Larry Brock
Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, that minister and the government have had 11 years to get this right. Last week, Canada suffered a tragic loss when officer Marc Pinizzotto was shot and killed in the line of duty. It has now been revealed that the man responsible for the horrific crime was already out on probation. Then we learned that the U.S.”
“Mr. Speaker, the criminal charged in the Lambton College shooting, which left one person dead, is not surprisingly out on bail. Only under these weak-on-crime Liberals could a man charged with murder and attempted murder be back on the streets before justice is served.”
“Mr. Speaker, I can inform the parliamentary secretary that the Conservatives will never support the government's position in supporting the Senate amendment. I reject the premise of her entire speech, with all due respect.”
“Mr. Speaker, with respect to the Senate amendment that the government supports, my understanding was that the focus was to provide some special consideration for indigenous offenders in remote areas who may not have the resources and the swath of friends and family to act as sureties.”
“Sadly, only 13% of dangerous offenders in Canada are currently housed in maximum-security prisons. In 2023, of the 736 classified dangerous offenders in our country, 580 of them were classified to medium-security environments. Nearly 90% of dangerous offenders are currently housed in minimum-security or medium-security prisons.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am truly honoured to rise today to debate an absolutely crucial piece of legislation that seeks to restore justice to Canada's correctional services system. It would ensure the most dangerous offenders and mass murderers receive the punishment they absolutely deserve.”
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“In the spirit in which the Prime Minister and the government House leader made their comments today, I would hope that would be predictive of his approach and instructions to his parliamentary secretary and his colleagues on the justice committee.”
“Madam Speaker, that is an important question. I am very hopeful that 2026 ushers in a positive change in the House of Commons. Today the Prime Minister and the government House leader gave press conferences setting out their purpose for the winter and spring session. They want to prioritize the quick passage of Bill C-14 and Bill C-16 . We are currently debating that. In fact, it may have already been passed at justice committee, which started at 11 o'clock. We want to prioritize Bill C-14, because this is what Canadians want. I had a conversation with the justice minister , but we did not get to the point where he would actually admit to any willingness to accept reasonable amendments.”
“We believe that the role of the House is to protect Canadians, not to explain away its own inaction. The bill can be made better, but only if the Liberals are prepared to abandon their soft-on-crime reflex and take public safety seriously for a change.”
“The bill would empower judges to disregard virtually every mandatory prison sentence in the code, with the exception of two: murder and treason. That includes mandatory penalties for aggravated sexual assault with a firearm, human trafficking, extortion with a firearm, drive-by shootings and multiple firearm offences. If judges are permitted to simply opt out of these penalties, then nothing about these sentences is mandatory, full stop. This is not reform. This is an abdication of our responsibility. If the government were serious about public safety, it would split the poison pill from the bill and allow Parliament to work constructively on the provisions that genuinely protect Canadians. Conservatives believe that Parliament must stand with victims, not with legal loopholes. We believe accountability must be real, not optional.”
“We are pleased that the government finally adopted the substance of my colleague from Calgary Nose Hill 's private member's bill, Bill C-216 , to protect Canadians from this new and insidious form of exploitation. Likewise, the inclusion of mandatory reporting requirements for child sex abuse material, also drawn from that private member's bill, is a necessary step. I am also pleased to see the government finally adopting an approach that Conservatives have been calling for all along, recognizing the murder of an intimate partner as first degree, a reform championed by my colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola in his private member's bill. These positive measures do not excuse what comes next. Despite these additions, Bill C-16 continues the Liberal pattern of weakening accountability.”
“These are not talking points. These are StatsCan figures. Mandatory sentencing is not optional and never should be. Parliament did not impose these penalties casually or accidentally. They were put in place precisely because certain crimes are so grave, so dangerous and so destructive that Parliament determined that incarceration must be the baseline, not the exception. That is why it is so troubling that even where Bill C-16 contains measures we can acknowledge as constructive, the government insists on embedding them inside a broader, soft-on-crime framework that undermines their effectiveness. There are elements of the bill that move in the right direction. Banning the creation and distribution of deepfake images is necessary and long overdue.”
