Scott Reid

[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—

[Privilege, December 13th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to see you today taking the chair as we begin our proceedings. I think back to the fond memories I have over the past few years. I think, like all of us, I kind of divide my life into the pre-COVID and post-COVID world. The very first time I was able to be away from home as restrictions were gradually being lifted during the immediate aftermath of the COVID lockdowns was when I took a trip to Nova Scotia and spent time in your beautiful constituency. It is really one of the most beautiful places anywhere in the world, and certainly in Canada.

I know that all MPs, if asked, would insist that their riding is the most beautiful in Canada. I would submit that some have a better case than others, but in the same way that every mother truly believes that her baby is the most beautiful ever born, we all have this view of our constituency. However, when we are looking at other constituencies, we can have a more jaundiced eye, and I can say that even the most jaundiced eye would find the beautiful Fundy shore of Nova Scotia to be a place of extraordinary natural cultural beauty and richness.

I am here to join a debate that has now been going on in the House for some time. There have been a series of amendments before the House, subamendments to an amendment to a motion that was made some time ago, and I thought it might be helpful, given how much time has passed, to refresh the memory of the House as to the wording of the amendment. I do this each time I speak to a subamendment, and I thought this morning I would do so in the other official language.

Here is the motion that was moved in the House by the House leader of the official opposition:

That the government's failure of fully providing documents, as ordered by the House on June 10, 2024, be hereby referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs;

Here is the amendment, as amended, of the member for Mégantic—L'Érable:

That the motion be amended by adding the following:

“provided that it be an instruction to the committee:

(a) that the following witnesses be ordered to appear before the committee, separately, for two hours each:

(i) the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry,

(ii) the Clerk of the Privy Council,

(iii) the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who respected the order of the House and deposited unredacted documents,

I could return to that point.

(iv) Paul MacKinnon, the former Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Governance),

(v) the Auditor General of Canada,

(vi) the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,

(vii) the Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada,

(viii) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons,

(ix) the Acting President of Sustainable Development Technology Canada,

(x) a panel consisting of the Board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada; and

(b) that it report back to the House no later than the 30th sitting day following the adoption of this order.”;

Since the motion was moved, and the amendment, there have been several subamendments that have been debated before the House. I was able to speak to one of the other subamendments.

Now we are on a subamendment that has been presented by the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge and seconded by the member for Provencher that suggests that the amendment I just read:

...be amended by adding the following:

“, except that the order for the committee to report back to the House within 30 sitting days shall be discharged if the Speaker has sooner laid upon the table a notice from the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel confirming that all government institutions have fully complied with the order adopted on June 10, 2024, by depositing all of their responsive records in an unredacted form”.

This means, of course, that all of the current proceedings could be suspended if the original House order given in June, to which the main motion refers, were complied with. The government could immediately bring to an end all of it, including the process that would tie up the procedure and House affairs committee for some time, if the government were to instruct its departments to provide the documents in unredacted form. I think it is a very sensible, reasonable subamendment to have made.

I said I would return to:

(iii), the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who respected the order of the House and deposited unredacted documents.

I wanted to return to it to make the point that it is possible to fully comply. Full compliance was achieved by a government agency. It is interesting to note that the agency that did comply is in fact the agency whose responsibility it is to protect privacy rights: the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who, as one can imagine, is punctilious in having an official regard for the importance of keeping matters private.

We have heard, endlessly and volubly, from the few members of the Liberal Party who are allowed to speak on the matter or on any other topic about the ostensibly enormous procedural justice problems that would arise if the documents were submitted, as the House ordered, to the Clerk and the legal counsel. These arguments are, of course, nonsense. I will just restate what is wrong with the arguments: The documents would be submitted not to the view of the general public but to a law clerk who would have the ability to sift through and make sure that nothing is disclosed in a way that would compromise an investigation.

However, we should be clear about this; material is presented all the time to the police that has to be discounted at the time of an investigation if it was improperly acquired. The ways in which evidence is improperly acquired are not likely to conform very closely to the situation we have here. For example, if the police raid someone's house with a warrant in which they are looking for a certain offence, they cannot then go on a fishing expedition and look for other offences while they are in there under the auspices of that warrant. The court issued a warrant that gives them a very limited purview.

