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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was regard.

Last in Parliament September 2021, as Conservative MP for Thornhill (Ontario)

Won his last election, in 2019, with 55% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Main Estimates, 2018-19 June 14th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton West.

Here we are, in the final moments of debate, the penultimate opportunity to speak to the 2018-19 main estimates. I am delighted to have this opportunity. For the benefit of folks looking in from home, the main estimates are supposed to list and outline the resources required by individual departments and agencies for the upcoming fiscal year, in order to deliver the programs for which they are responsible. The main estimates are supposed to be allotments of dollars and cents, many dollars and cents, aligned with specific spending plans, laid out by the government in the budget for the fiscal year.

As we know, budget 2018 was not an economic document. It was a virtue signalling, social engineering, shamelessly pandering, ideologically preoccupied pitch to what one respected national commentator described as “every conceivable Liberal client group and policy cult”.

This year, in budget 2018 the government told Canadians that total government revenues this year, taxes primarily, would amount to about $324 billion. Total expenditures by the government and its agencies and departments would be about $339 billion, leaving the budget in a deficit of more than $18 billion. Let us remember, this major deficit is much more than the modest deficits promised by the Liberals, and that their promise of a balanced budget by next year will also be broken, along with so many of their original 2015 campaign promises.

Getting back to the main estimates and how they are supposed to work, the various spending authorities are called “votes” with the amounts to be included in future appropriation bills that Parliament will be asked to approve to enable the government to proceed with its spending plans. That is the way it is supposed to work.

Members may recall the days when finance ministers explained in detail the planned expenditures to Parliament and to Canadians. Not here, there are scores of unknown and undetailed spending elements in the main estimates for 2018-19. That is why so many of my colleagues have shared with the House and Canadians their concern that the Liberals are changing the rules to suit their own suspect agenda.

Is “suspect” too extreme a characterization? I do not think so. After hearing so many opposition speakers, I am sure the Speaker shares our concerns regarding the unacceptable way the Liberals are trying to hide their spending intentions from Canadians. For example, we have the oft-referenced $7.4-billion example. Vote 40, a $7.4-billion vote, is either an attempt to hide next year's election year goodies funding, like the many million dollars dumped into the Quebec riding facing a by-election in just a very days, or it was a very large contingency fund to cover the President of the Treasury Board's unidentified spending priorities, as set by the direction of the Prime Minister and cabinet to avoid parliamentary oversight.

This $7.4 billion has been quite properly characterized by our shadow finance minister, the member for Carleton, as nothing more than a Liberal election-year slush fund. At committee earlier this month, departments that had received major allotments were unable to give meaningful answers about millions of dollars they were to receive or how the spending of those millions will be reported, if ever at all.

Instead, in something of a puppet show, Treasury Board officials stepped in to offer their answers for the department officials who could not. When it came time at that meeting to ask questions about how the mysterious $7.4 billion apparent slush fund would be spent, the Liberal members of committee walked out. Their abandonment of committee killed quorum, leaving those questions unanswered, as they are still unanswered today.

Among the scores of unanswered questions is another glaring question, which was debated in the House earlier today. That question involves the Liberal refusal to tell Canadians just how much the carbon tax obligations they have downloaded on the provinces to collect will cost the average Canadian family.

The Liberals know the answer. They will not tell us, and they will not tell Canadians. They have provided a document that quite clearly focuses on the potential impact of a carbon price on household consumption expenditures, but when the document comes to key findings, there is a blackout. Most segments of the rest of the document are redacted, hidden behind solid ink black blocks.

Members will recall that under our previous Conservative government, Canada worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by regulation. Even though Canada generates less than 2%, now far less than 2%, of the world's annual emissions, we acknowledged that we would work with the provinces to carefully reduce emissions while at the same time ensuring that we protected the economy, even as we protected the environment, lines that have since been taken by the Liberal minister and reiterated, by rote, in question period almost every day. As a result, our Conservative government was the first in history to achieve tangible, significant reductions of greenhouse gases.