“We can continue down the Liberal path, drafting criminal law that collapses under constitutional pressure, inviting litigation and leaving victims behind, or we can reaffirm a basic democratic truth: Parliament sets law, courts apply it and the charter guards against true excess, not political discomfort. Bill C-16 , as written, fails that test. We must also consider the context in which Bill C-16 is being debated. Canadians are not imagining things. They are not misinformed. They are responding to reality. After nearly a decade of catch-and-release bail policies, the repeal of mandatory minimums and a long line of Liberal criminal justice reforms, Canadians are scared. They have every reason to be. Since 2015, trafficking has increased by over 80%. Sex assaults are up nearly 76%. Violent crime overall has increased by more than 50%.”
“(1250) Bill C-16 involves no clear statutory safety valve, no proportionality override, no exceptional circumstance clause and no direction to courts on how Parliament expects minimums to operate. It is unserious to claim that a Liberal crime bill protects victims when it systematically weakens sentencing. Victims do not experience crime as a hypothetical. They do not experience it as a charter seminar. They experience it as fear, loss, trauma and lasting harm. Mandatory minimums are about certainty, denunciation and public trust, which is sadly lacking after 10 years of failed Liberal policies. When the government undermines Parliament's ability to set clear consequences, it sends a message to communities that criminal accountability is negotiable. The House has a choice.”
“Crucially, the dissent recognized that judicial discretion already exists in the criminal process in charging decisions, prosecutorial elections, plea negotiations and sentencing ranges above the minimum. In other words, these judges acknowledged what the government refuses to admit: The system already has safety valves and Parliament is allowed to rely on them. This is where Bill C-16 collapses under its own weight. The Supreme Court has repeatedly indicated that carefully drafted safety valves can preserve mandatory minimums while protecting against gross disproportionality. The dissent in the Supreme Court decision of Nur, from 2015, made this explicit, pointing to hybrid offences and prosecutorial discretion as legitimate mechanisms to prevent unjust outcomes.”
“This is not what responsible law-making looks like and not what Canadians expect from the House. As Chief Justice Wagner warned, alongside Côté, Rowe and O'Bonsawin, using far-removed hypotheticals to dismantle Parliament's sentencing choices risks undermining democratic accountability itself. The dissent stated plainly that Parliament is not constitutionally required to sentence for the least serious imaginable case. That sentence alone dismantles the Liberal theory of criminal law. The dissent went further, warning that the majority's approach risks converting section 12 into a rolling licence to invalidate democratically enacted penalties untethered from real-world harm. The dissent emphasized that minimums serve expressive and denunciatory functions. They communicate society's moral judgment, not merely actuarial risk assessments.”
“Instead of responding to Senneville without discipline, by clarifying offence definitions, narrowing the application or adopting a narrowly tailored safety valve, the government chose a very different path. Bill C-16 does not correct a problem identified by the court. It uses Senneville as political cover to advance a long-standing ideological goal: the systematic dismantling of mandatory minimum penalties altogether. In other words, a contested, deeply divided Supreme Court decision, a five-four split, has now become the excuse for a sweeping legislative retreat. Bill C-16 is not in careful compliance with the charter. It is a capitulation, a surrender of Parliament's authority based on the most expansive reading of judicial power, even while the court warned against it.”
“That is precisely why the dissent in Senneville matters so much and why the Liberals would rather the House not talk about it. The dissenting justices issued a clear and forceful warning not only to the courts but to Parliament. They rejected the idea that section 12 of the charter requires lawmakers to sentence for the least serious imaginable application of an offence. They emphasized that mandatory minimums are constitutionally permissible where they reflect Parliament's judgment about the gravity of core criminal conduct. The dissent cautioned that using hypotheticals to strike down laws would transform section 12 of the charter into a weapon against democratic decision-making, allowing courts to invalidate Parliament's choices based on speculative scenarios rather than real-world harm.”