If the police entered the house looking for evidence that it is an illegal drug production facility, and while they are there they find some evidence of some greater crime, such as evidence that a murder has taken place, they can use that, but that is different. If they go in looking for the evidence of that drug facility and they find other things, relating to unpaid parking tickets for example, they cannot use that material.

We should be very careful of the procedural arguments being made by the government, and consider them as being inherently suspect. I should note that in general we should be very suspicious of the respect or the lack of respect for procedural justice, for the law, for the rule of law, indeed, for the rule of anything other than the absolute will of the sitting Prime Minister that is displayed by the government.

It is the same government that imposed the Emergencies Act, effectively a kind of martial law, in order to suppress a peaceful demonstration that was happening outside this place. The government demonized the individuals involved in it, who were in fact mostly just hard-working citizens who were put in an impossible position by the government's ruthless and unfair actions towards them. It is a government that attempted, under the Prime Minister, to suspend the entire workings of responsible government for a year and a half.

I can remember coming here in late March 2020, shortly after COVID had been declared a pandemic. We were all in a personal panic, I guess, but we were all told to stay home. Our Prime Minister said, “Go home and stay home.” I can still remember him standing at Rideau Cottage, which is misnamed, by the way. Rideau Cottage, which can be looked up on Wikipedia, where it has its own article, is actually a mansion on the grounds of a 20-acre estate, the grounds of Rideau Hall. The Prime Minister spoke from the front steps of his mansion on his 20-acre estate.

The Prime Minister is a man who, when he got bored of that place, could always take off and go to Harrington Lake, breaking a series of provincial protocols about crossing borders at that time, to stay at Harrington Lake where he has a beautiful farmhouse. I have been there under a previous prime minister; it is gorgeous. It is a private lake up in the mountains. It is spectacular.

The Prime Minister could go from one place to the other. However, he was saying to people who live in a bachelor apartment with no balcony and maybe facing into a light well in the apartment building so they get no natural light, “Go home and stay home”, as if somehow he were their moral superior.

This has been, of course, the theme of the current government: endless virtue signalling about its own moral superiority. At the same time, it is engaging in the most vile practices, such as squandering the country's money and the inheritance of our children; driving up the price of housing to unaffordable levels; and creating a greater disparity of wealth than we have ever seen before, which is getting worse at an increasing pace as the Liberals adopt policy after policy designed to take from the tax base as a whole to transfer to the people who happen to be in positions to take advantage of the various things they are offering.

Almost every service now that has been created under the current government is effectively something that benefits primarily the people who are already well off. A great example is the $10-a-day child care, which is completely unavailable in a rural riding like mine and to anybody who works shift work, who works at night, who lives in a rural area or who lacks the transportation to get their child to the day care.

The child care program basically eliminates the entire working class. It eliminated a lot of people during COVID. I understand their going in to work despite the Prime Minister's injunction for us to stay home, which I regarded as insulting and also as an order that cannot be enforced on members of Parliament, who have a right to come to Parliament.

When I came in, I used to take the O-Train. My wife and I have a place in the west end. The people who were coming in to work during COVID were all the working-class people who did not get a chance to stay home when we were told that coming to work put our life in danger, including the people whom we said were heroes, until later on, during the period of the convoy, the Liberals decided they were zeroes. Those were the people who were on the train; it was very interesting to see.

The mix of people on the train changed in that period. It became a lot less white and a lot more brown because, whether the government wants to say it or not, increasingly with the Liberals' immigration policies there is a clear racial divide. On the one side are people who have the better jobs, the privileged jobs and the jobs that give us access to, among other things, the reliable hours that allow one to take advantage of $10-a-day day care and that also give us higher salaries.

On the other side are the people who do not have that option, who had to keep on working during COVID and who are excluded from programs like $10-a-day day care. Is there some kind of compensation for these people, whereby if they cannot get it, they will get some kind of benefit? No, of course there is not.

