James Bezan

[National Defence, March 26th, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister is busy grandstanding once again, bragging about how much he is spending on defence, but it is all just an illusion. He stood up a new agency, hired more bureaucrats and created a taxpayer-funded bank. He is issuing massive corporate subsidies to large defence contractors and enriching Liberal insiders. Meanwhile, Canada has only 300 troops defending the Arctic, and half our equipment is unusable. We do not even have new fighter jets or anyone who can actually fly them.

Why is the Prime Minister wasting money on backroom bureaucrats and corporate insiders instead of giving our frontline troops the equipment they need?

[Respecting Families of Murdered and Brutalized Persons Act, March 24th, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford for bringing forward Bill C-235, the respecting families of murdered and brutalized persons act, which would amend the Criminal Code.

The bill is about putting victims' rights first. It would do that through amendments to the Criminal Code, which, as was already articulated very well by our shadow minister for justice, the member for Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, would increase the parole ineligibility that a jury can recommend to a judge for people convicted of committing the most heinous of crimes, to anywhere from 25 years up to 40 years. The discretionary powers would be given to the judge, who could also take into consideration the offender's character, the nature of the crime and the jury's recommendation to impose the same 25 to 40 years of parole ineligibility at the time of sentencing.

It is important we talk about the fact that this bill is not about increasing stiffer penalties for these sadistic murderers. We are talking about the most depraved of society. We are talking about those who kidnap, rape and kill the most vulnerable, such as children, women and often the elderly. Those who commit some of the most heinous acts are those we are targeting through this bill.

The bill is about saving the families of the victims from having to go through the agony of attending these unnecessary and traumatic parole hearings. We have to remember that somebody who is serving a life sentence of up to 25 years can start applying for parole at year 23. Often, these individuals, who have been incarcerated for committing the most despicable acts of abduction, sexual assault and murder, use this as a way to feed their own depravity by having the families come in, seeing them face to face and having them live through the trauma of what happened. The bill would give the jury and judges the power to make the decision, as defined by the charter and as respected under our common law, to determine whether to give 25 to 40 years of parole ineligibility.

I originally drafted this bill back in 2013, when it was tabled as Bill C-478 in the 41st Parliament. Later that year, in 2013, I was promoted to parliamentary secretary, so I was not allowed to carry forward the bill. It was dropped and was then picked up by one of our former colleagues, Colin Mayes, a former British Columbia member of Parliament, as Bill C-587. It passed second reading and was supported by the Liberals, the NDP and some independents, along with the Conservatives, on September 24, 2014.

In 2016, I reintroduced the bill as Bill C-266 after the election, and it passed second reading on May 16, 2019. Again, the Conservatives and the Liberals supported it. That bill made it through committee and came out in 2019, but of course in 2019 we had another election, so it was lost.

In 2021, it was retabled as Bill C-267 by the member for Stormont—Dundas—Glengarry and was also presented simultaneously at that time in the Senate by then senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu, as Bill S-224.

In the 44th Parliament, in 2022, I retabled this bill as Bill C-296, but it was way down on the Order Paper and of course never made it through. In this Parliament, here in the first draw, I am glad to see that my friend from Cowichan—Malahat—Langford has picked up this bill and is running forward with it, with some very personal experiences on this as well from people in his riding who have been impacted.

I want to talk about the nexus of why I did this. Back in 2009 and 2010, we were hearing about the terrible abduction, rape and murder of Tori Stafford. In 2010, Terri-Lynne McClintic was arrested and prosecuted. Then Michael Rafferty, her partner in crime for this horrendous and disgusting act, was sentenced in 2012.

During this time, while I think all of our hearts were breaking listening to this story as it played out on the airwaves, Clifford Olson was dying from cancer in prison. I heard Sharon Rosenfeldt talk on the radio about how the murderer, who killed a number of children, impacted them. When he was getting ready for parole board hearings, he would send letters to the families of the victims and describe in detail how he tortured, raped and killed their children.

It is because of that sadistic behaviour, the tormenting of families and the use of parole board hearings to feed his own sick appetite, that it became clear that we had to do something to protect the families. I knew full well that both Michael Rafferty and Terry-Lynne McClintic were going to be eligible for parole sometime around 2033 because they killed Tori Stafford.

I believe that all Canadians would consider it unacceptable that families have to go through this ongoing saga of parole board hearings every couple of years and that these monsters who stole their loved ones and killed them sadistically continue to have the opportunity to retraumatize the families.

