Karen Vecchio

[Attack in London, Ontario, June 9th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, last night I stood among 10,000 Canadians who came together to grieve, commemorate and address the issues of Islamophobia. Following the horrific attack on a London family this past Sunday, leaders from all levels of government, representing all political parties, came together to honour the Afzaal family: Salman, Madiha, Yumna and Talat. Nine-year-old Fayez remains in the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Together we listened to leaders of the Muslim community. Together we witnessed the number of people impacted by this.

We must end racism. We must end hate. There needs to be hope, and that begins with all of us working together. As a parliamentarian, and after working in federal politics for many years, I have seen an increase of intolerance, and I have seen an increase in the fear. I pledge to work with leaders in our community and in this country to build a stronger, more inclusive society. We should feel proud to be Canadians, but that will come with patience and commitment. It takes more than words.

[Privilege, June 7th, 2021]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the prima facie contempt, concerning the misconduct of the Member for Pontiac committed in the presence of the House, be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

I will be sharing my time with the member for Banff—Airdrie.

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I would ask if the member could, just for one moment, be quiet.

As we know, today has been a very difficult day. We have been working hard for the dignity of democracy and for the free speech of all Canadians. The member is now questioning who we have in the lobby. Recognizing that we do need to have support staff, we are always going to have somebody sitting at the desk in the lobby, which is the appropriate thing to do. We also have a member from the House leader's office who is also assisting me. However, for recognizing that there must be many people there, the member is way off course. All he is trying to do is say that Conservatives do not care about health. That is so not the case.

We are doing our job. We are putting all of the people in place, but the member wants us to go in there and count how many people there are. We are working, and perhaps if the member would care more about what his party is doing and a little less about what we are doing working together, we may have a little better discourse.

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I respect where the gentleman is coming from, but the fact is that it is extraordinarily difficult for one person to measure how many people may be in another room due to hearing voices. I am not going to indicate how many people are in this room, but I can tell members that Liberal voices are very loud in this House of Commons regardless of how many are present.

[Government Response to Petitions, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I would request a recorded division.

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I recognize that this is a very difficult topic, so I would ask that we actually move to statements of the day, go to question period, and then resume this discussion.

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Excuse me. I appreciate that the member for Kingston and the Islands has lots to say and he has spent all of his time here for the last number of weeks. I have not been able to hear my own colleagues because I have heard his voice over these things.

I recognize this is the issue. We went immediately into the 30 minutes of debate before we even had the opportunity to discuss our points of order. This lack of decorum is because the freedom of speech right here, especially what we are seeing in the sections of these amendments, is being quashed and we will continue to fight.

I request, Madam Speaker, that you please deal with the points of order so that we can have decorum in this place. I do believe that it is the right of Canadians.

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, and to all my Conservatives colleagues, the reason we are seeing this lack of decorum today is that we are outraged. We recognize that they are taking the right of Canadians' free speech away in this bill and this is exactly what we are seeing here. They have chosen to move—

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, we will be debating a motion that we do not believe is admissible in the first place. Those are some of the concerns as we are moving forward here.

If we could please have that precedent put forward so that we have an actual authority to move forward, that would be wonderful. I would really like to have the precedent before—

[Points of Order, June 4th, 2021]

Madam Speaker, I want to read from Standing Order 10, “Order and decorum. No appeal”, which states:

The Speaker shall preserve order and decorum, and shall decide questions of order. In deciding a point of order or practice, the Speaker shall state the Standing Order or other authority applicable to the case. No debate shall be permitted on any such decision, and no such decision shall be subject to an appeal to the House.

I just wanted to bring that forward as I believe there is a lot of discussion here today and we would really like to understand why this will be going forward.