“The hypothetical imagined an 18-year-old who briefly received or possessed an image without evidence of predatory behaviour, coercion or exploitation. That scenario was then used to invalidate sentencing floors that were designed to address the most serious and harmful forms of child sexual exploitation, offences that involve deliberate conduct, repeat behaviour and profound harm to victims. This is not a reasonable hypothetical in any meaningful legislative sense. Parliament does not draft criminal law to address fleeting, technical-edged cases. It legislates for the heartland of an offence, the conduct that motivated Parliament to act in the first place. Stretching a law aimed at combatting child sexual exploitation to hypothetical outliers fundamentally distorts legislative intent.”
“The Supreme Court has never said that mandatory minimum penalties are illegal. It has never said that Parliament lacks the authority to impose them. What it has said repeatedly is that Parliament must legislate carefully. Bill C-16 would not do that. Instead, it would use a single, deeply divided decision as justification for dismantling sentencing law far beyond what the court required. (1245) Nowhere is that misrepresentation made clearer than in the Attorney General of Quebec v. Senneville. In that case, the majority of the court struck down mandatory minimum penalties for child pornography offences, relying not on the actual facts before it but on a constructed hypothetical scenario, a scenario that Parliament never intended to capture when it enacted those sentencing provisions.”
“This is where Bill C-16 becomes dangerous, because once Parliament enacts a mandatory minimum penalty without explicit statutory guardrails, it invites defence counsel to construct hypotheticals designed to stretch the law to its constitutional breaking point. This will lead to courts invalidating mandatory minimums incrementally, case by case. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute has warned that this cycle has systematically hollowed out Parliament's authority over sentencing, not because mandatory minimums are inherently unconstitutional, but because the Liberals refused to draft them responsibly. Bill C-16 repeats this mistake. The Liberals claim that removing mandatory minimum sentences, expanding judicial discretion and hollowing out sentencing floors are required by the charter and demanded by the Supreme Court. That is false.”
“Bill C-16 continues a now familiar Liberal strategy, which is drafting legislation not to withstand constitutional scrutiny but to invite it. The government legislates, knowing and, in some cases, hoping that courts will be asked to fix what Parliament refuses to resolve. Academic literature has warned for years that overly broad criminal provisions, combined with a rigid sentencing framework, create fertile ground for section 12 litigation, particularly when Parliament fails to include clear guardrails or safety valves. The Supreme Court's section 12 jurisprudence allows courts to assess mandatory minimum penalties using reasonable hypothetical scenarios. They are not absurd and fanciful scenarios, but ones that could realistically arise under the law.”
“Supreme Court jurisprudence has emphasized that gross disproportionality is reserved for punishment that is “so excessive as to outrage standards of decency”, not merely sentences that some judges might view as excessive or unnecessary. That distinction matters, because Parliament is constitutionally entitled to impose punishment that reflects denunciation, deterrence and moral condemnation, even when courts might prefer a lighter sentence. The Liberal narrative pretends that any mandatory minimum risks unconstitutionality. That is simply false. It is the narrative we heard in the 44th Parliament. What creates constitutional vulnerability is careless breadth, missing guardrails and deliberate legislative ambiguity, all of which are present in Bill C-16 .”
“I have seen their anguish and their fears. I have seen the aftermath of serious violent crimes, including gun violence. I have watched judges struggle to impose meaningful consequences within the frameworks the Liberals chose to weaken. When legislators strip away sentencing certainty, they do not empower justice; they inject inconsistency and unpredictability into a system that depends on public confidence to function. The charter does not prohibit mandatory minimum penalties. The Supreme Court of Canada has said that repeatedly in a number of decisions. Section 12 prohibits “cruel and unusual...punishment”. The test is not whether a sentence is harsh but whether it is grossly disproportionate. That is an exacting standard, and intentionally so.”
“It claims to modernize sentencing, while it would reopen every door the House has tried to close. The Liberal government wants credit for being tough on crime, but it refuses to do the hard work of writing laws that actually withstand constitutional scrutiny, protect communities and respect Parliament's role in setting punishment. The Supreme Court of Canada, in the mid-nineties and in 2016, released two landmark decisions that provided a road map to the Liberal government, under then prime minister Justin Trudeau, to do exactly these things, and nothing was done. (1240) My views on this issue are not theoretical. They are shaped by decades of working inside the criminal justice system and my nearly 30 years as a lawyer, including many as a Crown prosecutor. I have stood in courtrooms with victims.”