There have been a number of legal arguments about increasing parole ineligibility, consecutive sentencing and the like. I can say that this bill was fashioned after Bill C-48 in the 40th Parliament, the protecting Canadians by ending sentence discounts for multiple murders act, as well as Bill S-6 from the 40th Parliament, which also provided parole ineligibility at the discretion of the courts, and that is charter compliant.

I want to read into the record some of the quotes that we have heard over the years.

Susan Ashley, whose sister Linda Bright was murdered in 1978 by Donald Armstrong, said, about the parole board hearings in the past, “My heart breaks having to live through this again. My heart breaks having to watch my Mom and Dad drag up their thoughts and pain from that deep place inside them where they tuck their hurt away”.

She did an interview in the London Free Press back in 2012. Susan stated, referring to Donald Armstrong, “He cannot be fixed. And to put him in the community, it's a public risk to any woman that he can have access to. My family and myself, we really don't want to see another family victimized like we were. It's a terrible thing to have to endure, it's a lifetime of pain and suffering.”

Linda's mother, Margaret, said during her victim impact statement, “This is not fair. We should not have to relive our tragedy. When I remember my daughter, let me remember her as a little girl. Don't make me think about the other awful time in 1978.... Let me tell you this has been the most difficult thing I've had to do in the last 20 years”.

Gary Rosenfeldt, Sharon Rosenfeldt's husband, who was a stepfather to Daryn Johnsrude, said publicly, after going through a number of parole hearings against Clifford Olsen in 1997, 2006 and 2010, when there was still the faint hope clause: “What's really horrendous about this...is this is only the beginning. We're going to have to do this every two years as long as Olson lives. And this is a very painful experience for myself, my family.”

Darlene Prioriello was abducted, raped, mutilated and murdered by David James Dobson back in 1982. Darlene's sister, Terri, said this about having to go through these unnecessary, repetitive and painful parole board hearings: “Families have already been victimized once. They shouldn't have to be victimized every two years. Having to face a loved one's killer and to read what he did to her and how her death has affected our lives is something nobody should ever have to do once, never mind twice.” In the Toronto Star, in talking about her mother reading her victim impact statement, she said, “I listened to her read it and it was like she was burying Dolly all over again. It was so upsetting for Mom. She cried. Families shouldn't have to go through this all over again.”

Yvonne Harvey of the Canadian Parents of Murdered Children said, “Although I have not personally faced the ordeal of a parole hearing, I have spoken to many individuals who have. I am certain that the primary intent of this bill, to spare the families of victims from having to attend unnecessary parole hearings, would be most welcomed.”

I ask that all members of the House allow this bill to get to committee so that we can stop the revictimization of families by these monsters who are convicted and will never qualify for parole.

[The Economy, March 24th, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are failing Canadian workers, farmers and businesses. The Prime Minister promised he would have a trade deal done nine months ago, but we are still waiting. He is not even willing to sit at the negotiating table. While he dithers and delays, Canada has lost over 100,000 jobs in the first two months of this year alone. Our economy is shrinking. We have the second-highest unemployment, the highest household debt and the highest food inflation in the G7.

If the Prime Minister is looking for someone to blame, all he needs to do is look in the mirror. His government is running the biggest deficit in history and blocking growth with anti-energy laws. It added more bureaucratic red tape to construction projects and imposed an industrial carbon tax that punishes Canadian farmers and manufacturers. All this Liberal mismanagement results in our economy shrinking, jobs disappearing and our national debt rapidly growing out of control.

If the Prime Minister will not take blame, will he just get out of the way so Canadians can get back to work?

[Combatting Hate Act, March 23rd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that clarification from the member for Waterloo, because we are talking about report stage. We are talking about the amendments that were made, and that it is repealing section 319(3.1) and 3(b) of the act, which is the area that provides—

[Combatting Hate Act, March 23rd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, that was dealt with through unanimous consent, but we are not debating just the short title. That has been dealt with. What we are talking about is how the Liberals, on page two, would repeal paragraph 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code—

[Combatting Hate Act, March 23rd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from London for the hard work he has been doing in talking to Canadians across this country to ensure that they understand what is happening in the House.

When I talk to constituents and people from across the province, they are not aware of Bill C-9. If we were not out there speaking about it and if we were not out there communicating via email and social media, and making sure that we were posting online, they would not know about it. That is the only way for people to understand that their religious freedom and civil liberties are eroding because of the Liberals.

