Brad Redekopp
Saskatoon West, Saskatchewan · Conservative · Canada
“Bill C-287. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-287, An Act to amend the National Research Council Act . He said: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present my private member's bill, the housing cost transparency act. Canada is in a housing crisis.”
“These summaries would show what a proposal does, what housing is affected, who pays, what benefits are expected and what assumptions are being made. It would also improve governance, transparency, public registry information and annual reporting.”
“Even by 2030-31, there is still going to be a deficit of over $50 billion, by their own estimate. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an officer appointed by the government, a person whom the government trusts, tells us it is going to be even worse than the government is saying; the government is actually not telling us the truth, th…”
“A car could be sold multiple times during its life, two, three, four times, and every single time, GST is charged, and the government makes money on that. We think that is unfair. The government should get the GST at the beginning, and that should be the end of it. I want to thank my colleague the member for Elgin—St.”
“The debt charges this year will be just about $60 billion. To put that into perspective, the amount of money the federal government gives to the provinces for health care is $55 billion, so we are actually spending more on interest than what the government gives for health care.”
“The Liberals do not want to have questions asked; they want to avoid all that. As they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, it appears that they are evading accountability. That is not a good look, and Canadians can see that. The decisions that would be made in this bill would impact Canadians for decades.”
The complete record
Every one of 397 lines we hold for Brad Redekopp, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 8.
“On the immigration side, we have to remember that somebody who is not a citizen of Canada showing up at our borders does not have the right to become Canadian. Canadians are the ones who decide who can become Canadian. Canadians are the ones who decide that we should allow certain people to come into our country and in certain quantities. Those are our decisions to make. They are no one else's. For many years, Canada had a consensus on immigration. If someone is not an indigenous person, then they quite likely have an immigrant in their background somewhere. My grandparents came here 100 years ago, so I am the product of immigration to this country, as are most of us here who are not indigenous people. Canadians were happy and comfortable with that.”
“There is a thing called “the principle of restraint” that was introduced in the bill, for police and courts to ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention. It forces our criminal justice system to release criminals at the earliest possible opportunity. This is how we arrived at the revolving-door bail situation, where people are arrested and end up back out on the streets. These are the things that have been done by the government that have caused crime to increase in our country and light sentences to prevail. The consequences of crime are gone. We have completely lost control of crime in our country. When I say these things to a person from Rwanda, they are shocked. This is not the view of Canada that they have, but it is the true Canada that we do have.”
“It is frustrating police officers to the point that they do not even bother to arrest some people for crimes now because it just does not matter. Why is this happening? It is partly because of Bill C-5 , which took away mandatory minimums. It allowed judges the freedom to give lesser sentences, which has happened across the board, and not for little things; it is for serious things such as gun trafficking, robbery with a firearm and drug trafficking. These kinds of offences are now not subject to mandatory minimums, and judges are free to give whatever lenient sentence they may choose. Bill C-75 was a big expansion of bail. It was the bill that not allowed but actually required judges to consider the least possible thing they could do to a criminal.”
“Violent crime is up 55%, firearms crime is up 130%, extortion has skyrocketed and is up 330% across the country, sexual assaults are up 76%, and homicides are up 29%. This is the result of some of the changes that the Liberal government has made. It is hard to imagine that when one is sitting in a country like Rwanda. We have a perception that it should be a problem in Rwanda, but it is actually a problem here, not there. Then I tell Rwandans that police are increasingly powerless. Any of us who have talked to police officers will hear every time that they got into policing to catch the bad guy and put him in jail. They are increasingly frustrated that they cannot do that because courts are releasing the bad guy.”