“Mandatory minimum penalties have been around since the very first Criminal Code in 1892 and were brought in by consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments. Bill C-5 deliberately silenced the message reflecting the gravity of the danger that certain offences cause. Bill C-16 would do nothing to restore it. Sadly, it would continue down the same path. This is not evidence-based reform; it is policy-making driven by ideology, insulated from the real-world harm it causes. For victims of crime, the justice system is not an academic exercise and it is not a theoretical debate about hypotheticals; it is about whether the law means what it says and whether consequences are real. That is where the bill gets it wrong. Bill C-16 tells victims one thing, yet it would deliver another.”
“Bill C-5 stripped away 14 mandatory minimums for very serious criminal offences, including drug charges, that Parliament had deliberately put in place to ensure the denunciation of and deterrence for serious crimes. At that time, I said that removing mandatory minimum penalties under the banner of compassion would not make our justice system fairer; it would make it weaker, less predictable and less capable of protecting the public. Four years later, that warning has not only aged well but sadly been proven correct. Mandatory minimum penalties were never about denying judicial discretion. They were about ensuring that Parliament spoke loudly and clearly about the gravity of that danger. As I said then, and as I say today, this is not a partisan issue.”
“Bill C-16 fails in that responsibility, not because it is too firm but because it is too careless. It continues a troubling pattern we have seen time and time again of laws that sound tough in press releases, but are drafted so loosely, so vaguely and so defensively that they hand the control of criminal sentencing to the courts by default. Bill C-16 claims to modernize sentencing. In reality, it would open the door to a constitutional crisis, chaos, further litigation and a steady erosion of Parliament's role in defining the moral boundaries of criminal law. I want to remind the House that what we are debating today is simply not new. More than four years ago, during debate on Liberal Bill C-5 , I stood in the chamber and warned of exactly where this approach would lead.”
“Madam Speaker, welcome back to the House. I welcome all of my friends on the other side, as well as my colleagues, and I wish every member of the House a very happy new year. I hope to have a really productive winter and spring session in the 45th Parliament. I start by reflecting on what Bill C-16 would and would not do. At the outset, I can state that the bill is largely supported by the Conservative Party of Canada, but there are some red lines, which I will elaborate on, that need to be discussed. We can start that debate as early as today. When Parliament legislates on criminal law, it does not engage in abstraction, but exercises the most serious power entrusted to a democratic legislature: the power to define wrongdoing, protect the public, including victims, and impose meaningful consequences on those who harm others.”
“Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister should actually show up at the justice committee and see what his colleagues are doing. We showed up, ready to fix the Liberals' broken bail system, but after more than 17 attempts to prioritize Bill C-14 , the answer from the Liberals is always no. It is clear the government is unwilling to take even modest steps toward keeping Canadians safe. Still, today, it continues to block tougher bail measures at every turn. When will it stop obstructing, so we can finally scrap Liberal bail once and for all?”
“Mr. Speaker, Conservatives asked the Liberals 17 times at the justice committee to start working on the bail bill. We moved 17 motions to get to bail, and 17 times the Liberals blocked it. They voted against our jail not bail act. They voted against our three strikes motion. Now they are blocking their own bill. At what point will the government stop voting against every single measure to finally scrap Liberal bail?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals had multiple opportunities to crack down on violent repeat offenders. Instead, they chose religious censorship over public safety. The Liberal members for Burnaby Central , Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle , Mount Royal and even the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice must answer to Canadians as to why they keep obstructing the study of Bill C-14 . They were given the chance to protect Canadians. They chose not to. How many more murders, sex assaults and violent extortions are enough for the tired Liberal government to finally protect Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, last night at the justice committee, Conservatives moved to immediately prioritize Bill C-14 and scrap dangerous Liberal bail laws. What did the Liberals do? Shamefully, they blocked us, not once, not twice, but three times. Now we just learned that they cancelled today's eight-hour meeting. Instead of stopping criminals, the Liberals are more concerned with prosecuting religious expression. Why do the Liberals not just get out of the way and let Conservatives finally fix the broken bail system?”
