Jeremy Patzer
Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, Saskatchewan · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, when I rose in the House previously in question period, I asked the Minister of Public Safety about charges being stayed against two fentanyl traffickers who were arrested and in court in Swift Current. Police found 17.5 pounds of fentanyl in their car, and their charges were stayed.”
“This person was out on bail for a previous drug possession and trafficking charge for a street value of $125,000. This is getting insane. These are the kinds of things that people are seeing on the streets.”
“The “earliest reasonable opportunity and on the least onerous conditions” is the main theme of what Bill C-75 has meant for people like drug traffickers. Let us take a look at a few other cases in and around Saskatchewan. On April 8, another individual was found with 51 grams of fentanyl.”
“Mr. Speaker, the common theme we see with the Liberals is that they go easy on criminals, and then all of a sudden they introduce all these new laws that try to make up for their own undoing of previous laws that were in place and would have helped deal with a lot of this. There are other chronic issues that are at play here.”
“The borders continue to be a sore spot for drugs coming in. Basically zero containers are scanned coming into Canada, so all kinds of drugs and who knows what else are pouring into our country, and it is putting our citizens at risk and in danger. How else do we end up with 17.5 pounds of fentanyl getting on the streets down Highway 1?”
“Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to be able to rise on behalf of the great people of southwest and west central Saskatchewan, and to be able to do so here in the month of June. We know June is the graduation season for all of the kids in elementary school who are moving up to high school.”
The complete record
Every one of 281 lines we hold for Jeremy Patzer, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 6 of 6.
“Mr. Speaker, after the election was over, and even when we were at the doors during the campaign, people were very clear. They said that if the Conservatives formed government, they wanted to get answers on the Liberal scandals and see some accountability for the green slush fund, SNC-Lavalin, GC Strategies, the list goes on and on. Now that Conservatives are in opposition, they want us to keep pushing the government on these things. As the opposition, we are going to continue to demand accountability for the things the government did in the past, because it is not a new government, and also the things it is going to do in the future. The best indicator of the future is the past. When we look at the Liberal government, we know exactly how this is going to go.”
“Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the track record of the new Prime Minister . He spent four years advising Justin Trudeau. Is it possible, maybe, that the Prime Minister was advising behind the scenes on GC Strategies? Was he advising behind the scenes? We do not know because he will not file all of his disclosures. He may have been tied in with the Ethics Commissioner prior to becoming Prime Minister. When we look at how new the Prime Minister is, the Liberals say he has only been on the job for 45 days. No, he has been here. He openly admitted he started advising Justin Trudeau back in 2020, so he is not new. He has been around the block for a long time.”
“I hope the government takes it seriously. We have been hearing Liberals say, “Oh, we're going to take them to court," but then, "Well, maybe we're not taking it to court.” We do not know what is actually going to happen there. The government needs to take this seriously. I hope this motion passes and that we see the taxpayers made whole, not just for the amount but maybe even for the interest that has accrued. Canadian taxpayers need to be made whole. I hope the government takes that seriously.”
“What are they giving their first speeches on? They are speaking on our motion on Liberal government scandal. It must be a little demoralizing over there, knowing they have to get up and talk about the scandals, the waste, the corruption and the fraud that has gone on and has permeated throughout the government for 10 years. That is what their first speech will be about. As an opposition member, when I was first elected in 2019, to me it was no wonder we were talking about Liberal corruption and scandal. It was no shock, watching how Justin Trudeau ran this country. Therefore, when we look at the motion here today, it would seem that the very least the government could do is demand that the money that was stolen from Canadian taxpayers by GC Strategies, under false pretenses, be recouped and repaid.”
“There is no ministerial responsibility left, thanks to 10 years of the Liberal government. GC Strategies is just one of many examples of why people are so sick and tired of the government corruption coming from there. I want to take us back to 2019, when I was first elected. One of the first subjects I stood up in this House to speak on was the Joe Peschisolido report; he was another former Liberal who was in breach of ethics. We also had the SNC-Lavalin scandal. We are all pretty familiar with what happened under that situation. Then we had the green slush fund, which seized this place up for a number of months prior to the election, talking about Liberal scandal again, and so many other scandals woven in between all of that. We have new members from the government standing up to give their first speeches today.”