We started with the transportation sector, the largest-emitting sector, and we created, in partnership with the United States, tailpipe regulations, which are reducing car and light-truck emissions and will, by 2025, reduce those emissions by 50%, and which will consume 50% less fuel. We set new regulations for heavy-duty trucks and buses that are seeing emissions from these vehicles, by this year, reduced by up to 23%, which means a saving of up to $8,000 a year for a semi-truck operator driving a newly purchased 2018 model vehicle.

We set marine emission guidelines, began work with the aviation and rail sectors, and then moved on to the next-largest emission sector: coal-fired electricity generating plants. We set emission-reduction regulations, and our former Conservative government imposed a ban on the construction of any new coal-fired units, the first government in the world to implement such a ban.

In every one of those emission-reducing regulations, scientists and economists at Environment Canada conducted a cost-benefit study, and in every one of those situations, we were able to show that the benefits of the regulations outweighed the costs. The regulated sectors and the provinces and the consumers knew what careful, reasonable regulation would cost. That is why we are so concerned by the Liberals' refusal to come clean on the estimated cost to the average Canadian family of their carbon tax.

I would like to end with just a couple of statements by past and present parliamentary budget officers. Former PBO, Kevin Page, said, of the unaccounted billions in the main estimates, “Financial control and ministerial accountability are being undermined.” He said that of the current government and the main estimates and the budget. Mr. Page said, “This is a new low for our appropriation system.”

The current PBO said, “virtually none of the money requested in the new Budget Implementation vote has undergone scrutiny through the standard Treasury Board Submission process.” In effect, the current Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying that the government is getting the money through its majority, without proper scrutiny and accountability to this elected House.

Therefore, we in the official opposition will, in the coming many hours, stand so many times, proudly, to oppose the Liberals' unexplained, undocumented, and unaccounted removal of billions of dollars from the national treasury, to be spent in ways that can only be described as highly suspect in the coming election year.

Foreign Affairs June 14th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' moral equivalence with Israel and its enemies is notorious, and when they had an opportunity to stand against a one-sided motion against Israel at the United Nations yesterday, and in direct contradiction to votes in the House this week, they did it again. The Liberals directed Canada's diplomats to sit on their hands, to abstain from standing with the only democracy in the Middle East.

The Liberals always show up for the annual Walk With Israel, as fair-weather friends would. Why did the Liberals refuse to stand with Israel yesterday?

Employment June 12th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of worthy Canada summer jobs employers were denied funding for thousands of young people this year because they refused to accept the Liberals' imposed values. Now, the Islamic Humanitarian Service of Kitchener ticked the box and funding was personally approved by the Liberal House leader. Well, Sheikh Shafiq Huda of this organization now calls for genocide, the eradication of Israelis, and says, “You will leave in body bags.”

Does the minister not believe those words clearly violate the Liberal values attestation?

Employment June 11th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, thousands of young Canadians have been denied summer jobs because the groups that would have hired them refuse to bow to the Prime Minister's imposed values test. One group that ticked the PM's attestation box is the Islamic Humanitarian Service. At the annual al-Quds' Iranian hatefest at the Ontario legislature, Sheikh Shafiq Hudda, of this same organization, called for genocide, the eradication of Israelis. The minister claimed that the Liberals' imposed values would protect rights. What does she say today?

Impact Assessment Act June 6th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, when we were in government, working responsibly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by regulation, protecting the environment at the same time as being conscious of protecting the economy, Environment Canada scientists and economists did cost-benefit evaluations of every piece of legislation. When we brought in legislation to reduce tailpipe emissions, which was very effective, the benefits were found to outweigh the costs, and we shared that information at committee. When we brought in legislation to phase out any new construction of coal-fired generating stations, we did a cost-benefit estimate and shared those dollar figures with the industry.

Why will the minister not share the cost-benefit studies that we know the department has done with regard to how much the carbon tax will cost the average Canadian family?

Latin American Heritage Month Act June 6th, 2018

[Member spoke in Spanish]

[English]

Madam Speaker, this is yet another opportunity to talk about Latin American heritage month and Bill S-218. Let me acknowledge again the support this bill has received from all sides of the House since it arrived here from the Senate.

This legislation essentially recognizes the many significant contributions to Canada's social, economic, cultural, and political fabric made by Canada's dynamic Latin American community. As I have done on every occasion I have spoken to the bill, I would like to again remind colleagues and those watching on CPAC tonight that this legislation, carefully fashioned by our late colleague, the hon. Senator Tobias Enverga, will I am sure stand as a notable element of his political legacy.