“Mr. Speaker, Canadians are tired of excuses. They want groceries they can afford. The food price report put it bluntly: If 2025 was difficult for Canadian households, 2026 will not be easier. After the most expensive Prime Minister in Canadian history has already shattered household budgets and forced families into desperation, Canadians are now being told the pain will only deepen. Will the Prime Minister commit today, yes or no, to scrapping the industrial carbon tax and the fuel tax on food production, or will he keep choosing ideology over empty stomachs?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister told Canadians he should be judged by prices at the grocery store. The results are in, and the Liberals have failed. In my community of Brantford, the city council declared a food insecurity emergency. Liberal inflationary spending is causing a run at food banks. Grocery bills have doubled, and the outlook for 2026 is even worse. After all of this damage, will the Liberals finally admit that their taxes and reckless spending caused this crisis and scrap them now before even more Canadians go hungry?”
“Madam Speaker, that is their formula. They love to mislead Canadians and paint a rosy picture that we have never had it so good. They can tell that to the people in my riding who are lining up in record numbers at food banks. They can tell that to a struggling— An hon. member: Oh, oh! Larry Brock: They can stop the heckling, and—”
“Madam Speaker, I offer my congratulations to the member and her riding for that stellar performance and win. On the issue of the Prime Minister flip-flopping, the Prime Minister wrote a book called Values . He was absolutely against everything that he is promising now to Canadians. With all due respect to my friend, I have some deep reservations as to his true motive. Is this ultimately going to benefit Brookfield in the end? Wherever the Prime Minister goes, four times around the world, meeting with world leaders and stakeholders in Canada and stakeholders in the U.S., Brookfield is not too far behind. He is always at the ready to take a phone call. I really question his sincerity in everything he has announced so far.”
“Madam Speaker, the level of hypocrisy coming from that member is absolutely through the roof. I am a proud member of the justice committee. I am the vice-chair of the justice committee. Every member of the Liberal government, including that member, should be ashamed of what has been happening at the justice committee. They have been stalling, filibustering, cancelling meetings without notice at the very last minute, not scheduling any meetings this week, the very last week of our sitting. They do not have the audacity to put together a meeting. The member needs to look at himself in the mirror. They have failed Canadians. They are not delivering on the promise of bail reform, because they are dragging their heels.”
“We will continue to fight for an affordable budget, paycheques that beat inflation, homes that people can buy, food that families can afford and an economy that rewards hard work again. Canadians have simply sacrificed enough after 10 years of failed leadership. It is time to end the Liberals' out-of-control spending and bring home an affordable budget for all Canadians.”
“Before this budget, Conservatives offered a clear, responsible plan and solution: Bring down the deficit to the level the Liberals promised, scrap the hidden taxes on food, end the inflation tax by cutting government waste, and restore housing supply by cutting red tape and development charges. Every single one was rejected. This is the most expensive Prime Minister this country has ever had, and Canadians are paying the bill at the grocery store, at the rent counter and on their credit cards. Every dollar the Liberals spend comes from Canadian pockets. The more the Liberals spend, the higher food costs rise, the higher rent rises and the higher the interest payment rises. Canadians now spend more on debt interest than on health care transfers. Conservatives will not and cannot support this costly budget.”
“Even with claimed savings, total new spending still rises to $90 billion, which translates to $5,400 per family. Even Fitch Ratings warned that this budget erodes Canada's fiscal credibility. The Prime Minister also promised 500,000 new homes per year. The PBO exposed the real truth: Only 5,200 homes per year will be added. Build Canada Homes will construct just over 1,600 units annually. Rents will rise to over $2,000 per month for a two-bedroom unit. Instead of restoring the dream of home ownership, the Liberals are forcing Canadians into permanent renting status.”