“When I talk to Rwandans about what it is like in Canada, they do not believe me. The conversations are quite interesting. I talk about things like homelessness and how we can see homeless people in any major city, tent cities, people cooking on fires in our cities in Canada. When I tell that to people in Rwanda, they do not believe me. I talk about the drug use we see in our cities, the fentanyl use, people literally dying on our streets and the way our government actually supports that by providing tools and facilitating the use of drugs and in some cases giving hard drugs to people. They cannot believe that. One certainly does not see that on the streets of Kigali in Rwanda. The obvious consequence of these things is that crime has increased since 2015 in Canada.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today on this motion we put forward in the House. I have had the privilege of travelling to Rwanda multiple times. It is a beautiful country. When I say I am going to Rwanda or have been to Rwanda, people look at me with shock on their faces, because they have an image of a country that was rocked by genocide 32 years ago, which it was. It was a tragic thing, but the country has been rebuilt. It is a beautiful country, hilly and tropical. The fruit there is amazing, and so are the people. It is now a very safe country that is well developed. There are roads and buildings. They have a beautiful soccer centre and a basketball centre. It is an amazing place. They had the cycling UCI Road World Championships there last year, which was the first time ever in an African country.”
“Madam Speaker, the member just commented that the secretary of state does not even understand or know some of the contents of bills. It makes me think of Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 , two bills that made house arrest possible and took away mandatory minimums. I wonder if the member has some comments on those two bills and how they are affecting this situation.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague hit on a wonderful point here, that ultimately there need to be teeth in legislation. When we do things around here that are meant to help people, there should be ways for those reports or mechanisms that come back from commissioners, or whoever it might be, to actually generate results, because, ultimately, that is the goal. We want results. We need results in this country, and that is something we are sorely lacking right now.”
“Madam Speaker, it is important for us to consult all people, whether for a new pipeline or whatever the project might be. Once again, I am coming back to the point that this legislation would not actually help that. We already have the mechanisms in government. We have departments and ministers. We have an abundance of bureaucrats. We have an Auditor General. We have so many different ways that we can consult with communities in Canada, particularly with indigenous communities in Canada.”
“Madam Speaker, the government has obligations to fulfill things like treaties, but another bureaucracy would not solve that problem. We already have ministers. We have two indigenous departments in the government. We have an Auditor General. There are many, many ways that these kinds of things can be enforced and implemented, and that is what needs to be done. We need action on these things. We need them to be done, not to create more bureaucracies the government can just point to and say, “Well, we did this,” instead of actually acting.”
“Madam Speaker, of course it is important. We have laws in this country that need to be enforced and things that need to be done. The government has obligations to all kinds of people— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!”
“Madam Speaker, within the member's question was the whole point of this. People, whether they are indigenous people or all people in Canada, quite frankly, are asking for results. People want to see results. People want to see their lives get better. They want to see better job prospects. They want to make more money. They want to have a roof over their heads. They want to have their families protected and their lives made better in Canada with the promise of Canada. This kind of legislation is not helping them. This legislation would create bureaucracy. It would probably create jobs here in Ottawa. It would spend a lot of money doing something that we can already do in the systems, groups and bureaucracy that we already have.”
“The problem is not a lack of oversight but a lack of execution. Creating a commissioner does not fix that. It is worth reminding the House that modern treaties are not symbolic documents but constitutionally protected agreements in federal law. Implementing them is not optional, yet under the Liberal government, not a single modern treaty has been finalized, despite more than 70 groups currently being in negotiations. The Conservative record was much better at completing agreements. Until such time as the Liberals start putting the needs of the indigenous people of Saskatoon West ahead of those of the bureaucrats in Ottawa, I cannot and will not support this legislation.”
“This legislation, Bill C-10 , is a perfect example of that. Let us be clear about what the commissioner could and could not do. They would have no binding authority. They could not compel departments to act, enforce treaty obligations or impose consequences on ministers or officials who fail indigenous treaty partners. What are we doing here? What would the commissioner actually be able to do? They could observe and report. Then what? Indigenous nations would still be left to do what they have always been forced to do under Liberal governments: hire lawyers, go to court and fight the Crown to enforce agreements that are already law. We already know where the failures are. The leaders have told us. Parliamentary committees have heard it. The Auditor General has reported on it repeatedly.”
