety per cent of the clients of the constituency of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry do not deal with me; they deal with my staff. I go out on weekends to social events and everybody tells me that they went to my office and had great service. I tell my staff that I get wonderful feedback from constituents, and I want them to know it. I keep getting re-elected because of them. I have been re-elected four times. They do all the work and I get all the glory. However, I tell them that if I keep my job, they keep theirs. That seems to work for them.

I want to thank my colleagues on all sides of the House. It truly has been an honour to sit in the chamber and serve the constituents of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry as well as the citizens of Canada.

To the citizens of Canada, to all the staff in Parliament and all my colleagues, I say “Thank you”. God bless them and may God bless Canada.

[Criminal Records Act, May 30th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague.

[Criminal Records Act, May 30th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, the member says there was all of this planning for three years. I have the budget for the Parole Board and there is not 5¢ in it to deal with this issue. If there were so much planning over the last three years, one would think there would at least be a nickel or so in the Parole Board's budget to deal with this problem.

[Criminal Records Act, May 30th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite says that I stated the legislation was a mistake. I want to clarify for the record that I did not say the legislation was a mistake. I said the way the government rolled it out was a horrible mistake. The government did it too quickly and did not listen to any advice from any organization across Canada. That is why we have this problem. The Liberals are trying to work on the margins to save this problem.

We all know about gateway drugs. The member only has to have one person in his family get involved with marijuana and then more serious drugs to realize how much of a gateway drug it is.

[Criminal Records Act, May 30th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I do not often rise in the House to speak, but Bill C-93 is a very interesting piece of legislation. In all honesty, I think Bill C-93 came as a result of good intentions. The government saw a problem it had created because of some previous legislation and said that it had to fix it.

We should go back to the original issue. The original issue was that the Liberals rushed a piece of legislation. They tried desperately to meet self-imposed deadlines that they should not have made. The Liberals made promises that, in all honesty, they realized they could not keep. Then, to try to keep the promises, they crafted some very poor legislation. Of course, I am talking about the bill that legalized marijuana.

As some of my colleagues have said, the jury is still out. I do not feel that the jury is out, but some people say that the jury is still out on whether marijuana is a gateway drug. I have some personal experiences in my family, and I would argue that marijuana certainly is a gateway drug. I do not think we are seeing the full ramifications of the legalization of marijuana.

We are discussing Bill C-93 this afternoon because the government is trying to come up with a quick fix for some flawed legislation to legalize marijuana. The end result would be a brand new category of record suspensions, which could not be easily revoked and could be granted automatically without any insight into an individual's history.

Let us imagine a person charged with possession of marijuana. For the poor innocent teenager who is caught smoking marijuana and charged, I am 100% in favour of striking that off his record. However, the people who are repeatedly charged, or the people who plead down maybe from a charge of selling marijuana to a charge of simple possession, I do not think should automatically be granted a pardon.

It is a good thing there is an election in October. Hopefully, what will happen in October is that there will be a change in government. The new government will be able to address some of the flaws we are seeing in Bill C-45 and Bill C-93. Hopefully, the Conservatives will form that new government, and we will bring some common sense and some pragmatic ideas on how to deal with this unfortunate happening.

In essence, we support expedited pardons. We think it is a good idea. There is a little good news in this legislation. I am not part of the committee, but I understand that while the Liberals did not accept all of our amendments, two were accepted that helped to improve the bill's procedural fairness. They would require the Parole Board to include a review of the program in its annual report. If the Conservatives are elected in October, and if there is any justice, we will be elected in October, we will be able to review this, because after a year, this would be subject to review.

Everyone makes mistakes. We realize that the government made a mistake when it legalized marijuana. However, we are supposed to learn from our mistakes. We try to teach our children to learn from their mistakes. We should learn from our own mistakes.

Unfortunately, the Prime Minister, in his rush to meet self-imposed political deadlines, failed to act to adequately address the many concerns of municipalities, law enforcement, employers, scientists and doctors about this cannabis legislation. I am here to say that in my riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, we are feeling the ramifications of legalized marijuana.

In my riding, I have had police officers stop me and say that they do not know what to do with this. They are not sure about the equipment they were given to test whether folks are impaired, or whatever. It is the same with employers. Employers are shaking their heads and asking how they are going to deal with this terrible legalization of marijuana. They are telling me that people are going out during their breaks, smoking up and coming back to work. It is legal, so what is an employer to do about it? People are very confused about this.

Now what do we do? We would add to the problem with Bill C-93. If the government had taken its time and not had its self-imposed deadline at all costs, and instead done Bill C-45 correctly, we would not have this problem. Police officers, employers and all the labour unions told telling us how to do Bill C-45 properly; there was a lot of input. The government had to get it done and now we have ended up trying to fix the problem with Bill C-93.

As I said, Bill C-93 is well-intentioned and has some good features. We agree that a person who just had one charge should not have it on his record, and we would like to facilitate its removal.

From what members of the committee tell me, the government would not listen to suggestions. I cannot understand why it would not listen to the suggestion made on behalf of the Canadian Police Association, which I believe is a reasonable one to improve the bill, namely, calling for the Parole Board to retain limited flexibility and discretion to conduct investigations and to ensure that the small number of applications by habitual offenders are vetted. This would have ensured that these individuals did not take advantage of a process that is clearly not intended for their cases.

The Canadian Police Association deals with this issue day in and day out. It has the experience and we should be listening to it. That was a wonderful amendment. I wish somebody from the government side would explain why it has no intention of including that amendment in the legislation. The amendment is so reasonable and would be so helpful, yet it was defeated at committee where the Liberals have the majority.

There were other amendments that I understand were also rejected. One of them was to restore the power to make inquiries to determine the applicant's conduct since the date of conviction. Let us say a young person made a mistake when they were 15 years old and have not had a problem since. I could understand our pardoning that person very easily. However, what if that person has had a terrible record of breaking and entering, selling marijuana and all of these other kinds of things? Would we still give that individual a pardon? Under this proposed legislation, we would not have any choice because the government did not agree to this amendment.

The bottom line is that I will be supporting this legislation, but it is not the way it should be. The truth of the matter is that the government should have taken its time. Why did we get this piece of legislation in the House at the last minute? It is because the government was too busy with other priorities and it did not seem to matter. All of a sudden, now it wants to ram this through at the last minute. I do not think that is the way this place should operate.

[Criminal Records Act, May 30th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to speak to Bill C-93 this afternoon. Bill C-93 is the result of—

[Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, May 28th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, for the past 15 years I have had the honour and privilege of representing the residents of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry in the House. I can truly say that sitting in this chamber among my honourable colleagues, both past and present, has been the greatest time of my life.

To the residents of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, I would like to use this opportunity to thank them for their confidence in me and electing me as their member of Parliament for five consecutive terms; for placing their trust in me; for allowing me to be their voice in the greatest democracy in the world; and for sharing their thoughts, opinions and concerns with me. I did my best to make sure they were addressed.

During my 15 years as a member of Parliament, I did all I could to promote my riding and to try to bring investment dollars back home in order to see our community grow and prosper. I will continue to give back in whatever capacity I can to the people who so faithfully put their trust in me for the past 15 years.