“What this shows is a complete lack of leadership in the government among its ministers. What happened to those ministers? Most of them were re-elected and put back into cabinet. In a lot of cases, they were promoted to even higher portfolios, with more responsibility. They failed upwards. That is what was given to them by the Prime Minister . One would have thought that after Justin Trudeau stepped down as prime minister, and the supposed new government came in with a new leader, there would be some changes in the front bench of the Liberal government over there. There have not been. They are the people who are ultimately responsible for this, because the buck stops with the ministers. The ministers need to know what is happening in their file and their department.”
“One of the last questions that was asked of Mr. Firth before he was done was whether he felt any shame. His answer was that he did not. Then he just hopped up and walked out, and that was the end of it. He felt no shame. He took all this money, robbed the taxpayer and away he went. I read out some of the things in the Auditor General report: the support for contract pricing, the lack of justification, that federal organizations had made payments without showing deliverables, the weaknesses in contract monitoring and the security requirements not being enforced. Why does that matter? There are a lot of reasons why that matters, but what it goes to is government responsibility. Are ministers following up with their departments? Do they even know what their departments are doing?”
“It brings them back to a time of government overreach: people being forced into quarantine who should not have been, people not being allowed to leave or enter Canada and all kinds of issues like that. That is what people remember about ArriveCAN. GC Strategies is the company that was awarded a big contract. It was supposed to only cost about $80,000 for this app but ended up costing over $64 million. We do not even know the total cost of it, because the Auditor General could not get access to all of the information on it. That is what we are dealing with here today with our opposition day motion. We are demanding that the government get that money back. I also want to bring people back to when we called Kristian Firth to the bar here. He was admonished by this House. However, there was a very telling element to that.”
“Underneath the rubric of “Federal organizations did not follow procurement policies when awarding contracts”, it reads, “Procurement methods were not consistently justified”, “Security requirements were not enforced”, “There were weaknesses in contract monitoring”, “Information on suppliers' performance and rates was not collected and shared”, “Support for contract prices frequently lacked justification” and “Federal organizations made payments without evidence showing that all deliverables were received”. (1345) Most people at home are probably wondering what on earth GC Strategies did. Well, it did basically nothing, except to take a lot of money for the ArriveCAN app. For a lot of people, if we tell them about the ArriveCAN app, it instantly triggers a reaction.”
“I just want to highlight a couple of other things from the Auditor General's report. Right at the very beginning, it reads: Federal organizations are required to monitor the work performed by contractors. However, we noted that federal organizations frequently disregarded government policies in this area. This included not having records showing which contracted resources performed the work, what work was completed, and whether the people doing the work had the required experience and qualifications. In addition, in 82% of examined non‑competitive contracts and competitive contracts that received only 1 valid bid, federal organizations failed to verify that the fees paid did not exceed market rates. On top of that, let us take a look at some of the notes in the report as well.”
“I know that all of us on the campaign trail would have heard similar stories from people who are struggling with the cost of living, people who are struggling after 10 years of bad Liberal policy, and what that has done to them and their communities and their ability to afford housing, to afford groceries, to afford a vehicle, to get out of high school, to get out of college, to get out of university and enter the workforce, and how those opportunities are not there, thanks to Liberal mismanagement of basically everything. After the last campaign, those are the kinds of stories that people elected us here to be able to tell. The Auditor General's report and the issues it talks about are the reason why we have a motion today calling on the government to make sure that GC Strategies repays the money, that that money is recovered.”
“What happened with GC Strategies is just another glaring example of the type of cronyism, the type of fraud, that has really been committed against the taxpayer. This young mom, in the situation she is in, sees this and wonders, “What on earth is going on? I can't even get ahead.” In the Auditor General report here, it says that not only did Kristian Firth get all this money that he should not have been getting; he also got to help write some of the contracts. He got to help write some of the conditions for the deals. There was a $25-million deal that he helped write, and then he got the deal, and of course it was heavily slanted in favour of GC Strategies. What a shocker. We see that, and then we hear about the plight of this young lady.”
