Linda Duncan

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, December 10th, 2018]

Madam Chair, I appreciate the concerns that my colleague from Alberta is raising but he seems to be missing the point. That person who is waiting for a treatment bed, even if there are a lot more treatment beds, is still using. Would we not prefer that the person had a safe drug and a safe needle wherever he or she is using the drug?

I would also remind members about “Moms Stop the Harm”. Hundreds of mothers across this country are calling for decriminalization because the majority of their children have gone through treatment and guess what? It is like alcoholism. A person is an alcoholic for life. With opioids, people may go through treatment but they always revert. Therefore, people need access to a safe drug that they can take in a safe place.

I wonder if the member could speak to that.

[Opioid Crisis in Canada, December 10th, 2018]

Mr. Chair, the minister mentioned that she has put in place some measures at the borders. I have worked in the area of training border guards and I know how many federal pieces of legislation they are responsible for checking. Could the minister tell us how many additional resources have been put to train and assist our border officials, particularly on the west coast or anywhere where shipments may be coming in from China, to inspect very carefully for fentanyl and carfentanil to make sure that we are catching every single shipment of these drugs coming into our country?

[Petitions, December 7th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by 2,657 Canadians regarding more sustainable fishing practices in British Columbia.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, December 6th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could be so positive about the success of the application of sustainable development legislation. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development gave an absolute abject failing grade to all the agencies that were reviewed. A lot of her recommendations for greater accountability were rejected by the government. The other place made an attempt to change the bill.

One of the main amendments the commissioner had called for was specific reference in the Sustainable Development Act of the cabinet directive on sustainable development. The reason for that is that this directive would require every department and agency to do an assessment of policy program spending that is submitted to cabinet. One subset of this is the provision the government is refusing to accept from the other place, which was also recommended by our committee.

Bill C-57 is in fact not based on the review by the committee on which I used to sit. It is based on what the minister decided she would do to keep a reduced function of the bill in holding the government accountable for delivering on the sustainable development 2030 goals that our country signed on to.

Could the member speak to why the Liberals are not accepting these broader provisions to hold the government, the departments and agencies accountable for spending and assessing what the impact might be on the broad sustainable development goals?

[The Environment, December 3rd, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, in Paris, the Liberals committed to greenhouse gas reductions that would hold the temperature increase to 1.5°C. Back home, they have stuck to Stephen Harper's targets. In Marrakesh, they called for respect for the rights of indigenous peoples. Back home, they approved major energy projects impacting those rights. In Bonn, at the 11th hour, they committed to a just transition for fossil fuel sector workers, and yet a year later there is nothing budgeted to support Alberta's initiative.

This week, at COP24 in Poland, will the government simply make more promises it has no intention of keeping?

[Committees of the House, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the honour of visiting Skeena—Bulkley Valley, and I know what strong indigenous communities there are there.

I want to share two powerful experiences I have had with indigenous communities. This past summer, I had the honour of travelling with my colleague, who represents northern Saskatchewan, to a very indigenous community, both Métis and Cree I believe. In that gathering and in between, it was not English that was being spoken. I could hear my colleague speaking her language, Dene. It was a beautiful moment, because we are most powerful when we speak our language.

I also want to share that when I went to a gathering of the Dene people in Fort Providence, a small community in Northwest Territories, I lost count of how many interpreters were there. Indigenous communities are used to having interpretation, even among themselves.

I wonder if my colleague can speak further to the absurdity of the suggestion that there would be difficulty in finding interpreters of these beautiful indigenous languages that Canada is grateful to have.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, if ever I heard filler in a speech, that was it. I congratulate the member for Yukon.

Omnibus budget bills were brought forward by the former Harper government and now this. There are a number of issues. It is not just whether the matters may relate to finance or the budget. The Liberals promised in their election campaign three years ago that they would not repeat the omnibus budget bills that Mr. Harper brought forward. Yes, a carbon tax bill may be a financial matter, but it was a massive legislative undertaking that merited review unto itself instead of being thrown into the middle of other financial matters that folks in the finance committee might have wanted to discuss. Rationalizing that this is what omnibus bills are just does not address the problem we have with the sitting government.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his attempts to amend this bill. The government has repeatedly said that we are all in this together, yet when it comes to tabling bills, it rejects every sensible amendment.

Last night, there was an emergency debate in the House on the energy situation particularly being suffered in the province of Alberta. Almost a year ago exactly, in Bonn, Germany, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change committed that she would finally invest some dollars and have a strategy on an energy transition strategy for workers. Here we are about to go to the next COP on climate and nothing has been invested by the Liberal government.

Could the member speak to what the government could have done to invest in helping our workers, including our oil field workers like those of Iron & Earth, who are proud to be oil field workers but would also like to be trained as well so they can move into the energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors. Why has the federal government put nothing in this budget?

[Canada's Oil and Gas Sector, November 28th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member is 100% right. If the Conservative government had not downgraded that process, it probably could have proceeded through a process that was generally considered to be a credible, useful process right around the world. Instead, Conservatives eviscerated the process and they caused all the downturn in the economy.

[Canada's Oil and Gas Sector, November 28th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I thought I was quite clear about that. The federal government has a lot of potential power to save the industry. Liberals are taking a resource that is owned by the people of Alberta and choosing not to refine or upgrade it, which would create a lot more employment for the people of Canada. What are the Liberals going to do? Buy every pipeline, buy every upgrader, buy the bitumen mines? Liberals can use their regulatory power, assert some authority and create some jobs for value added in Canada.