“It is complete and utter incompetence. That single moment says everything about this government's approach: no diligence before the cheque is written, no accountability after workers lose their jobs, and no consequences for those who sign away billions without even reading the fine print. When the government claimed that it was separating operating and capital spending, Canadians were warned that the books were being cooked. The Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed exactly that. Capital investment was inflated by $94 billion. True capital spending is 30% lower than claimed. Corporate subsidies were falsely counted as investment. The operating budget will not balance itself for at least five years. The debt-to-GDP ratio is rising again. The new fiscal anchor has only a 7.5% chance of being met.”
“(1300) The Prime Minister also promised to negotiate a win with the United States, elbows up. Since that promise, tariffs have doubled, negotiations have stalled and foundational industries face collapse. At Algoma Steel, 1,000 workers lost their jobs after $400 million in Liberal subsidies with no job guarantees. At Crofton, 375 workers lost their livelihoods. Last week, Canadians were also getting a stunning glimpse of how casually this government handles billions of taxpayer dollars, when it was revealed that the Minister of Industry never even read the contract that handed $15 billion in subsidies to Stellantis, a deal she later defended after the company announced 3,000 job cuts. Think about that: There were $15 billion committed and thousands of workers laid off, and the minister responsible never reviewed the agreement.”
“This is what an affordability crisis looks like on a pay stub. Canadians do not need accounting tricks. They need paycheques they can live on. Let us talk about the day care failure. For young families trying to raise children in Canada, the problem gets even worse. The government loves to point out the $10-a-day child care as a flagship success, but for families who cannot find a space or are still paying double that, the branding means nothing. Half of parents now report difficulty finding child care. Nearly one-third of families are on wait lists. Over three-quarters of centres have wait-lists, and 86% cannot find staff. Even the Auditor General confirmed that the $10-a-day promise is not the reality many families experience. Once again, this government announces a photo op and fails to deliver.”
“When Conservatives demanded that the government scrap the hidden taxes on food, namely the industrial carbon tax, the food packaging tax and the fuel standard tax still adding 17¢ per litre, the Liberals voted no. The results speak for themselves. Under the Prime Minister , Canada now has one of the weakest growth performances in the G7. Productivity is collapsing, and business investment is falling quarter after quarter. Nearly one in five part-time workers wants full-time hours but cannot find them, because the jobs simply are not there. Last month alone, Canada lost 9,400 full-time jobs. At the same time, nearly 30,000 Canadians over the age of 55 were forced into part-time work over the past year, 10,000 of them just in the last month, as rising grocery bills pushed seniors back into the workforce.”
“More than a quarter cite housing. This is Canada in 2025, with parents skipping meals for their children, seniors choosing between prescriptions and groceries, and workers lining up at food banks after full-time shifts. “Canada's Food Price Report” for 2026 confirms the worst: Families will pay nearly $1,000 more per year for food; 86% of Canadians are eating less meat, and beef, chicken and pork are all increasing at once, a devastating trifecta. Canadians are being forced to abandon healthy food because they simply cannot afford it. Why is this happening? The Prime Minister keeps saying that inflation is global but government costs are very local. Fuel, fertilizer, transport and packaging: Every cost that hits a Canadian farmer now hits a family at the checkout.”
“Food Banks Canada puts it bluntly: “Employment is no longer a reliable buffer against poverty.” That means that people are working but still going hungry. In my community of Brantford, in the past three years, the number of people relying on the food bank in a single year has doubled, from 5,000 to more than 10,000 people. The situation was so bad that the city council had to declare a food insecurity emergency. As the Brantford Food Bank director put it, “In 20 years on this job, I wasn’t sure we’d ever get here, where food security is being taken as an emergency in our community.” When a Canadian city is forced to declare a food emergency, that is not a trend. It is a warning and a direct indictment of the failures of leadership in the country. More than half of food bank users now cite food prices as a reason they are there.”
“Today, Canada has one of the weakest growth performances in the G7. Food inflation is double the Bank of Canada's target, with food prices rising nearly 40% faster than in the U.S. and homebuilding predicted to fall by as much as 13%. This is not recovery. This is the cost of the Prime Minister , the costliest the country has ever seen. Who would have imagined that we would have a hunger crisis in a G7 country? Last week, Feed Ontario released a hunger report that should shock the conscience of every member in the House, reporting 8.7 million food bank visits in Ontario alone and 24,000 visits every single day. One in 16 Ontarians now relies on food bank usage. Here is the statistic that breaks the Liberal illusion that everything is fine: Nearly one in four food bank users actually has a job.”
“Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the great constituents of Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations. Budgets are not just balance sheets. They have consequences, and the consequences of the budget are already visible: higher food prices, fewer full-time jobs, rising debt and record food bank use. This is not theory. It is the lived, sad reality of families who can no longer afford groceries, seniors forced to return to work to cover basic costs, and workers who cannot find full-time hours. The budget did not fix that reality. It locked it in. When the Prime Minister told Canadians how to judge his government, he said to judge him by “their experience at the grocery store”. Canadians have done exactly that, and what they see is sticker shock where supper used to be.”
“Madam Speaker, the election was at the end of April. We returned to Parliament at the end of May. We had approximately five to six weeks of sitting. We then broke for the summer. Approximately six months have passed since the election, and the very first piece of criminal justice legislation brought forward by the Attorney General is Bill C-9 . The Liberals are prioritizing it. We had our debate. We got it to committee. Members heard, in my speech, about delays, cancelled meetings or meetings ending abruptly, which was all done by the Liberal chair at the time, who is now a minister. I listened to the member talk about obstruction and delays. He is a master of hypocrisy. We were prepared to sit until midnight this past Tuesday. We are prepared to sit until midnight today to get to the heart of Bill C-9 .”
“Madam Speaker, that particular member just spews hatred and spews disgust. He impugns the integrity of every one of my Conservative colleagues. I am so disgusted in that particular framing of the question and the content of that question that I am not even going to respond. It is just not worthy of it.”
“Madam Speaker, they should be very afraid. Every faith leader should be very afraid about what the Liberal government, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, wishes to do. As I indicated, religious freedom is under attack at the hands of the Liberal government. They absolutely need to speak out loud and clear. Those members of religious organizations across this country in Liberal-held ridings, in Bloc ridings, need to reach out to their members to express very clearly that they do not support this attack on religious freedom.”
“It has had no success whatsoever, because of the existence of the current criminal provisions that deal with incitement to hatred.”
“Madam Speaker, the member clearly did not listen to my speech. The issue is not the religious exemption itself. It is the legal threshold that prosecutors must look at when presented with a case: Is there a reasonable prospect of a conviction? Is it in the public interest? As I indicated, the words of that radical Islamist were disgusting, absolutely abhorrent, but they do not meet the threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. They have absolutely nothing to do with section 319. That was the heart of my speech. If there is a lawyer within his caucus, perhaps that lawyer can do a little bit of research for the member, because the member needs to realize that for several decades that particular defence has been seldom used.”
“But even beyond constitutional risk, removing the defence is a profound moral and civil liberties mistake. We should not want, let alone empower, prosecutors to criminalize any form of prayer. Religious texts across traditions contain pleas for justice against enemies, metaphors for divine retribution and expressions of anguish, symbolism and cosmic struggle. This is not the realm of the police. If the state begins parsing Psalms...line-by-line in a courtroom, then we have forgotten why the Charter exists at all. This is all the more reason for everyone in the House to support our motion to ensure that every major stakeholder who wishes to express an opinion to defend the religious expression that we have in the charter needs to be heard. If the Liberals will not do it on their own, we are asking collectively for the House to do it.”
“She wrote further that “even if it had involved the defence, one inflammatory prayer at a political rally is not a justification for dismantling a safeguard that protects millions of Canadians from state intrusion into matters of faith.” That is what the Liberal government continues to do and has done, not only in this particular Parliament but in the 44th. She continued: The religious defence has also been essential to the constitutionality of the hate-speech prohibition itself. In R v Keegstra, the Supreme Court wrote that the offence is a minimal impairment on the right to freedom of expression, in part because of “the presence of the Sec. 319(3) defences.” The courts upheld the law because the religious exemption exists. Remove it, and the constitutional floor collapses.”