Let us look at the carbon tax. The same thing is going on. The carbon tax is designed for the purpose of changing incentives. It is overtly designed for the purpose of re-incentivizing, of making it more painful and expensive to use carbon. What do we mean by carbon? We mean gas or diesel, home heating fuel and the burning of fossil fuels. Well, people who live in a rural area and who drive an older vehicle may not be able to afford to replace it with one of the fabulous new Cybertrucks, one of which I just saw on Parliament Hill for the first time ever in real life yesterday. They look as cool in real life, and as futuristic, as they do in the pictures.

Anyway, I guarantee that truck was not driven by a resident of my riding. I guarantee they cannot afford Cybertrucks or other electric vehicles, and even if they could, the reality is I cannot afford these things. I am paid an MP salary. I looked into getting a purely electric vehicle. I have a hybrid Toyota Highlander. I looked into whether it is possible to get an electric SUV, and the answer is that I cannot. They do not have long enough range to be workable in rural areas.

As such, we created an incentive that punishes people for having gas-burning vehicles, and we punish people who cannot switch because of the nature of where they live. I guess they could sell and come to the city and say that they just give up on living out there. My riding and all ridings in rural Ontario, and Nova Scotia, for that matter, are full of abandoned farms from over the decades as it ceased to be economically viable to live in one place or another, but of course, the people who left those farms, who had cleared the land or whose parents had cleared the land, have lost the value of that asset.

That is being increased by what the government is doing. They come to the city where housing prices and rents have doubled, meaning it is unaffordable. People in my constituency are poorer than the average. We are in the bottom quarter of the Ontario population, but there is a long-term pattern I have seen working here. I have been here a quarter of a century now. When I was first elected on November 27, 2000, there were only two ridings in the province of Ontario that were run by my party, the old Canadian Alliance, mine and that Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, directly to our north. Both are rural areas with lower than average incomes.

Within my old riding of Lanark—Carleton, we had an enormously wealthy area, Kanata, which had, among other things, a billionaire living there. I had the wealthiest suburb in Canada. At the far other end of my riding, I had the poorest municipality, the Lanark Highlands, in the entire province, outside of indigenous areas in northern Ontario. Interestingly enough, the results were that I did worst in the wealthiest areas and best in the poorest areas. The actual lowest-income spot in the entire riding was the only spot where I got more than 50% of the vote at that time.

That is a pattern that has not disappeared. That pattern has replicated itself over and over again, not just in my riding, but across the country. The Liberals are the party of the privileged, the well off, by which I do not necessarily mean that billionaire I was referring to, who made his money in high tech. I am referring to those whose wealth and well-being is the result of what is properly understood as privilege.

We hear a lot of nonsense about privilege. I remember one occasion when I was asking a minister a question about corrections. He rose up to say that the member was asking the question from a position of privilege. I literally have no idea what that sociological academic babble even means, but real privilege is a right that is issued as a licence. It is a licenced right. A driver's licence is a privilege. I cannot just hop in a car and drive. It is not an absolute right. One has to fulfill certain things.

More and more activities are effectively privileged in this society, and privileged to the same people over and over again. The rules are adjusted as necessary to ensure that those people, their friends and their relatives stay at the top, whether it is through adjusting the zoning laws, the housing regulations or the building costs so that, effectively, the housing supply is shrunk, making one group of people, and I am fortunate to be in that group of people who are older and own homes, wealthier at the expense of those who do not, who happen to be younger, more recently arrived in Canada and, typically, browner.

If that seems like a picture of social justice to someone, then they have a very different conception of social justice than I do, but that is the government, and the government has been the opposite of transparent. We have been tied up trying to resolve the issue of getting the government to release documents revealing the depth of the scandal, and it has been willing to allow House business to be held up for over a month while we deal with this. That says a great deal about how much the Liberals are committed to having absolute opacity, a black box of government, under which they can carry on activities that I think do not meet the standards of any decent Canadian.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, December 11th, 2024]

With regard to the cow barn under construction by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) at Joyceville Institution and the dairy research program: (a) what was the original anticipated cost of building a cow barn at the time of the June 2018 announcement, and what was the anticipated cost of building the barn at the time the construction contract was awarded in March 2022; (b) what was the original projected date of barn completion at the time of the start of construction in April 2022, and what is the current projected date of completion of the barn; (c) what is the total amount of spending on the barn construction to date, and what is the total projected cost to achieve full barn completion; (d) beyond the barn construction costs, what is the amount of spending to date on procurement fees, consultancy fees (design, engineering, geotechnical, environmental, etc.), travel and meals, contingencies, project management, contract administration, and dairy equipment and technology for the cow barn since 2018; (e) since 2018, what has been the total amount of spending on renovating the existing barns at Collins Bay Institution as temporary housing for the dairy cows, heifers, and calves;

