Crisis in the Philippines  Mr. Chair, I want to thank my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his intervention tonight and how important this debate is. It is to show and demonstrate that members in Parliament are standing in unison with Canadians across the country, especially with the Filipino Canadian commu

Veterans Affairs  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all our military who have served us so proudly over the years. As we have said before, we have been working with the Chief of the Defence Staff and the chief of military personnel to ensure that members of the Canadian Armed Forces are not released u

Veterans Affairs  Mr. Speaker, we have been working with the chief of military personnel to ensure that members of the Canadian Armed Forces are not released until they are prepared. Every possible accommodation is made to ensure that soldiers are kept in the forces. Before being released, member

Canadian Museum of History Act  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Oakville for his great presentation today. Just last month, I met with the Association of Manitoba Museums. It told me that it is excited about having the Canadian museum of history and the sharing artifacts that is now going to be ava

Veterans  Mr. Speaker, last spring it was discovered that the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie had said that First World War veterans fought “a capitalist war on the backs of the workers and peasants”. There was no demand for a retraction from the Leader of the Opposition, even after

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2  Mr. Speaker, in the last Parliament I chaired the environment committee. I am proud of the work that we do through Environment Canada. A lot of people do not realize that Environment Canada is the fifth largest research organization in the world. The four larger ones are in the U

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2  Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the compliment to my family. We have had a chance to work together on a number of issues and I do appreciate her comment. On the issue of environmental permits, we as a government have reduce the redundancy and duplication of services betwee

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2  Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise today to speak on behalf of my constituents from Selkirk—Interlake about how important the building Canada fund is to our municipalities and about the importance of our economic action plan to our farmers, commercial fishers, and small

International Trade  Mr. Speaker, through the Canada-Europe trade agreement, our government is creating new and historic opportunities in Europe for our agricultural producers. Almost 94% of EU agricultural tariff lines will be duty-free when the Canada-Europe trade agreement comes into force. Our g

National Defence  Mr. Speaker, we are very concerned about everyone who will lose their jobs. With the changes that are happening with the roll-down of operations in Afghanistan, we have gone through a renewal, looking at all our strategic assets and all our operations. We want to make sure that

Iraq  Mr. Speaker, the Mujahedin-e Khalq , or MeK, are Iranian refugees living in exile in Iraq. MeK refugees have suffered serious hardships living in camps Ashraf and Liberty, including being targeted by mortar and rocket attacks. On September 1, the last remaining residents of Camp

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act  Mr. Speaker, we would be able to do this within existing resources, and we would make sure we were standing up a 50-member RCMP unit that would go out and target where the high levels of contraband are. They would be able to do this within existing divisions across the country. T

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act  Mr. Speaker, we just actually renewed the federal tobacco strategy here in 2012, and we are going to continue to work on tobacco control. This is aimed to preserve the gains we have made over the past 10 years and to continue the downward trend of smoking prevalence. As the memb

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act  Mr. Speaker, the bill does provide for co-operation between Attorneys General across this country as we have seen in other pieces of legislation. The federal Attorney General and provincial Attorneys General would be coordinating any problems they may see in increases in imprison

Tackling Contraband Tobacco Act  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in favour of Bill S-16, an act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in contraband tobacco). The bill proposes amendments to the Criminal Code to create a new offence of trafficking in contraband tobacco and provide minimum penalties