In a moment I will speak of my admiration and unrestrained support for the bill, but first I would like to read just a couple of paragraphs from a speech delivered by Senator Enverga when he spoke at second reading in the other place.

He reminded his colleague that he came to Canada from the Philippines and that he was one of many people now in the Senate who were fortunate enough to be welcomed to Parliament, and to be able to contribute to society. Senator Tobias Enverga pointed out that, “Few countries in the world are as open and accepting to people who come from other countries to settle and make a new life for themselves.” He said, “The Canadian policy of multiculturalism is a great success when it comes to allowing for, and celebrating, the various cultural backgrounds and languages we have”, and share.

The Senator referenced other heritage months that moved him to propose one for Canadians of Latin American descent. He talked about the importance of Black History Month, proclaimed in 1995, and about Asian Heritage Month. He anticipated Italian Heritage Month and Portuguese Heritage Month, both passed into law just last year, and this year we celebrated Jewish Heritage Month.

Before I get to the bill he created, the process and legislation before us today, I will provide a little background on this great Canadian.

Tobias “Jun” Enverga was respected by all for his kindness, warm sense of humour, and his unparalleled work ethic. He was a family man, self-described as surrounded by four lovely women, his daughters Reeza, Rocel, and Rystle, and his wife Rosemer. He was a tireless advocate for people with disabilities. Tobias served as a Catholic School Board trustee in Toronto for years and became known in the Toronto region for launching the Philippine Canadian Charitable Foundation and its fantastic annual Pinoy festival and trade show, which, by the way, is next Saturday at the Toronto Convention Centre. Senator Enverga was also co-chair of the Canada-Philippines Interparliamentary Group, and inaugurated the annual Filipino independence day flag raising on Parliament Hill, which I am sure many members of the House will attend on Monday morning.

During his years at the Senate, Senator Enverga was a member of several standing committees. He participated in a variety of important studies on issues ranging from first nations northern housing to maritime search and rescue operations. Also, and this is very important to remember, Senator Enverga was an executive member of the ParlAmericas group. He invested his energy in forging closer ties with parliamentarians from across Latin America, helping them to strengthen democracy and governance in their countries through political dialogue and parliamentary co-operation. It was his work with ParlAmericas that moved him to propose the bill before us today.

As we know all too well, Senator Enverga passed away Thursday, November 16, while on parliamentary business in Colombia. Despite his tragic and untimely passing, Senator Enverga's Latin American heritage month bill lives on. It was passed in the other place a couple of weeks later and sent to us in the House.

Some of my colleagues in the House may remember that Senator Enverga introduced a bill in the 41st Parliament, Bill S-228, to create a Hispanic heritage month, matching such designations by the Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto. However, that bill was lost on the Order Paper in the election of 2015.

Senator Enverga, after further consultation with members of the public, reconsidered the reintroduction of that legislation and decided instead to change the focus in this bill to “Latin American”, as a geographic and linguistic community, which adds not only the Lusophone and Francophone communities, but also those of the indigenous peoples of the Latin American region. This was not a snap decision. Senator Enverga pondered long and deeply the issues of self-identification of the diverse Latin American community in Canada. He became convinced that a Latin American heritage month would better enhance our understanding of the complexities involved and believed this act would better respect the spirit of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988.

Latin America is of our hemisphere. The region is generally understood to consist of the entire continent of South America, all of Central America, Mexico, and the islands of the Caribbean whose peoples speak a Romance language or have a Romance language among their various official languages.

For the purposes of this bill, Senator Enverga envisioned the widest possible interpretation so Bill S-218 would cover those who identified as Spanish and Portuguese speakers from South America and Central America, as well as those whose heritage was of the Francophone and Hispanic Caribbean Islands.

Using that broad and inclusive measure, we can see that Canadians of Latin American origin can be found far and wide across our great country from coast to coast to coast. In the absence of absolute census numbers covering that broad, and I think members would agree somewhat imprecise measure, we might estimate a possible demographic well above half a million men, women and children.