“As the conversation went on, she talked about how unaffordable life has become, about the struggles of a single mom and the plight she was in with her former partner not doing a good job of making his spousal and child support payments, as well as the lack of enforcement around that. The reason that matters is that while we have this story about this young lady in Biggar and the struggles she is going through in life, on the other hand, we need to look at what has been happening with the government, which is the same as the last government and not the new government it says it is. Look at the track record of so many ministers. We can look at the scandals, the waste and what has gone on over the last 10 years.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place on behalf of the great people of not just southwest Saskatchewan but also west central Saskatchewan. With the redistribution of the ridings for the past federal election, I have taken on some significant area to the north of what the old riding used to be. It is an honour to be able to represent people from that new area. I want to thank my constituents for trusting me to be their representative here in the House for a third time. While I was on the campaign trail, I was door knocking in the town of Biggar. “New York is big, but this is Biggar" is a saying in that town. It is a great community. I knocked on this one door, and a mom answered. She was a single mom with a couple of young kids, and she was working as an EA in the local school there.”
“Mr. Speaker, the minister is going off the facts. She is saying that there is no mention of pipelines in there. It sounds as though the Liberals are not going to get pipelines built. Now, if there is national consensus, if they are able to get it, will cabinet veto it as it was given to them in the Impact Assessment Act?”
“Mr. Speaker, the minister says that they are working in unity, but the only unity that we are seeing is that the Liberals do not want to see another export pipeline built in Canada. Is there consensus, or is there not?”
“Mr. Speaker, she is saying there is no veto, but we saw the Premier of British Columbia get up clearly and say he would absolutely not support any pipelines. How can she stand up here and say there is national unity when it has been very clear from the Premier of British Columbia that there is no consensus?”
“Mr. Speaker, it appears the moment has already passed for consensus in the country. We heard it here today from the minister. I have a separate question for the minister, though. Will the government remove the emissions cap, yes or no?”
“Canadians are working harder than ever yet falling further and further behind. That is why the House voted for the government to present a budget this spring. It is time the Prime Minister reeled in his reckless spending so Canadians can finally catch a break.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister campaigned as the “man with the plan”, but so far he is still following Justin Trudeau's plan, so let us take a look at the results. Canada is staring down the barrel of a recession and the potential loss of 100,000 jobs. Unemployment is now at 7%, the highest in nearly a decade outside COVID. There has been effectively no job growth since January. Over 1.6 million Canadians are now unemployed and, on average, are spending 22 weeks, nearly half a year, without a job. One in five young people cannot find work. Food banks are seeing record numbers. Missed mortgage payments are up, grocery prices are skyrocketing, and according to the 2025 Canada food price report, the average family of four will spend an extra $800 on groceries this year.”
“In the United States, then president Biden, three years ago, gave an order to make sure approvals were handed out in less than two years on big projects. Our party, in fact, especially our critic from Lakeland, has been very vocal about the need to not only match that but to do better than that and try to get approvals even more quickly. If we are going to be competing with the United States for investment dollars, we need that regulatory certainty, and we are not getting it.”
“Mr. Speaker, what would make Canada competitive would be a competitive regulatory framework. With respect to the Impact Assessment Act, the one that has been ruled unconstitutional already, the government has said that it made a bit of changes to it, but we know that there are other unconstitutional elements still in place. It is one of the biggest barriers, one of the biggest problems. We are trying to get approvals here in Canada. It is taking over a decade to get an approval on a major project. That is why there are no major projects being built in Canada today. The first thing the Prime Minister is going to have to do is get rid of the emissions cap and also fix the Impact Assessment Act.”
