Jake Stewart

[Online Streaming Act, February 28th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, that is a very good question. Part of the thing for an artist and a creator is to take control of their work. They have to have the copyright for their work before they put it out. There is always a danger when they are performing live. Especially with music, there is a great danger. I appreciate the question. I do not think this bill is solving that issue. I think it is infringing on our freedoms.

[Online Streaming Act, February 28th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I understand that issue very well. I was in smoke-filled bars from the age of 17 until 30 years old. I was a singer in a band, and I travelled all over the place. I remember writing an album and having to worry about that very thing. We would go to a bar when cellphones were just starting to be a thing, and somebody would make a recording that was not asked for. Then maybe that song, which had not been released yet, would end up on Facebook. I understand the issue very well. I do sympathize. That is an issue that happens very often in our society.

However, I think the issue here today is that, with each new bill brought into the House of Commons by the Liberal government, there is a freedom that is being taken from us, every single time.

[Online Streaming Act, February 28th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, everybody knows the propaganda system that comes out of Russia. That was not part of my speech. I do not disagree that it is full of propaganda.

My point is that every time the Liberal government brings a bill forward, every single time, it borders on a Communist-type policy. It borders on it every single time. The Liberals are trying to take away what we can see online, what we can read online, where we can shop and who can advertise to sell us something online. It is clear that the government does not want the people of Canada to think for themselves about their own content.

[Online Streaming Act, February 28th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am very excited to speak to the bill today.

In the last couple of minutes, I heard the words “misinformation” and “disinformation”. In our own society, it seems like information put out there by the woke society is good information, but if somebody has a difference of opinion, it is horrible information.

I want to give an example from my own province of New Brunswick, where this is prevalent. When I was an MLA from 2010 to just last summer, there were two major projects in New Brunswick. One was the Energy East pipeline and the other was a natural gas project. At the time, natural gas did not get widespread support and it ended badly: We never developed the industry. With the Energy East pipeline, we could not get support from the Province of Quebec at the time, for whatever reason, and that project did not happen either.

If we look at what is happening around the world today, it would be misinformation to tell Canadians, particularly New Brunswickers, that those two projects were not worthy. We can see what is happening in the world today, and if we look at the energy sector around the world, New Brunswick is very well positioned in its gas industry to have a pipeline sent from Alberta to both New Brunswick and Montreal. These would have been very good projects. However, we are not going to hear that from the Liberal Party of Canada. We are also not going to hear it from the Green Party of Canada. We cannot have it both ways.

What do we see here today? The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is at stake. I am not a lawyer, so I will speak about this in general terms that are understandable. Subsection 2(b) of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms says:

freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression...freedom of the press and other media of communication

This subsection guarantees us all the liberty to express ourselves without reserve or coercion from the state. That is a core principle of our constitutional heritage in this country. Although it was embedded in the charter in 1982 by the Prime Minister's own father, it goes back hundreds of years through the English liberty this parliamentary system transmitted from one generation to the next. As Sir Winston Churchill said, “Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”

We see that in this country. I understand the precedent of a war and how that is the biggest issue of our time, but in this country, all too often the woke community can go out and spew what it likes, drive it down everybody's throat and then try to compare us to American politicians, which could not be any further from the truth. That is an example of misinformation and disinformation.

This bill seeks to take away that right and those freedoms. Do not take my word for it. I can quote directly from one of at least two former commissioners of the regulatory body that would be empowered under this bill to control Internet content. Peter Menzies described the bill as an assault on freedom of expression. Another former CRTC member explained that it would allow political appointees to determine what we see and what we say on the Internet. Senator and great writer David Adams Richards, from my home community of Miramichi, said something along the lines of it being like a knife through the heart of the freedom of expression we enjoy in this country. These are quality names and very well known individuals who have some very strong points on this topic.

I forgot to mention that I am splitting my time with the member of Parliament for Haldimand—Norfolk.

There is a lot we do not know about this bill because numerous of its amendments were voted on before they were even made public to the committee. The Liberals want a series of bureaucrats, unnamed, unelected and unknown, to decide what Canadian content is heard and not heard.

I will give the example of mainstream media. Mainstream Canadian media often runs American political content without Canadian content. It gives a strangely outward and seriously biased opinion on the content and feeds it to the Canadian public without any local content, and it includes its opinion each and every time. However, we pay for this as Canadian taxpayers. Long gone are the days when media put out the facts and let the public decide what was right, what was wrong, what was Liberal, what was Conservative. The public used to determine these things of their own accord. As a country, we got along better then, and we need to somehow get back to that.

Another example is a community association in a Canadian neighbourhood telling us about local food drives. It is in a Canadian neighbourhood, it has a Canadian author, it has a Canadian story, it is a Canadian initiative in a Canadian city and it is read almost exclusively by Canadian readers, yet it would not be considered, presumably, Canadian content and therefore would be demoted.

That is just the daily pedestrian content we get online. What about the more conscientious stuff? The government is going to decide what kinds of political views are Canadian. Of course, endorsing the Prime Minister's left-wing agenda and his ideology will be a prerequisite of Canadiana. We can be sure of that. Liberal Party members have effectively been saying for generations that they and only they represent Canadian values and, therefore, that only the values they espouse would be considered Canadian for the purpose of this act alone.

