Scott Reid

[Season's Greetings, December 17th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker,

T'is the week before Christmas, and all through this House
MPs dream of returning to home, hearth and spouse
Our stockings are hung by our chimneys with care
But what of the homeless? Who put them out there?
There's fingers to point and random people to blame
But, mostly, I think of one person I'd name
And that's Rideau Cottage's middle-aged Swifty
Who, through taxes, inflation and budgets unthrifty
Has crushed housing starts and caused rents to double.
Perhaps, in the end, he's one source of our trouble?
His modest proposal to ease Canada's pain
Reads like Jonathan Swift: no more tax on champagne!
But, what if instead we stopped taxing new houses
Might that build more homes for our kids and their spouses?
If housing officials weren't paid to say “No”
Would that cause the supply of housing to grow?
If that can be true, then of hope there's a token
That Canada soon will be much less broken.

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. If you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to let this member go on and on forever. With such wisdom dispensed from his lips with every word he says, surely we can cancel our Christmas holidays to enjoy the pearls of wisdom that he continues to drop upon us—

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary offered his opinion as to what the only problem in the House is. I want to ask my hon. colleague whether he would agree with me that the problem in the House is that the Prime Minister has emasculated the entire caucus and does not allow anybody to speak except for the one member and the member for Kingston and the Islands, who take up all the time despite having, as any human being would, a limited amount of knowledge.

The situation has resulted, effectively, in the people who know the least saying the most in the House. That is a profound dysfunction within the House currently.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, of course, Doug Ford enthusiastically supported the Prime Minister's restrictions on civil rights, and that was one of the many points on which I have departed from Doug Ford.

However, I will point out that I do not love Doug Ford. Nobody who knows me thinks I love Doug Ford. If members were to go online to google “Doug Ford, Scott Reid, Stalin”, they would find a reference to me comparing him to Stalin for the way he treated a member of his caucus when tossing him out. Doug Ford is no fan of mine. I have told the provincial party that it will start getting donations from me again when Doug Ford leaves as premier, and I am happy to say that in the House of Commons.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the hon. member for his kind words. Likewise, one of the highlights of my career was working on the parliamentary Special Committee on Electoral Reform, which this member chaired. He did an extraordinary job with what, I have to say, was a very difficult file. We do not often get the chance to say nice things about each other. I actually do think highly of most colleagues, both those who are presently here and those, like Joe Comartin, who have left. We have had many extraordinary people pass through, and I have been very fortunate to have been able to serve with so many.

However, the obvious thought here is that, in the example provided, with the purpose being that the documents were to be given to an external group, such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I think that would be very unwise. What would happen here is that they would be given to the Parliamentary Law Clerk, who would then go through them and make independent judgments about them.

The purpose of doing that would not be merely to facilitate prosecution. In fact, I do not think that is the primary purpose at all. It would be to make sure that the potential for prosecution does not serve to hide the fact that there are other things going on, which may or may not be illegal, but that are outside of what Canadians expect to have with regard to the governance of their money.

We all understand that mere compliance with the law is insufficient in a government. It has to go beyond and try to match up with the various other rules and codes, such as the ethics code, which we have to sign on to, and the conflict of interest code, for which office holders have a separate code that is more restrictive. There are also other rules and norms in place, the very conventions that we have here, that are only partly written down. The practices are themselves norms that are not enforceable by law. They are enforceable by public opinion. Depriving the public of the ability to see relevant documentation is the concern that I have here.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member's intervention gives me the opportunity to make another point. I did talk about the election in 2000 when only two members of my party were elected in Ontario. That was an election where 98 out of 102 ridings in Ontario had members who were elected for the Liberal Party. The other riding was the one that the member currently holds, and it was Joe Comartin, who was a great member.

The answer is that I do not know about the details of this, and I am not my party's spokesman on this matter. I will look into this and try to find out more. Although, as I say, I know nothing, I guess that, if it is back-to-work legislation, we would wind up dealing with that legislation here in the next 24 hours, or however long.

Fortunately, my riding is close to Ottawa, so I am just driving back and forth, but for those who would have to cancel travel plans to be with their families, I am sad about that.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, was that actually a point of order? That was not a point of order. I think that just made my point, did it not? I am thankful the member for Winnipeg North just made my point for me.

No, I did not hear about this until now. I have a policy when I am dealing with the media that I never comment on an issue to the first person who tells me about it. I want to go back to find out more. Once these questions are over, I am going to scoot back into the back to find out more about what the minister is up to.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. He has demonstrated that it is possible to be brief in one's comments, a lesson that the member for Winnipeg North would do well to remember for the future.

Since this is the first I have heard of this, I think it will be necessary—

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg North is, of course, interrupting, as he always does. I do not know if a speech ever gets made in the House that does not involve an interruption from him, whose word count is already far greater than that of the rest of us. He really ought to wait his turn. Let us see if he can do that for the rest of this day as a special test, as a Christmas gift to all of us. That would be so awesome.

When I am working here, and I am trying to get work done, I listen to music on my iPhone. I put in earbuds to drown out the endless drone from that member because he is like a black hole for ideas. Any useful thought that comes out of anybody's brain just vanishes into this behind-the-event horizon.

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, do civil liberties count as a metric? Does freedom count as a metric? Does someone's ability to be with their loved ones when they are dying count as a metric? If they do, then we were terrible.

Not all of that was the fault of the federal government. It was the fault of—