Right to Vote at 16 Act  Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today and speak in favour of the wonderful bill introduced by the great member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. I think the bill is so pivotal and engages so many important concepts about our democracy. When I was first elected 14 years ago, in 2008, I sat down with my young staffer, Sam Heppell, and we talked about bills to be introduced in the House.

Health  Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not getting the care they need in our health care system. This is not surprising. The government has failed to offer real solutions to fix what the Canadian Medical Association is calling an “unprecedented health crisis”. This failure of leadership is paving the way for the Conservatives, who want to privatize health care, putting profits over patients.

Canada Disability Benefit Act  Madam Speaker, I think I speak for everybody in the House when I say that any measure that would help people living with diverse needs or with disabilities is a positive measure. However, as has been repeatedly pointed out, this is only a framework, and it does not identify who will receive disability benefits, how much they will get or when.

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns  With regard to Canada’s pledge at the UN Women Generation Equality Forum in 2021 to commit $100 million in new funding for standalone programming addressing unpaid and paid care work in low-and middle-income countries: (a) how much international assistance funding dedicated to care programming has been dispersed by Canada since July 2021, broken down by month; (b) how much of that funding has been (i) channeled to multilateral institutions and processes, (ii) earmarked for standalone projects; and (c) what steps is the government taking to ensure that this funding supports and can be accessed by women’s rights organizations and feminist in-country partners in the Global South?

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns  With regard to the Canadian Coal Transition Initiative (CCTI) and the CCTI Infrastructure Fund, since their inception, broken down by fiscal year and by initiative: (a) what is the total amount of funding provided under each program to date; (b) how many projects have been funded; (c) in which communities have the projects been funded; (d) what is the timeframe for assessment, review, and approval or rejection of an application, broken down by (i) average timeframe, (ii) median timeframe; and (e) what accountability metrics are in place to ensure that (i) emission reduction targets are met, (ii) workers in the sector find employment in other industries?

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns  With regard to disability benefits provided by Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) since November 2015, broken down by year: (a) what is the median time to process (i) an initial application, (ii) a reassessment application; (b) of the applications in (a), how many were processed after 16 weeks of receiving all the information needed for processing; (c) of the applications in (a), what is the percentage of cases that VAC met its service standard target; (d) how many of the decisions on initial applications submitted for mental health conditions were made in more than 16 weeks, as a (i) percentage, (ii) raw number; (e) of the timeframes in (a), what are the application processing times broken down by recipient groups (i) male, (ii) female, (iii) anglophones, (iv) francophones; (f) what is the total number of applications; (g) how many officers process applications broken down by (i) temporary officers, (ii) permanent officers; (h) what is the volume of backlog of applications; and (i) were the number of total applications processed below the fiscal year target, and, if so, what is the target and what is the number of total applications processed?

Questions on the Order Paper  With regard to the Canada Revenue Agency's criminal investigation of KPMG's offshore tax scheme: (a) what is the job title of the person who decided (i) to initiate the investigation, (ii) when to initiate the investigation, (iii) the mandate of the investigation, (iv) the date of completion of the investigation, (v) the drafting of the full investigation report, (vi) determination of the findings of the investigation; (b) for items in (a), was the minister or her exempt staff involved in these decisions, and, if so, to what extent; (c) when did the investigation begin; (d) what are the titles and numbers of the documents used in the investigation; (e) how many hours were spent on the investigation; (f) how many full-time equivalent employees were involved in the implementation of the investigation; (g) when did the investigation end; (h) what are the detailed findings of the investigation; (i) was the minister involved in the investigation, and, if so, to what extent; (j) were the exempt staff of the minister's office involved in the investigation, and, if so, to what extent; (k) when was the minister informed of the findings of the investigation; (l) was the minister or her exempt staff involved in (i) the drafting of the full investigation report, (ii) the review of the full investigation report; (m) are there different versions of the full investigation report, and, if so, why, and what are the titles and numbers of those versions; and (n) was the full investigation report sent to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, if not, why not, and, if so, did the Public Prosecution Service of Canada make a decision to prosecute, if not, why not?

Health  Mr. Speaker, health experts are raising the alarm. According to the Canadian Medical Association, our health care system is collapsing around us. Health care workers are dealing with severe burnout and leaving the profession. Patients are being treated in cars. They wait months for diagnosis and are suffering without care.

Criminal Code  Mr. Speaker, one of the, I think, good things about the bill is that it removes mandatory minimums for drug sentences, but it leads to a larger question of consistency with the government. The member and the government voted against the NDP Bill C-216, which would have treated addiction as a health issue and decriminalized it for everybody.

Criminal Code  Mr. Speaker, I guess what I am struggling with is there seems to be a relatively straightforward connection and a couple of principles that underpin this bill. One of them is that we have a very high percentage of people locked up in our country who are suffering from mental health or addiction problems.

Criminal Code  Madam Speaker, absolutely, we need to start addressing in a more meaningful way the social determinants of crime. That is part of it. Also, I think the bottom line is that we need to give our courts and judges the tools they need to make proper individualized assessments to find out what the root causes of the person and the circumstances are before them.

Criminal Code  Madam Speaker, of course, I guess this is a matter of perspective. If one believes that punishing people more harshly and putting addicts and people with mental illness in jail cells for longer will keep communities safe, then I suppose one will critique this bill, as the official opposition is doing.

Criminal Code  Madam Speaker, I would answer that by approaching the latter part first. I had both the privilege and the trauma of suffering through the Harper government the whole time. I have been in this House for 14 years, and it was a major political issue the entire time of the Harper Conservatives to adopt this tough-on-crime approach, where they did bring in mandatory minimums.

Criminal Code  Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure and an honour to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill. By way of introduction, it is important to note that this bill was reintroduced from the 43rd Parliament. It is an almost identical copy, with no changes except for the omission of coordinating amendments, which made some changes to the Firearms Act and adjusted some penalties for firearms offences.

Criminal Code  Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague quoted Lisa Lapointe, a very respected public health official in British Columbia. She has called for the decriminalization of drugs and for treating drug use and substance use disorders as health issues. My hon. colleague properly empathizes with the unbelievable, astronomical death rate in British Columbia.