The great danger in any country is when a government starts to take small bites out of our civil liberties. At the end of it, we are left with nothing.

[Combatting Hate Act, March 23rd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am looking forward to the match between the member for Winnipeg North and the shadow minister of justice. My money is on the member for Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, and I am laying it down. It is going to be no contest. I can see the member for Winnipeg North screaming “uncle” halfway through the first round. I am very much looking forward to it.

The Liberals are using every play in their little dirty book of procedure to try to shut down debate in the House. They are trying to undermine our democratic right to come in here to speak and represent all Canadians, and they are busy trying to attack religious freedom across this country.

[Combatting Hate Act, March 23rd, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, if the member for Winnipeg North would hush down, I would be more than happy to intercede on the amendments at report stage of Bill C-9.

As I previously stood up during debate on the closure motion on Bill C-9, I want to reiterate that here we have a government that is bringing in a bill and amendments under the guise of hate speech that are actually an attack on our civil liberties and on our charter freedom of religion. We know that the Liberals are now censoring debate by bringing this closure motion. We only get today in the House on Bill C-9 amendments, and then they are forcing us to vote. They are going to force the bill to a final vote on Wednesday.

This is just the modus operandi of the Liberals. When they want to ram something through, when they want to creep into our lives and erode our civil liberties, they bring in closure, they force a vote and they get their way at the end of the day. That is not democracy. That is not parliamentary procedure. It undermines our country and the freedoms we enjoy.

We know that Bill C-9 came in to address the issues of the imam in Montreal, Adil Charkaoui, who said on October 28, 2023, that he denounced all Zionist aggressors, and he called on Allah to kill the enemies of the people of Gaza and spare none of them.

That in itself comes down to anti-Semitism. It was hate. He should have been charged for it, but the RCMP and the investigators decided they were not going to charge him. They did not believe, because there was reasonable doubt, that there was enough evidence to proceed to charge him under sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits public incitement to hatred against anyone, and identifiable groups. He used the term “Zionist”, and that is not really religious, but we know he was talking about the Jewish people. It is despicable that he would even suggest that.

Christina Van Geyn wrote an opinion piece in the National Post that states, “One may argue that ‘Zionist’ was just code for ‘Jews.’...But the decision not to charge Charkaoui turned on the basic threshold of incitement to hatred, not on the religious defence.”

The problem the Liberals have in this situation is that it was the prosecutors and the RCMP who decided not to investigate, rather than addressing the real issue of going after it, instead of bringing in Bill C-9, which is just a ruse to undermine our civil liberties, including freedom of religion, freedom of conscience and freedom of expression.

We asked the government to split Bill C-9 into two parts. There are sections in the bill we do want to support, because we all want to stop hate speech. We want to stop the crime that is taking place around this country. Again, though, the Liberals are just ramming this through.

In the dying hours at the justice committee when it was studying Bill C-9 in its original form, the former chair of the committee, who is now the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, the member of Parliament for Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, stated from the chair, using his prerogative, “As despicable and as unlawful as the statements made by Mr. Charkaoui are”, and he said that maybe they needed to go into the good-faith argument a bit more. Then he stated, “In Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Romans, there are passages with clear hatred.... Clearly, there are situations in these texts where statements are hateful. They should not be used to invoke...or be a defence.”

That is when, all of a sudden, we got this amendment out of nowhere that would take away from the Criminal Code the religious exemptions to ensure protection for those people who are at the pulpit reading the ancient texts, scripture from the Bible, the Torah and the Quran. Now the Liberals are saying they are hateful and should not be allowed.

The Liberals are trying to make the argument that they are still protected under the charter. However, decisions made by the Supreme Court over the last 30 or 40 years have said clearly that the guardrails we need with respect to protection of the religious freedoms embedded in the Criminal Code under paragraphs 319(3)(b) and 319(3.1)(b) are required.

The sections they want to take away state, and it is the same in both paragraphs, that “No person shall be convicted of an offence under subsection (2.1)”, which is hate crime speech, “if, in good faith, [the person] expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text”.

They would be removing that, and they are trying to say, “Do not worry about it. It is all still going to be protected under the charter.” It would not be. As I said before, this is being led by the person who is now the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture. He is supposed to be protecting Canadian culture, which includes freedom of religion. He, backed by the Liberal cabinet, the Liberal caucus and the Bloc, is trying to take away the religious freedoms that we have and the exemptions that are granted to protect, particularly, pastors, imams and rabbis who are actually reading and quoting from the Bible, the Koran, the Torah and other religious texts.