Not only can the Liberals not tell us what content would be acceptable and what would not, but they cannot tell us who would be subjected to the bill. Originally, they had an explicit exemption for users, the everyday Joe and Jane who post stuff online. It is called user-generated content. The justice department said not to worry, that the bill would not affect any of them because there is a very specific exemption that excludes them. However, the Liberals showed up at committee and, all of a sudden and just like that, here we go again. It is another example of a government that cannot be trusted.

What is the issue here? The Liberal government has introduced Bill C-11, formerly Bill C-10. Last year, the Liberals passed Bill C-10 in the House of Commons without allowing a full debate at the heritage committee to address many outstanding concerns from experts and parliamentarians on how that legislation would affect Canadian rights and freedoms on the Internet. Canada's Conservatives support creating a level playing field between large foreign streaming services and Canadian broadcasters while protecting the individual rights and freedoms of all Canadians. Canada is home to many world-class writers, actors, composers, musicians, artists and creators. Creators need rules that do not hold back their ability to be Canadian and have global successes. Earlier I gave an example of Senator David Adams Richards, a well-renowned writer from Miramichi.

This bill is a near copy of the Liberals' deeply flawed Bill C-10, and it fails to address the serious concerns raised by experts and Canadians. While the government claims there is now an exemption for user-generated content, the legislation would allow the CRTC to regulate any content that generates revenue directly. People need to be free to see anything that is available so they can make their own decisions for themselves, a liberty we have in this country, on what is important, what is right, what is wrong, what is just and unjust and what the facts are.

Now more than ever, Canadians need to know that their freedom is their own, that it does not belong to politicians, bureaucrats and judges, that it belongs to each of us and that on this founding principle, people can feel free. Freedom is paramount. It is the one liberty we all want and need, and each of us is prepared to fight for it, especially those in the Conservative Party of Canada.

[Emergencies Act, February 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, what we are seeing here is what I was trying to say earlier, and it goes to the very question I am being asked right now. A prime minister who is reasonable would reach out to the organizers and attempt to have a conversation so that common ground could potentially be found. Other jurisdictions were already loosening mandates. We would not have been different from any of those jurisdictions in the free world. The difference here was that the Prime Minister, as he did in the WE scandal, hid in the cottage; as he did in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, hid in the cottage; as he did in the blackface scandal, hid in—

[Emergencies Act, February 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question from the hon. member opposite. For full disclosure, the Americans are my friends too. That was part of my story.

What I will say today is that I never met with extremists. The government is trying to make this question into an issue a liberal agenda versus a far right wing agenda. It is not. This is about whether or not Canada wants to be similar to a communist state. This is not about liberalism anymore. I went to a liberal arts university. These are communist, socialist agendas.

I met with a transport truck driver who provides for his family. The member may have trouble with Fox News, but she is voting for the censorship bill that is trying to censor what Canadians can see online and what they can write online.

[Emergencies Act, February 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to remind the member opposite that when this issue started, the Prime Minister did not act in a reasonable, measurable, responsible manner, as the Prime Minister of our country. Think of Chrétien, Harper and Mulroney. Think of the people from our past who would have reached out to those dissenting voices. They might have broken bread. They may have shared a coffee and they may have had a disagreement, but they would have put in an effort to reach common ground. I believe this would have been over at least two and a half weeks ago.

[Emergencies Act, February 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, it is certainly a privilege today to speak on behalf of the people of Miramichi—Grand Lake.

After 14 years of life in politics, this speech kept me up at night. It caused me to consider so many different angles of what is truly happening. It took me back to some travelling I did as a young adult. I travelled extensively in Italy and France, I lived in South Korea for a time, and I stayed in Rome for one month.

While in Rome, I studied ancient history. We learned about the Emperor Nero. We learned about how, when Rome was burning in the year 64, he let the city go up in a blaze. Historians often pondered whether he played the fiddle while it was burning because he wanted to create a new palace amid the ashes. He blamed it on a small fringe minority of people called Christians. I learned that in ancient history.

In the afternoon on that study trip, we studied modern Italy. I learned about how the Italians were so thankful to Canadians for being liberated during World War II. I attended a ceremony in Thierville, Normandy in 2011, and spoke on behalf of the Province of New Brunswick. I witnessed the tears in real time of the people who lived in Juno, of the first houses liberated, and the respect they have for Canadians to this very day.

When I lived in South Korea, I was walking down the street late one night. I believe there was a 12-hour difference, and I was calling home. In the street, a drunken old man cursed me out because he did not like the sound of my voice. I was speaking English. What I realized later is that he thought I was American.

Some friends of mine who are Korean walked up to the man. They told him to be kind to me and that I was Canadian. I did not understand the language they were speaking. The old fellow, who could barely walk as he was intoxicated, walked up to me and kissed me on the cheek. He called me a oegug-in, which is a Canadian to a South Korean, and thanked me in his language for what our ancestors and veterans did in the Korean conflict. It is not lost on me, the respect our country has around the world and how we achieved it.