“Just like with Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, the net-zero advisory board, the Impact Assessment Agency, Build Canada Homes, the Canada Infrastructure Bank and the federal housing advocate, the bill risks becoming another Liberal monument to process over results. The debate we are having today is about something fundamental: the honour of the Crown, and the relationship between the federal government and indigenous people. That relationship is not built through org charts, offices or glossy annual reports, but on trust, action and delivery. Unfortunately, after nearly a decade in power, the Liberal government has demonstrated a consistent pattern. When it fails to deliver results, it creates another level of bureaucracy and calls it progress.”
“The government launched Build Canada Homes and rebranded funding envelopes, but communities are still waiting years for approvals. It created the Canada Infrastructure Bank in 2017, claiming it would unlock investment and accelerate major projects. Billions were allocated, but project delivery was slow. Even the Auditor General raised serious concerns. When housing affordability spiralled out of control, the response was not to build more homes or remove gatekeepers. It was to create the federal housing advocate in 2021, an office that can issue reports and recommendations but cannot build a single home. Housing affordability continues to worsen. Bill C-10 fits this exact pattern.”
“When the Liberals repeatedly missed their own emissions targets, they created the net-zero advisory board in 2021. This body has no authority, no enforcement power and no accountability mechanism. It exists to advise, audit and report, while Canadians pay higher costs and targets are still missed. This is the exact same model as is proposed in Bill C-10 . They also replaced the environmental assessment regime with the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada in 2019. The promise was better assessments. The reality has been longer approval times, regulatory uncertainty, stalled projects, lost investment and fewer jobs. With more regulation comes less certainty and fewer results. In housing and infrastructure, the pattern continues.”
“Starting with indigenous affairs, the Liberals split the former indigenous and northern affairs Canada department in 2017 into two new departments: Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, and Indigenous Services Canada. The stated goal was to improve service delivery and reconciliation. The real-world result was more deputy ministers, more bureaucracy and more spending, while indigenous communities continued to face housing shortages, boil water advisories, health gaps and treaty implementation failures. Indigenous Services Canada was sold as the delivery department. Years later, outcomes have not really improved, and here we are with Bill C-10 . The lesson is clear: Creating a new department did not fix the problem. It added complexity. The same pattern appears in climate and environmental policy.”
“The Liberals are making no effort to build the homes that families need to live in housing they can afford. The government must do better, and we must do better. (1350) I have already said that this legislation is about building bureaucracy. Ronald Reagan famously said, “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” We have seen time and again from the Liberal government that the solution to every problem is more government, another department and more layers of bureaucrats. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That summarizes the government. We have seen this approach repeatedly.”
“If departments fail to uphold their commitments, there should be real consequences, not another memo to a bureaucratic office. If funding is promised, it should be delivered on time and in full. If jobs or housing targets are set, they should be measured independently and transparently, but with teeth, not just reports. Indigenous residents of Saskatoon West are not interested in symbolic gestures. Like all Canadians, the indigenous people in the riding of Saskatoon West are interested in outcomes, including jobs that pay, homes that are affordable, children who are safe and futures that are bright. Bill C-10 does not deliver these outcomes; it will not reduce food costs or lower energy bills. Nowhere in this debate are Liberals talking about creating jobs that indigenous and all youth are desperate for.”
“The Conservative plan, rooted in economic growth, will remove barriers to investment, cut red tape for small businesses and help urban indigenous entrepreneurs succeed. This is the kind of approach that creates dignity and independence, not dependence on endless studies. Like many places in Canada, housing is also a crisis in Saskatoon West. Indigenous families, like all families, struggle with unaffordable rents, limited supply and skyrocketing prices. Building more homes means more supply, which means lower prices. Conservatives have long advocated for removing the federal policies that slow housing construction, cutting needless regulatory barriers and incentivizing both private and indigenous-led housing. Conservatives support strong relationships with indigenous leaders that are rooted in accountability.”