“The rest of the world has come to Canada numerous times looking for Canadian gas, for Canadian oil and for LNG, and Justin Trudeau repeatedly said there is no business case, despite the fact that numerous countries have come to Canada begging for these things. Industry wants to have export pipeline capacity so we can reduce our dependence on the United States for selling our product. The production cap that is in place is going to further hamper Canada's ability to be the supplier of clean, reliable energy around the world. I am just wondering whether the government would be willing to admit that the production cap is a terrible idea and that they need to scrap it.”
“Funding from the oil and gas sector is what would be used to hire some of the agents needed to fix a lot of the problems. The Liberals are deliberately trying to cap the single biggest driver of the Canadian economy with their emissions cap, which is a production cap. If this cap stays in place, which the Prime Minister has already committed to, and I would assume his silence on the matter only confirms that, oil production in Canada is actually going to have to be curtailed by 5% in the next couple of years. We are looking at a 5% reduction, and yet we see what the rest of the world is wanting and needing.”
“In 2022, for example, $45 billion in revenue from the oil and gas sector alone went to Canadian governments. In 2022, that would have just slightly trailed the cost of health care. If we think about it that way, the money that comes in for governments from the oil and gas sector is equal to right around the same number of dollars as health care costs. There are many great businesses and companies in the oil and gas sector in our ridings that support the local health care foundations. They sponsor our local hockey rinks. They sponsor our community centres and our seniors centres. This is the money that funds education. It funds nurses. It funds doctors. The government today has tabled a bill on fixing the border and the ports.”
“One of the main issues we are facing is that we are looking at over 54,000 job losses and over $20 billion in lost investment into the Canadian economy. This is on top of the hundreds of thousands of job losses that have already occurred in the energy and resource sector because of the Liberal government's anti-energy policies. That was led by Justin Trudeau for the past 10 years, and now the current Prime Minister is following in his steps. This is what we are seeing as well from the current environment minister . I have served on committee with her before, and she is actually very vocal about her opposition to any expansion of the oil sands, and quite frankly, on committee, she has been very deliberate in trying to suppress the oil and gas industry. I was looking at some more numbers.”
“Mr. Speaker, this is my first opportunity to rise in the House of Commons, and I just want to thank the great people of Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley for putting their trust in me for a third time after this last election. I also really quickly want to thank my wife, Kyla, and our three kids for their support. I would not be able to do this job if it were not for my wife and all the things she does with our kids. In fact right now she is sitting in the hospital in Swift Current getting a CT scan on our daughter's foot, because she broke her foot last week. I wish good luck to my wife and my daughter. Hopefully everything goes well. I rose earlier to question the Minister of Environment and Climate Change on the emissions cap, which is essentially a production cap.”
“Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on being re-elected once again. The House has already passed a motion, actually an amendment, to the throne speech, asking for a budget to be produced this spring. What are my colleague's thoughts on that and what would his constituents, the people of Quebec, generally think about the government not providing a road map or a budget to show how it will get things done to build this nation of Canada and to build Quebec?”
“Madam Speaker, it is great to see you in the chair once again. I want to congratulate my colleague for getting elected for the first time. It is a pleasure to work with him. I am just curious to know what the member's thoughts are. We have heard a lot of soft talk from government members on how they want to build nation-building projects, yet we are not hearing about any specific projects. They met with the premiers, yet nothing concrete actually came out of it. It was just lots of words but no action. I am just wondering what the member heard at the doors about things that his constituents would like to see the government do and get done, versus just the fluffy words we have heard so far.”
“Mr. Speaker, the opioid crisis is affecting communities all across Canada, but in particular it is hitting rural communities very hard because the health care services and response times are not there to help the people struggling with it. We are also seeing the disproportionate impact it is having on rural communities. I am wondering whether the member has any thoughts on how rural communities are being left behind by the government as well.”
“Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of Liberal anti-energy policies, the devastation continues. There have already been hundreds of thousands of job losses in the industry, and thanks to the radical ministers on the front bench, the Liberal oil and gas production cap has another 54,000 jobs and over $20 billion on the chopping block. The Prime Minister campaigned on having a plan to get things built, yet he has already committed to not overturning the production cap. Is the Prime Minister 's refusal to scrap the cap an admission that he supports this devastating policy?”