The question here today is an important one. We all believe in freedom. We all know how we achieved it. We have to ascertain what it means to each and every one of us. If people are listening in Miramichi—Grand Lake and watching today, I want to tell them that there is a difference between an emergency and an invocation of the Emergencies Act.

The act used to be called the War Measures Act. It was brought in during World War I and World War II. It was also brought in by then prime minister Trudeau in 1970, in what then leader of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, called basically a gargantuan oversight by an inept government.

This is the fourth time in our history. Now it is under the new name of the Emergencies Act. I need members to realize this act was not brought in for 9/11 under Prime Minister Chrétien. It was not brought in when Allan Legere, a serial killer, terrorized and horrified Miramichiers on a murdering rampage nobody in my community will ever forget. It was not brought in for the natural shale gas demonstrations on Route 11, which saw millions of dollars of seismic equipment destroyed and eight police cruisers bombed with molotov cocktails, while the people who managed the protest stood there with machine guns. When the RCMP was called to make it end, it ended abruptly. It did not end with what we used to call the War Measures Act. It did not end with what we now call the Emergencies Act.

The fact is that I am vaccinated, as are my wife and kids. Many people I know are vaccinated, and many people I know are not vaccinated. I believe it is a personal choice to be vaccinated, and I do not believe the leader of the nation should vilify those who have made the personal choice not to be. I do not believe in that. I could never believe in that.

For those following at home, today's speech is not about vaccinations. It is not even about mandates anymore. It is about whether we bring the Emergencies Act in to move protesters: dissenters of the Canadian public. I wonder about my own security. I walked through that every night for 14 days, in the dark and alone in temperatures of 20° to 30° below zero, without anyone escorting me. If this was a national crisis, who was protecting me?

The only way to find a cab was through those unlawful people, as mainstream media would have us believe. They asked me if I wanted a cheeseburger. One of them asked me if I wanted to dance. I cannot make this stuff up. One does not have to agree with the protest. One does not have to agree with why they are doing it, but one needs to see that when bridges and rail routes and trade routes were blocked, the blockages were removed almost instantly.

How did that happen? How did all of these other issues that happened in our jurisdiction get solved? They got solved by decency. They got solved by prime ministers who did not run and hide inside their own houses while their country was in turmoil because of a crisis started by the Prime Minister himself.

If my constituents are wondering about this, I did not run home to hide. I was one of the first members of Parliament to walk up to a transport and talk to some truck drivers. They were from Alberta. It was Saturday, January 29, before the convoy even hit Parliament Hill. Most of them were vaccinated. They were protesting for freedom. They believed their freedoms were being taken away.

How did sitting on the back of a flatbed with a few truck drivers make me a racist, misogynist member of Parliament? How did the member for Thornhill, whose family experienced the Holocaust, get called a racist and a sympathizer?

The Government of Canada has been labelling Canadians for many, many months. The Prime Minister has traumatized Canadians by using divisive language, using constant wedge issues, resulting in the outright stigmatization of the Canadian identity, and the Prime Minister will not apologize for the labelling that he has done. He has hurled insults at everybody who disagrees with him.

The Prime Minister has used the following language and expressions to further traumatize Canadian citizens: These people. Unacceptable people. People who hold unacceptable views. Racists. Bigots. Terrorists. Misogynists, and people that take up space. People that take up space? I would like to think that all of us are allowed to take up a little bit of space in this country that we call Canada. The Prime Minister must wear the blame.

I want to leave colleagues with something. We must value and uphold freedom of speech and the diversity of opinions. We all have a relative in our past who fought for the freedom we share today. They sacrificed for the right to have different opinions from government and to live free in that perspective. Dissenting voices are part of our democracy.

I leave colleagues with the following. I am against the Emergencies Act because it is an overreach. Freezing bank accounts is something they do in communist states. This is a verse from the Bible, Philippians 2, verse 3-4:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

This is the Canadian way. To the world, Canada has always been a nation of peace and justice. It is time we witnessed that again while we are here at home.

[Health Care Transfers, February 9th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, the pandemic has underscored the current state of health care in Canada. Our health care institutions are overwhelmed. Massive gaps have been detected. There are shortfalls, and the entire system is on the brink of collapse. Intensive care units are consistently filled with patients. Surgeries and procedures have been delayed, and staff are completely exhausted.

On February 4, Canada's premiers came together and called on the Prime Minister for help, requesting an unconditional $28-billion boost to health care transfers.

Earlier this week at finance committee, we uncovered $70 billion in new spending, yet none of it for federal health care transfers. Some economists were suggesting any new money should be directed at health care federal transfers.

We know two things about the Liberal government: The Liberals love to spend money, but refuse to listen to Canadians. Will they listen to Canada's premiers?

[Economic and Fiscal Update Implementation Act, 2021, February 3rd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, with the COVID-19 measures, the government has continued to lock down. With testing, the rollout of vaccinations and PCR tests, a lot of things were late and a lot of things were in short supply. The N95 masks, which were supposed to be the best masks, were in short supply. Yes, I think the government could have managed COVID a lot better in terms of our health care system.