Andrew Lawton
Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“They will claim full coverage, as we see across southwestern Ontario in particular, when everyone who lives there knows that is just a joke. I thank my colleague across the aisle from Compton—Stanstead for introducing this very important discussion. I have actually spent some time in her riding in the past, and I know it is very rural.”
“I want to see us identify ways to ensure accuracy in telecom coverage maps in rural Canada, but I also want to see us fix and expand those areas where we know the coverage is not there.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise and speak on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. It is a particular privilege to speak to a bill such as this one, which speaks directly to one of the most persistent concerns I hear from people in the rural communities in my riding, scattered across Elgin County…”
“We still have the same problem, which is that we have people looking to a new technology, but that not solving the problem, which is applicable to not just the farmers in my riding, but all the people who live in these rural communities who want to work in these communities, want to study in these communities and, as my colleague for Aval…”
“As technology evolves, we see farmers incorporating more and more technology into their work that requires cellular connectivity, especially if they are out in the field, far from the Wi-Fi routers they may have in their homes or, increasingly, in their barns.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. It is with great pride and pleasure that I present a petition on behalf of representatives of the Elgin County Drowning Prevention Coalition, including Briar McCaw, Linda King and Nathan MacIntyre of the RIP Current Information Project.”
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“I appreciate my colleague raising this issue. It is about time we get some attention for rural Canada from the Liberal government.”
“I want to see us identify ways to ensure accuracy in telecom coverage maps in rural Canada, but I also want to see us fix and expand those areas where we know the coverage is not there. This is a crucial issue, and it is one that has wide-ranging implications for the economy and business, for connectivity and well-being, and yes, even for public safety and justice. Conservatives will always stand in support of transparency and accountability. I believe that companies have a moral obligation to provide accurate information, and I believe that government, given the manner in which it regulates telecom companies, needs to do its job and ensure this. My question I would like to leave everyone with is this: We have a framework proposed here. What do we do to turn this into real action? That is what I would like to see.”
“We still have the same problem, which is that we have people looking to a new technology, but that not solving the problem, which is applicable to not just the farmers in my riding, but all the people who live in these rural communities who want to work in these communities, want to study in these communities and, as my colleague for Avalon said a few moments ago, hopefully want to stay in these communities. We do not want people having to leave the place they call home because they feel they do not have the technical capabilities they need to live their lives there, to feel secure there and to feel like they can be on the go and run their businesses there. I want to see from this Liberal government a real commitment to rural communities, like the ones I have the great privilege and honour of representing.”
“We are sometimes talking about communities that are 15 to 20 minutes outside of very large cities, like London or St. Thomas, which are still seeing these coverage dead zones. If we cannot have full coverage in an area as densely populated as southwestern Ontario, we are certainly not going to have it in areas of the country that are far more sparsely populated and far more rural. We know that the telecom companies have tried to respond to some of these concerns by saying that we can move ahead with satellite technology. We have seen Rogers, in particular, Bell as well, advance satellite phones as an answer to some of these problems, but again, if people are near the Canada-U.S. border, as the vast majority of Canadians are, this satellite technology is not available to them.”
“He talked about affordability, which again is a very important issue, but I would love to see concrete action from the government on the actual question of accuracy in the coverage maps. Here is where I hope we can go if Bill C-268 is referred to committee. The bill requires a process for ensuring accuracy, but that is only the first step. We also have to be able to expand that coverage. In that sense, I hope this can be the beginning of a longer-term discussion about not just identifying where these dead zones are, but also fixing them. I do not wish to be biased, but actually I do wish to be biased towards my part of the country, because it is a beautiful place. However, the regions I am talking about are not even insanely rural and remote areas.”
“However, we are talking about establishing, as a baseline, an expectation that a lot of Canadians have that they are not going to pay for a service they are not receiving, and that they are not going to pay for a service that is not available to them at all points, especially when they may need it most. It is interesting that the bill happened to come up today. Last week, I rose in the House and asked a question in question period about this very issue, which was about what the industry minister would do to ensure accuracy in telecom maps. I was very pleased that the parliamentary secretary to the industry minister rose to answer my question, but he did not actually address the substance of the issue.”
“It is important to note that I am not talking about situations where, every once in a while, a call drops in an area. I am talking about perennial dead zones, where the telecoms companies are claiming they offer coverage, but the people attempting to use their phones there are not receiving it. That is a very important distinction. (1820) We know that there are always going to be glitches and down points. We know that there are going to be slight variances and variations in coverage from day to day. We know that the weather can affect this. We know that there are going to be technical issues on the coverage maps.”
“While there has been leadership from provincial governments and, in some cases, from the federal government over the past years on rural broadband, this idea of rural cellular connectivity seems to have been almost entirely ignored. I go back to two things that I believe need to change fundamentally. One is something that I hope and am optimistic this bill could address, which is the accuracy of coverage maps. The bill would require the CRTC to establish a process to ensure the accuracy of mobile network coverage data provided by Canadian carriers. This means that when people in Sparta, Iona, Iona Station or Dutton look at the coverage areas for a company that might want their business as a cellular customer, there has to be accuracy in those maps.”
“If a person cannot call 911, they cannot get the help they may need in a crisis. We also have, in general, the economic needs of travelling around rural communities. Stores increasingly want to use QR codes to load a menu at a restaurant, for example, or to redeem a coupon someone may have found. These rely on cellular connectivity that, increasingly in rural communities, is not available. One important point I will raise here is that rural communities have, for much of the last 10 years, felt very ignored by the Liberal government. We see announcement after announcement devoted to big cities. We have people in rural communities truly feeling left behind.”