What we do know is that the Latin American community is one of the fastest-growing cultural groups in Canada today. Statistics Canada reports that between 1996 and 2001, for example, the number of individuals reporting Latin American origins rose by 32%, at a time when the overall Canadian population grew by only 4%.

With respect to actual numbers, the demographers can only estimate that between 600,000 and 1.2 million Latin Americans, again from the broadest possible measure, live among us. These numbers are particularly interesting, given there was only a small Latin American population in Canada before the 1960s. It was in the sixties and seventies that we recorded the first significant migration of Latin Americans to Canada. Unfortunately, in too many cases, their motivation was to escape social and economic turmoil, dictatorships, conflict, and most recently another wave, fleeing Venezuela's corrupt and repressive regimes under, first, Hugo Chavez, and now the brutal Nicolas Maduro. These Latin Americans represented significant loss to the countries they left, but they have been a boon to Canada.

I could speak to the virtues of supporting Bill S-218, a bill to bring Latin American Heritage Month to Canada, but I must stop there. I move:

That, when the order for consideration of Bill S-218, an Act respecting Latin American Heritage Month is next called, the time provided for the consideration of any remaining stage of the bill be extended, pursuant to Standing Order 98(3), by a period not exceeding five consecutive hours.

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns June 5th, 2018

With regard to the event featuring Palestinian Authority Archbishop Atallah Hannah in April 2018, in which the Member of Parliament for Mississauga-Erin Mills provided greetings on behalf of the Prime Minister: (a) did the Prime Minister authorize the greetings; (b) does the Minister of Foreign Affairs agree with the statement given at the event on behalf of the Prime Minister; and (c) if the Member was not speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister or was not authorized to provide the greetings, what disciplinary action or corrective measure has the government taken?

Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71 June 4th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for a very heartfelt question. I understand the pain and suffering of the family and those close to the victims of this shooting.

Conservatives believe in common sense precautions and background checks, even of those who, in some cases, would own possession acquisition licences.

I am not familiar with the circumstances in this particular case, but I do know that the statistics cited by experts at committee, before the committee was cut short from hearing witnesses, overwhelmingly point towards unregistered firearms owners as the problem in Canada with regard to gun crime, and not those holding legally acquired and respected licences.

Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71 June 4th, 2018

Mr. Speaker, there are any number of inconsistencies and contradictions in the answers and explanations offered not only by the public safety minister, but also by some of those on the backbenches of the Liberal government who are trying to make excuses for what is a regulatory bill that takes clear aim at legal, law-abiding, licenced sport shooters, farmers, and hunters. The provisions and contradictions in the bill, the arguments presented by the minister at any number of news conferences, and reflected in the early termination of witnesses before committee show that the government, in fact, has a very difficult time explaining those contradictions in Bill C-71.

Instruction to Committee on Bill C-71 June 4th, 2018

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the motion that would enable the public safety committee to continue its work and to hear witnesses beyond Ottawa and across Canada.

I am pleased as well to speak to the content of Bill C-71, despite the legislative guillotine that has fallen in committee, blocking any further witnesses after barely four two-hour committee meetings, and in the shadow of the time allocation that will almost inevitably be imposed by the Liberal government. As members know, time allocation was imposed five times in barely three days last week, setting a new and unfortunate record for the Liberal government.

I am pleased I have this opportunity to debate this dishonest legislation. I use the word “dishonest” advisedly in the same way the Liberals attempted to impose their version of electoral reform and then abandoned their own legislation when they could not get their way. It is dishonest in the same way the Liberals promised to run modest budget deficits and then threw all caution and fiscal prudence out the window with runaway and ineffective spending.

Bill C-71 is dishonest in the same way as the Liberals' legislation to impose on Canadians a carbon tax, while downloading the responsibility at the same time on the provinces, imposing a carbon tax on Canadians, while refusing to share with Canadians the actual cost of such taxes.

Bill C-71 is dishonest because the Liberals claim that the legislation the government is ramming through the House, without adequate consideration, is in response to increased criminal gun use. However, the legislation is absolutely void of any provisions to actually combat, control or reduce the illegal guns used by gangs and organized crime.

Bill C-71 would target law-abiding Canadian gun owners who already follow regulations to acquire licences for gun purchases and who use them within the law.