“For indigenous seniors on fixed incomes, this means hard choices between heating their homes and buying food; for indigenous parents working minimum wage jobs or multiple part-time jobs, it means stretching every dollar just to keep a roof over their children's heads; and for indigenous youth trying to launch careers, this means fewer opportunities and more barriers. This is not rhetoric; it is what I hear every week from constituents in Saskatoon West. What indigenous communities in urban Canada and in my riding of Saskatoon West need are policies that empower, employ and uplift them, not policies that just observe and report. They need real job creation and skills training. Indigenous youth and adults in our community deserve sustainable employment that offers a living wage.”
“When indigenous families in Saskatoon West tell me that they are struggling to keep up with the cost of groceries, they are not talking about treaty implementation reports; they are talking about real life and real household costs that are compounded by federal tax policies that raise the price of goods, fuel and transportation. An example is the industrial carbon tax, which has pushed up the cost of diesel, natural gas and transportation across the economy. This tax may be an abstract policy for some here in Ottawa, but for families in Saskatoon West, it translates directly into higher heating bills in the winter, higher gas prices at the pump and higher prices for everything that has to be delivered by a truck, including groceries, clothing and household goods.”
“We must ask simple questions: How will this new commissioner create jobs in Saskatoon West? How will they make housing more affordable? How will they lower the cost of food and energy for families struggling to make ends meet? The answer, quite simply, is that they will not. This legislation would do nothing to grapple with the real economic pressures facing urban indigenous residents. It would do nothing to create meaningful employment opportunities, make housing more accessible and affordable in our city or reduce the extraordinarily high cost of living that burdens all families every month.”
“Saskatoon West is an urban riding and a community where indigenous people are teachers, business owners, nurses, parents, students, entrepreneurs, tradespeople and neighbours. They live in apartment buildings, single family homes, rental units and multi-generational households throughout our community. Indigenous people in Saskatoon need results, not more bureaucracy. What is Bill C-10 ? In short, it is more bureaucracy. Bill C-10 proposes the creation of a new federal office of commissioner for modern treaty implementation. The commissioner is tasked with monitoring, reviewing and reporting on treaty implementation, but monitoring, reviewing and reporting are not solutions; they are processes and paperwork. It is another layer of bureaucracy that Ottawa can point to when asked why tangible progress has not been made.”
“Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today and speak to this legislation, Bill C-10 , an act respecting the commissioner for modern treaty implementation. This legislation is presented by the government as a path to improved indigenous relations and accountability, yet when I look closely at both the text of this legislation and the lived realities of the people I represent, I must say that sadly, the legislation will neither improve relations between the government and indigenous people nor increase accountability. I believe this bill is fundamentally misaligned with the priorities of urban indigenous communities like Saskatoon West. Saskatoon West's population is approximately 18% indigenous, according to the 2021 census, which is a rate that is far higher than the national average.”
“Falsely claiming refugee status or using other procedural tricks is an insult to the victims of these crimes. Sadly, our reforms were rejected by the Liberals. It is just another slap in the face of everyday Canadians by the Prime Minister . Conservatives stand ready to work with the government to close these loopholes and bring true justice to the victims of crime in Canada.”
“Madam Speaker, in 2018, Saskatchewan was rocked by the news of 16 tragic deaths in the Humboldt Broncos bus tragedy. Today we learned that the deportation process for the truck driver responsible may finally be ending, as his last bid to stay in Canada has been rejected, and the wheels of deportation are now in motion. Our hearts remain with the families and loved ones of the 16 victims who lost their lives and the many more who were injured in this horrific accident. This is exactly why Conservatives tabled amendments to Bill C-12 last fall: to bar individuals convicted of serious crimes from exploiting asylum pathways and avoiding deportations. It is outrageous that a non-citizen charged with or convicted of a serious crime could even attempt to avoid removal using the many delay tactics provided by the Liberal government.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister sells himself as a master of economics, yet Bloomberg reports our economy is on life support. The Bank of Canada expects economic growth to shrink in the last quarter and to grow by only 1.1% this year. Canadian workers want to build and produce, but the government is holding them back with its anti-development laws and high taxes. The Prime Minister promised the fastest-growing economy in the G7, yet he has not delivered, and Canadians are paying the price. When will the Prime Minister listen to the Conservative Party's ideas and introduce a plan that gets the government's barriers and tax burdens out of the way so Canadians can build?”