(f) since 2018, what has been the total amount of spending on animal feed, veterinary care, and carcass removal for the cows in temporary housing; (g) what is the total amount of spending on the acquisition of dairy cows, heifers, and calves since 2018, and of this, what is the total amount paid to the Pen Farm Herd Co-Op specifically; (h) what is the total number of dairy cows, heifers, and calves purchased since 2018, and of this, how many were purchased from the Pen Farm Herd Co-Op specifically; (i) what is the current number of dairy cows owned by the CSC, and what is the projected cost of future livestock acquisitions to begin the dairy research program; (j) what is the current projected date for barn occupation by cows, and what is the current projected start date for dairy operations in the barn;

(k) what specific research will be conducted in the barn, and what amount of quota has been provided for the dairy research; (l) what are the total projected monthly revenues to be generated by the CSC from the dairy research program, broken down by source; (m) what are the total projected monthly expenses for the dairy research program, broken down by source, including staff salaries, veterinary care, feed, waste management, milk transportation, utilities, facility and equipment maintenance, internet fees, licensing, inspections, security and supervision; (n) how many cows will be milked and what volume of milk will be produced when the dairy research program reaches full quota production; (o) by what date does Dairy Farmers of Ontario require the CSC to reach full quota production, and when does the CSC anticipate reaching full quota production; (p) what specific accommodations and changes have been made to the barn design and construction to meet McGill’s research requirements and standards, and what have been the costs of these accommodations and changes to date;

(q) what other accommodations and changes have been made to meet McGill’s research requirements and standards, including renovation of additional facilities at the Joyceville site for dry cows, calves, and equipment isolation sheds, and what have been the costs of these accommodations and changes to date; (r) where will the milk from the CSC’s dairy research program be sold, at what price, and will the milk enter commercial streams sold to the public; (s) how many staff will be employed directly in the cow barn and in which shifts, broken down by CSC staff and McGill staff; (t) how many offenders will be employed directly in the cow research barn; (u) what specific jobs will offenders engage in as part of the dairy research program specifically, and what vocational training and industry trade certifications will be associated with offender participation in the dairy research program specifically;

(v) who are the members of the Animal Care Committee overseeing the dairy research program and what financial compensation, if any, will they receive; (w) what specific measures will be in place to preserve institutional security and privacy, biosecurity, animal welfare, regulatory compliance, and McGill’s good standing with the Canadian Council on Animal Care; (x) what is the volume of the manure lagoon and what is the volume of liquid and solid waste that will be produced by the dairy research program; (y) once complete, what is the projected or estimated market value of the cow barn; and (z) what is the estimated cost of disposal or divestment of the cow barn?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, December 11th, 2024]

With regard to the National Housing Strategy: (a) what funding programs or streams are dedicated to, or include streams or criteria for, rural or remote communities, and how much funding has been allocated for and disbursed by each one, broken down by year; (b) what is the population cap, or analogous constraint, on applications to funding programs or streams dedicated to, or which consider the recipient’s location as, rural or remote communities, broken down by funding program or stream and year; (c) what municipalities, groups, or projects received funding based, in whole or in part, on the location of the recipient being in an area defined as rural or remote, and how much funding was received by each recipient, broken down by year, province, funding program or stream, and rural or remote designation; (d) which municipalities received funding from funds dedicated to rural or remote communities, and how much funding was received by each recipient, broken down by year, province, funding program or stream, and rural or remote designation; (e) which municipalities, which are not designated communities, received funding from funds dedicated to rural or remote communities, and how much funding was received by each recipient, broken down by year, province, funding program or stream, and project or application;