There is now a list of almost every religious group and organization in Canada that is opposed to Bill C-9. However, the Liberals say that we should not worry because they are protected under the charter, but they are not.

Again, this a violation of the concept of separation of church and state, which is about keeping government and religion separate from each other. Now the government is trying to step in, and instead of being agnostic as to what faith people want to choose or not choose in Canada, it is now starting to wiggle its way in, inserting the thin edge of the wedge to again divide Canadians on another issue, saying that the church is going to have to take the rules imposed by the government, the state of Canada, on our religious institutions.

Even though we do not have a single law, like other countries have, that says we will separate church and state, there is good reason why we should always keep that separation and the government should not be allowed to dictate what is going to be preached from the pulpit. We do not want to restart what happened under Henry VIII in 1534, when he did not like what the church was saying so he took over the church. He created the Church of England, and today the Crown is still the head of that church.

We also do not want to go down the route of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China, where religion is outlawed, but that is exactly what the government is starting to walk towards. Even though it may be saying it is officially agnostic, or, as in the case of the Communist Party of China, saying that it is officially atheist, what the government is really trying to do is pick the winners and losers and is trying quash anyone who does not subscribe to its ideology.

When we were in government, we started the office of religious freedom. Stephen Harper said at that time that “governments that violate religious freedom are also prone to impose themselves in every other sphere of life.”

We talk about how the Liberals continue to weigh in on the issues, and this is not the first time they have started to dictate how the government wants churches and other religious groups, the synagogues the mosques and other temples, to behave. We witnessed this five or six years ago when they brought in the attestation for the Canada summer jobs program. They said that if someone was preaching certain beliefs from the pulpit, like the protection life, they could not do that or they would not be getting any government money. That was challenged and was walked back the following year.

Now the Liberals are trying to actually take away the Criminal Code section that protects what we say from the pulpit and ensures that it cannot be used against us in a court of law. I would just remind the House what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms says. In the very preamble, it says, “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law”. In section 2 the charter says, “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression”.

This is supported in Supreme Court cases, not the charter, but Criminal Code paragraphs 319(3)(b) and 319(3.1)(b). Both the Supreme Court cases of Big M Drug Mart and of Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay, the city, say that religious neutrality must be maintained and that the government cannot favour or hinder any of that belief.

Everybody should be voting against Bill C-9. Everyone of faith should be very concerned about what the Liberals are trying to do to religious freedom in Canada.

[Government Business No. 6—Proceedings on Bill C-9, March 10th, 2026]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to actually get up to speak to Bill C-9, and here we have a closure motion to censor debate on Bill C-9, which is now going to be used to censor free speech and freedom of expression, as well as freedom of religion by actually outlawing some of our sacred texts in the Bible.

When I look at the charter, it leads off with, “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law”, and in clause 2, it says:

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression

We are talking about actually now making parts of the Bible hate speech. That is what the Liberals have inserted into Bill C-9. We have to stop that if we believe in the Charter of Rights, in freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and if we believe in the “supremacy of God and the rule of law”. I will read from the book of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

I want to ask my colleague for Portage—Lisgar, who eloquently laid out all the dangers around what the Liberals are doing in their amendments to Bill C-9, is this actually more censorship and an attack on our freedom of religion?

[Iran and the Middle East, March 9th, 2026]

Mr. Chair, in the last exchange, the minister said that they are not considering any participation from the standpoint of sending military to the region. At the same time, the Prime Minister said in answer to a question last week, “One can never categorically rule out participation”. As we know, the chief of the defence staff has also said that they are looking at what they could do.

Historically, we have brought motions to the House and voted on whether there will be any deployment of the Canadian Armed Forces. Those forces could be used in supporting those already in the region or to support the Gulf states or other allies in the war against the Iranian regime, but we had votes in the House for Afghanistan in 2006 and 2008, for Libya in 2011, and for Iraq and Syria and the war against ISIS. Even under Justin Trudeau, we had a vote on the Iraq and Syria war in 2016.

Will the minister guarantee that there will be a vote before we send any Canadian Armed Forces into the region to assist our allies? Will he also address the issue of whether the 244 troops currently in the region, in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Egypt and the Golan Heights, are safe, armed and able to protect themselves or just sheltering in place?