“Mr. Speaker, yes, indeed, we were elected at the same time, and it has been six years of seeing very little accomplished and six years of longing for something different, and we are hoping the day will come soon. We have put forward so many amendments. The one I just want to highlight goes back to the issue of criminality. So often, non-citizens are charged with a crime, go before a judge and are guilty of the crime, and then the judge actually lessens the sentence because the judge knows that it will impact their immigration status and may cause them to be deported; therefore the judge then reduces the sentence to something lesser than we would get, and it is just not fair.”
“The problem I see with the justice committee is that the government has continually stopped meeting. The Liberals have cancelled meetings, they have shortened meetings and they do not want to actually do the hard work that needs to be done by the justice committee.”
“The member for Lac-Saint-Jean and I work well together on the committee. We do not always see eye to eye, but we are able to work very well, and that is what Canadians want to see when they look at Parliament. They want to see people who may not agree, and different ideas that come forward, but also that we can work in a constructive and positive way. I certainly believe we have that kind of relationship with the member for Lac-Saint-Jean. Regarding the question, of course we are united. I cannot speak for the specific beliefs of every single person in our party, but we have a common position and we are moving forward in a common way on the legislation. What is most important is that we do move forward and that we are able to voice opinions.”
“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 is sitting there; it has not moved forward. There is a reason that it has not moved forward, which is that it was bad legislation, which is just indicative of the way I see the government. As I said in my speech, the bill is the very first one the government brought forward. It is the Liberals' marquee legislation. After the election, it is what the Liberals focused probably most of their efforts on as to what they should do first. They all got in a room and figured this out, put everybody to work on it and came up with the legislation. Where is it? It is still sitting there. It has not moved forward, because it is extremely flawed, and no member of the House wants to move it forward, including the government; the Liberals do not want to move it forward either.”
“The Liberals took the lazy route with Bill C-12 and did the bare minimum number of things that need to be done, but there is so much more. Conservatives will continue to work to fix legislation like C-12 and continue to propose solutions to make this country better and to make our immigration system work better. Once again I wish everyone in the House a merry Christmas.”
“There should be one standard for all people. Whether they are a Canadian citizen or non-Canadian citizen, the same standard should apply, and that is not the case. Of course, there is ending the pull factor for asylum, including getting rid of free hotel rooms, endless medical benefits, and departure tracking, which are other things we do not do in our country that the Conservatives have some good policy ideas for. There are so many things that we worked hard on this year in order to provide good policy solutions for the government. Pretty much all of them were, of course, rejected, but the bottom line is that we worked hard on them. We believe that we can fix our system, but there are so many things that need to be done.”
“She said that nothing is going to be changing there. We worked hard to restore the sanity of sentencing immigrant criminals. The member for Calgary-Nose Hill introduced Bill C-220 to end sentencing reduction for immigrants. This is a big issue. An editorial in The Globe and Mail said that judges in our current system “are protecting non-citizens from the consequences of their criminal conduct”, and the author lamented that no one seems to consider “whether Canadians would want those offenders as citizens” in the first place. Essentially, judges look at the current rules, which say that if a non-citizen is convicted of a serious crime with a sentence of six months or more in jail, they have to be deported, and they reduce the sentence to below six months so it does not affect the non-citizen's citizenship status, which we think is wrong.”