(f) in total, how much funding has been provided through funding programs or streams dedicated to, or which consider the recipient’s location as, rural or remote communities, to municipalities with populations of fewer than 35,000, broken down by year, province, funding program or stream, and recipient; (g) what methods or figures are used to determine or track the number of homeless people in areas or municipalities with populations of fewer than 35,000; (h) how many people were homeless in areas or municipalities with populations of fewer than 35,000, since 2015, broken down by year, province, and municipality or area; (i) what methods or figures are used to determine or track the number of homeless people who are in, or migrate to, urban areas who are from areas or municipalities with populations of fewer than 35,000 and migrated to an urban area due to homelessness; and (j) how many people were homeless in urban areas who are from areas or municipalities with populations of fewer than 35,000 and migrated to an urban area due to homelessness, since 2015, broken down by year, province, urban municipality or area, and originating municipality or area with a population of fewer than 35,000?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, December 11th, 2024]

With regard to the CRA: (a) how many toll-free telephone lines are available for taxpayers to contact the agency, broken down by purpose or business line; (b) what are the toll-free telephone numbers in (a); (c) for callers who call each of the numbers in (b), what has been the average wait time to speak with an agent, for each of the last five years; (d) what percentage of callers to the numbers in (b) received a message that the line was full and they should call back later, for each of the last five years, broken down by month and year; and (e) what percentage of calls to the numbers in (b) were disconnected before an agent could answer, for each of the last five years, broken down by month and year?

[Questions on the Order Paper, December 11th, 2024]

With regard to the Expression of Interest published by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) for the commercial leasing of a building at Joyceville Institution: (a) what is the specific nature of the unidentified “steel clad structure” to be leased under this Expression of Interest; (b) what type of commercial activities does the steel clad structure have the potential to accommodate; (c) how many offenders would the commercial operation be required to employ; (d) what would be the hourly rate paid by the lessee to the CSC per offender hour worked; (e) what would be the hourly rate received by the offender per hour worked; (f) what types of vocational training and industry-approved certification for offenders would the lessee be required to provide; (g) what are the estimated costs of providing security for commercial activities undertaken within the prison, and who will be responsible for these costs;

(h) what scope of work and specific repairs have been identified for the “fit up” to the “as is” buildings that the lessee would be responsible for; (i) what are the current estimated costs for the “fit up” to the “as is” buildings that the lessee would be responsible for; (j) what specific measures will the CSC take to ensure that any commercial activities undertaken on this property will remain cost-neutral to taxpayers; (k) what is the calculated or estimated monthly market rent that would be charged to the lessee; (l) what are the calculated or estimated monthly costs for utilities that would be charged to the lessee; (m) what are the calculated or estimated total monthly expenses for rent, utilities, and cost recovery that would be charged to the lessee; (n) what specific federal, provincial, and municipal regulations and statutes will the lessee be required to comply with; (o) what is the current estimated market value of the steel clad structure;

(p) what is the current estimated market value of the beef stock barn and paddock; (q) what is the current estimated market value of the cattle chute; (r) since 2022, what specific list of maintenance, repairs, and improvements have been conducted by the CSC on the buildings, including any new or upgraded equipment or technologies that have been added to the steel clad structure, beef stock barn and paddock, and cattle chute; (s) since 2022, what funds have been spent on maintenance, repairs, and improvements to the steel clad structure, beef stock barn and paddock, and cattle chute; (t) since 2022, what funds have been spent on utilities, procurement disbursements and fees, consultant fees, travel, inspections, assessments, building condition reports, as well as drafting, translating, and publishing the Expression of Interest for the steel clad structure, beef stock barn, paddock, and cattle chute; and (u) what is the calculated or estimated cost of disposal or divestment of the buildings?

[Syria, December 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I have been a member of Parliament for 24 years. This is the first time I have flipped the bird to anybody.

To correct the member, it was not to the government; it was to the member for Kingston and the Islands, but of course, nobody deserves that, and I withdraw it and apologize to the House.

[Privilege, November 29th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am fascinated by that recent comment, that there might be something in the Leader of the Opposition's past that, if he gets a security clearance, gets to see it and is required to not speak about it, will somehow become public. I do not see how that works.

This is a terrible secret that is known to the Prime Minister, something that is a scandal, something that is terrible. The Prime Minister, who leaks regularly from this classified information, has not shared it with anybody.

What on earth is the member, in his parallel universe, talking about?