Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, the minister will not be surprised that I want to turn to Bill C-69 and the sections relating to the Impact Assessment Act. I never did practise constitutional law, but I have been consulting with some constitutional law experts. The minister brought the bill forward

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn to Bill C-63. I support Bill C-63, the online hate bill, but I do not think it adequately gets to some of the questions of algorithms. I think we have a real problem with rage farming. Some of the examples I have raised tonight are specifically

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I would like to turn to the question of the Victims Bill of Rights. When the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights was going through this place, I had the honour to be a member of Parliament at that time. I worked with then ombudsperson Sue O'Sullivan, who was trying to ge

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, one of the things that concern victims and their families is the sort of black box around plea bargaining. Victims' impact statements can happen at the point of an open court, but plea bargaining leaves victims and families out. I wonder if the minister has any thoug

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I also recall that when we were debating that and other issues in this place relating to mandatory minimums, there was a fair degree of evidence and concern that as jurisdictions used mandatory minimums, that tended to decrease what a judge did at the moment of sente

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, it seems that the bail supervision programs, which are cost-effective, are quite underfunded. Am I correct that those are funded through provincial and territorial governments?

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I mentioned what is cost-effective because it is about $120,000 a year per inmate to keep people in jail, and there are currently more legally innocent people awaiting trial, who are still legally presumed innocent until proven guilty, in the jails of our provinces a

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I have never practised criminal law, but members of my family have been prosecutors. The question that occurs to me often, and one of the things that seems outside the jurisdiction of the federal government, is whether it would not be salutary to find some way that,

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I am going to try to do something. The canvassing of issues this evening has been extraordinary and, I am afraid, all too often, superficial. I want to dive into a couple of things and just ask the minister for his reflections because this is tough stuff. I do not t

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, I think all these specific examples that are exploited end up leading people to doubt some of the fundamentals of our British common law criminal justice system, which is that one is innocent until proven guilty. People out on bail are essentially legally innocent pe

Electoral Reform  Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the Liberals did not put out an election platform in 2015 that said, “If we can find consensus, we'll change the voting system”. No, it was unequivocal. The promise was that 2015 would be the last election under first past the post, not “If we can

Electoral Reform  Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening in Adjournment Proceedings to pursue a question that I asked on February 5 of this year. It relates to a very key issue in our democracy, and that is our voting system, the winner-take-all system known as first past the post. We are one of the ver

Petitions  Madam Speaker, it is a great honour to rise today on behalf of many constituents, with a petition directed to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and to the Parliament assembled. The concern of the petitioners is the very perilous state of the sout

Petitions  Madam Speaker, forgive me, but it was distressing to hear heckling. Petitions are not the voices of the members here, as a member of the House of Commons representing a riding. Presenting a petition is presenting the voices of our constituents to this place. We are neither for no

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023  Mr. Speaker, there is much in my colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby's speech that I want to support, but I was particularly drawn to his reminiscences, believe it or not, of a better time that I think of quite often: the degree of co-operation that happened in this place duri