“We pushed hard to eliminate the online ceremony, and the government is, I think, slowly moving in that direction, but not fast enough, in our opinion. We suggested an end to the temporary foreign worker program. There is a youth jobs crisis in our country right now; the unemployment rate for Canadian youth is hovering around 15%, which is far too high. The temporary foreign worker program is part of the reason. Of course we need to consider agriculture and some other considerations, but generally we have way too many temporary foreign workers, and we do not need our immigration minister to be the chief HR officer for a place like Tim Hortons. I have nothing against Tim Hortons, but there are many Canadians who could work there. The minister confirmed, by the way, just a couple of days ago, that the program is staying.”
“It is the bill that would generate endless chain migration, which allows people not born in the country to become citizens, have their children not born in the country become citizens, and on and on. We tried very hard to put some common-sense amendments in the bill, which, of course, were rejected. The other big one is online citizenship ceremonies. The one-click online citizenship ceremonies are still, certainly in Saskatchewan, the majority of the ceremonies. For many newcomers to our country, the ceremony is the most important thing to them in this phase of their life. To have them sitting behind a computer at home because it is expedient for the department is just embarrassing, frankly. It does not convey the true purpose and meaning of becoming a Canadian citizen.”
“Unfortunately the Liberals blocked most of this work. Speaking of working hard, I want to mention that we on this side of the House have put a lot of effort and work into improving our immigration policies. A lot of people think the opposition's job is to oppose, and it certainly is, but we also want to propose solutions, so we have proposed many. Our entire caucus worked very hard under the leadership of our shadow minister for immigration, who is the member for Calgary-Nose Hill . She worked very hard and did a great job of making sure we had substantive policies that would actually help to fix our country. For example, we worked to restore the value of citizenship. That is a problem we have in our country right now. For example, we were very concerned about Bill C-3 .”
“We also put forward amendments on transparency so we could bring back some basic transparency on reporting. Often we have to do deep questioning and written questions to the government to try to find answers, and the government refuses to provide some of that information. Some of the amendments were passed, but not all of them, and some of them were stripped out. Probably the biggest success the Conservatives got was that we proposed that the government would not be able to do mass conversion of temporary residents to permanent residents; that amendment was accepted. We also proposed that the government would not be allowed to give mass extension to temporary residents with student visas and things like that. The bottom line is that we worked very hard to toughen up and fix our weak system.”
“We put forward many amendments to restore sanity to the asylum system, such as that lying to an officer would result in an automatic removal, that knowingly withholding information would automatically terminate a claim and that not showing up or not complying with basic requirements would terminate a claim. We also proposed that once someone had been denied, but then appealed, only emergency health care would be provided. That was rejected. We also proposed that designated learning institutions be on the hook when they bring someone into the country and that person claims asylum, but that was also rejected by the Liberals. (1130) We did work on human trafficking, trying to get amendments for tougher penalties to protect victims, but of course the Liberals voted no.”
“There is a story today from British Columbia, where 14 people were identified by the British Columbia extortion task force and were charged with extortion. A lot of effort was put into this. Extortion is a big problem right across the country, but particularly in B.C. Guess what all 14 of these newly charged people did. They claimed asylum, so their charges are now on hold because they are in the asylum system. It is probably a four-year wait, and of course they get benefits. They receive all the wonderful benefits we choose to give to people who are claiming asylum, even though we know the claims are illegitimate. We put forward an amendment to automatically reject asylum claims from any non-Canadian guilty of a serious offence, but of course it was rejected by the Liberal government.”
“We proposed 27 different amendments, and I think eight of them were accepted, so there were many that were not accepted. I have to commend the Bloc, which worked very hard at committee to help. Its members put forward some of their own ideas, we put forward ideas, and we were able to work together and get the committee to agree to a lot of things. Even the Liberals agreed to some things, but then of course had the Speaker turn them down once they came to the House. For example, with respect to foreign criminals, we had created an amendment that would deport people convicted of serious crimes, because there are many cases where judges are letting immigrants get lesser penalties. However, that amendment was not passed by the Liberals. Our asylum system is so broken.”