Bill C-71 boils down to the Liberals' imposition, again with the tyranny of their majority, of the recreation of an expensive, bureaucratic, and ineffective gun registry by the back door. The claim by the Minister of Public Safety that this is not a backdoor registry is preposterous, it is farcical. The government says it is a public safety bill, but, as I mentioned earlier, it does not deal with threats to public safety as posed by gangbangers or organized crime or even the increasing wave of rural crime.

This is a regulatory bill, a regressive regulatory bill, aimed at already law-abiding citizens. The public safety minister claims that Bill C-71 only requires firearms retailers to keep records of who buys a gun and with which possession acquisition licence. However, that is not true. I would direct the minister to section 58.1 of Bill C-71 for those details, and the mention of the registrar and the references.

With regard to the new requirement under Bill C-71, that the private transfer of firearms between two legally licensed individuals confront bureaucratic hurdles through a yet not costed firearms call centre, we are told it is not a registry because, at this point, a description of the firearm in question and its serial number will not be required. However, a reference number will be generated and registered, and it would only be a short hop to amend the legislation in future to achieve a 100% registry.

I would like to speak on what the public safety minister claims Bill C-71 would do to combat gun crime and the reality of what it would not do.

There is nothing within Bill C-71 to address the 167% increase in gun violence in downtown Toronto this year. There is nothing to address the 162 shootings up to May 28, just last week, that have occurred in Toronto this year, beyond downtown and across the suburbs of Canada's metropolis. If this trend continues, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that it will not, this will be the fourth straight year in Toronto in which the number of shooting victims has increased.

In 2015, Toronto saw 429 shootings. In 2016, there were 581 shootings. In 2017, there were 594 shootings. This year, with 215 people shot to date, the city is on course for another very bad year. There were six shooting homicides in May alone. In fact, these recent numbers will exceed, in fact are approaching double the numbers of Toronto's infamous year of the gun in 2005, when there were 359 shooting victims and 52 died.

Just this morning, a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa, Irvin Waller, was reported by the Toronto Star newspaper as saying that Canadian cities had not prioritized violence prevention. The same can be said about the Liberal government's Bill C-71, which misses the mark so unacceptably. The problem that the Liberal government cannot seem to recognize is that the problem is gun crime, not legal firearms ownership.

Statistics Canada informs us, in the oft-quoted testimony tonight of Gary Mauser, the professor emeritus at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies at Simon Fraser University, that licensed gun owners, those holding possession and acquisition licences, pose virtually no threat to public safety. Professor Mauser told the committee that PAL holders had a homicide rate lower, at less than one PAL holder per 100,000 licensed gun owners, than the national homicide rate. The professor reminded the Standing Committee on Public Safety that there was agreement among criminologists that no substantial evidence existed that legislation restricting access to firearms to the general public was effective in reducing criminal violence.

We will recall that the Minister of Public Safety and a passel of acolytes hosted a so-called summit on guns and gangs, at which they claimed the problem of gun crime was domestic. They claimed the problem was no longer the illegal smuggling of weapons of all sorts from the United States. However, turning to the testimony before committee by Professor Mauser, he said that criminals were not getting their firearms from law-abiding Canadians. It was either by stealing them, as the public safety minister suggested was the case these days, or through what the professor called straw purchases. He said that at the height of the long gun registry, only 9% of firearms involved in homicides were registered. He quoted Statistics Canada again, revealing that only 135 out of 1,485 firearm homicides from 2003 to 2010 involved registered weapons. In other words, barely 3% of the total number of homicides recorded in that period were legally registered firearms.

Professor Mauser said, “All reputable research indicates that gang crime — urban or rural — is driven by smuggled firearms that flow to Canada as part of the illegal drug trade.” He said, again as an academic expert in the field of gun control and firearm law in Canada, “Analyses of guns recovered from criminal activity in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and the Prairie Provinces show that between two-thirds and 90% of these guns involved in violent crime had been smuggled into Canada.”

I return to my original contention that Bill C-71 is dishonest Liberal legislation, as with so many other pieces of legislation that the government has either abandoned or steam-rolled, or attempted to steam-roll, through Parliament. Bill C-71 would impose a back door gun registry on law-abiding citizens, while doing absolutely nothing to address gang gun crime or organized crime.