“Has anyone heard of the current session's Bill C-2? No, they have not, because it became stalled because it was a mess. The pieces of Bill C-2 that the government could rescue came into what is now Bill C-12 , which is what we are debating today. This is part of the government's pledge to do amazing things at unimaginable speeds. Here we are, and there have been no amazing things done. In the whole year, I think the government has passed two bills. If that is unimaginable speed, then I do not understand the word “unimaginable”. The purpose of the bill, partly, was to fix immigration problems around asylum and deportation, because everybody in our country knows we have tremendous problems in that area. There were some good things in it, but there were so many more things that we needed to do in order to properly fix our flawed system.”
“Canadians would probably be happy to know that oftentimes many of us from different parties meet in the dining room and talk about substantive issues. We actually are able to talk with each other and get business done. I want to thank Lynn, Charles, Guy and all the staff in the parliamentary dining room, as well as my dining room colleagues I talk to many times; they all know who they are. I thank them so much and wish them all a merry Christmas. I will move on to Bill C-12 . This was the marquee legislation of the government when it was introduced as Bill C-2 . Just so everybody is clear, Bill C-2 is the designation for the first bill introduced by a government. Bill C-1 is kind of a technical thing. The government members put all their effort into Bill C-2; it is the most important thing.”
“Actually, if we are in that mode, I have a better idea of something to ask the Prime Minister , and that is to grant Canadians what they really want, which is for him to go back to his job at Brookfield and allow the Conservatives to run this country and fix the massive problems we have. Continuing on the Christmas theme, I want to give heartfelt thanks to all the support staff in this place. There are translators, pages, people in food services, security people and all kinds of staff in this building, including our party staff and all our own staff, who work so hard. I really want to thank all of them and wish them all a very merry Christmas. I also want to give a special shout-out to the parliamentary dining room staff. They are always missed in the thanks. I am not a very good tipper, so this is my way to make up for that.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a great time to get up to speak. We are into the Christmas season now and kind of in that spirit. I was reading this morning about something the NDP interim leader, the member for Vancouver Kingsway , said yesterday. Apparently he had asked the Prime Minister to grant party status again to the NDP in order to, in his words, make the House “function better”. I do not think it is a good idea. I was thinking that maybe the member was just continuing his comedy shtick from the parliamentary press gallery thing a week ago, which, by the way, I think was quite funny. He was not as funny as our leader , but it was pretty good.”
“Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech. She spoke quite a bit about the one-year ban on asylum claimants, and she cherry-picked a couple of stories. I am sure we can always think of somebody who has been badly affected by any of the legislation we have. However, there are many cases of people abusing the system. Just today, I read that in her home province of British Columbia, there were 14 extortion suspects who, once they were charged with extortion, all mysteriously claimed asylum. All 14 of them claimed asylum. This is a classic example of what happens in our system with the way it is, the way it is open and loose. This is the part that we support closing, because it needs to be fixed. How can the hon. member support all of these criminals, rather than regular, ordinary Canadians?”
“This is all while Canadians are facing record-high food prices just in time for Christmas dinner. Young Canadians are told to make more sacrifices, yet the Prime Minister is doubling our deficit. When will the Prime Minister stop acting like a greasy banker who puts his own personal interest in Brookfield ahead of everyday Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, it is always a good day to be Brookfield under the Liberal government. Why is that? Canadians for Tax Fairness called Brookfield Canada's “runaway leader” in tax avoidance, and estimated it has skipped out on paying $6.5 billion in Canadian taxes. It is clear that when the Prime Minister was running Brookfield, he would rather dodge its tax bill than contribute to Canada. Canadians deserve one set of rules for everyone; instead we get special carve-outs for Brookfield and for the Prime Minister. The Conflict of Interest Act is clear that a public office holder must not involve themselves in any matter where they could benefit, yet a Brookfield executive told the committee the Prime Minister 's ethics screen is basically an open window.”