“As technology evolves, we see farmers incorporating more and more technology into their work that requires cellular connectivity, especially if they are out in the field, far from the Wi-Fi routers they may have in their homes or, increasingly, in their barns. In our work on the justice committee, we heard from Liz Brown of Valora Place, which is an abused women's centre in St. Thomas, about how domestic and intimate partner violence in rural communities can be aggravated by not having the cell signal to make emergency calls. I do not wish to be overly dramatic or alarmist, but sometimes, a lack of cellular connectivity is literally a life-or-death issue if a person cannot get a signal to make a call. That is the case not just in an intimate partner violence situation, but in any emergency.”
“Sometimes, it is an inconvenience. I am sure that we have all had periods when the whip could not get a hold of us because we were in an area without cell coverage. Still, for a lot of Canadians, that is incredibly important. I want to explain what cellular service is, fundamentally. We can often trivialize the idea of being connected, and for good reason. In this world, we are overconnected sometimes, but we are not talking about the ability to download a game. We are not talking about the ability to idly scroll the Internet. For people in rural communities, the ability to connect to a cellular network is absolutely critical.”
“They will claim full coverage, as we see across southwestern Ontario in particular, when everyone who lives there knows that is just a joke. I thank my colleague across the aisle from Compton—Stanstead for introducing this very important discussion. I have actually spent some time in her riding in the past, and I know it is very rural. Parts of it are very similar to my own riding. I know her constituents see many of the same challenges that mine do and that members across the aisle have seen in their own communities. It is something we encounter. One of the things I love the most about my role is getting to criss-cross all of these different parts of these ridings and communities where people have to be on the go. Sometimes, it is a great privilege to be in areas where no one can call me. That is sometimes a convenience.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise and speak on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. It is a particular privilege to speak to a bill such as this one, which speaks directly to one of the most persistent concerns I hear from people in the rural communities in my riding, scattered across Elgin County from Rodney to West Lorne, Straffordville, Vienna and Port Burwell. Oftentimes, they do not have dropped calls because they live in dead zones where they cannot even make a call. They cannot so much as send a text message or load a web page on their phone. Obviously, we cannot have coverage everywhere we go in the country, but we look on the coverage maps that are published by many of the large telecoms companies and realize that much of what is on those maps is pure fiction.”
“Mr. Speaker, my second petition urges the transport minister to do the work of making CN reconnect the tracks between St. Thomas and London, which CTA order 1990-R-673 said it did not have the right to remove. The London and Port Stanley Railway was one of the first railway lines built in Ontario. It has historical and cultural significance to Elgin County and, specifically, to the communities of Port Stanley and St. Thomas. The national transportation agency, as petitioners point out, ruled that CN Rail could not sever the connection to the southern Port Stanley line and ordered this restorative action. Petitioners want to restore railway heritage in my community and have the transport minister reconnect this line.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. It is with great pride and pleasure that I present a petition on behalf of representatives of the Elgin County Drowning Prevention Coalition, including Briar McCaw, Linda King and Nathan MacIntyre of the RIP Current Information Project. The signatories of this petition point out that there are an average of 485 drowning fatalities in Canada every year, and non-fatal drowning incidents are nearly four times as common as fatal drowning. Drowning has one of the highest cost-per-case figures of all unintentional injury types, leading to estimates of over $191 million spent on drowning-related care, as reported by Parachute Canada. Drowning is a public health issue with a very significant impact, especially in communities like mine.”
“Mr. Speaker, we have heard the Prime Minister 's announcements before. What we have not seen is real action. Again, the Prime Minister has travelled around the world and failed to deliver a single new free trade agreement, while Canadians suffer. Even the Liberals' so-called surveillance pricing announcement yesterday will not even be in effect until at least 2028, meaning it is yet another announcement that is not delivering results for Canadians. Of food bank users in Canada, 2.2 million in a single month last year, one-third are children. When will the Prime Minister reverse course and stop driving Canadians into the food banks?”
“Mr. Speaker, it is time once again. All of the G7 leaders are gathering together, and our Prime Minister has lots to talk about. He can brag that he is the only one of them to lead his country into a recession in the time he has been in office. In fact, he is the only leader in the G20 to do that. The fact that Canada is in a recession is just one measure of the way things are not going well for so many Canadians. We have families living in RVs in parking lots, we have seniors sleeping in Tim Hortons because they have nowhere else to go, and we have food bank usage at record highs, yet the Prime Minister says affordability is the best it has been in years. If this is the best, will he tell us what the worst would look like?”
“Mr. Speaker, what a mess this is. I actually feel bad for the Prime Minister that this is the cabinet he has to deal with. The fisheries minister shrugged because she did not even know what a question was about, before winging it anyway with a non-answer. The foreign affairs minister just said she is consulting to cover up three years of inaction. The public safety minister is refusing to listen to Canadians' concerns on Bill C-22 and is hell-bent on ramming it through. I thought we actually had an overperformer with the treasury board president 's finding his notes today, but then the Liberals did not let him answer a question anyway, because he did not have the answer. Is the Prime Minister happy with his front bench? Canadians sure as heck are not.”
“As I say that now, Liberals are groaning and laughing, which speaks exactly to what I am saying. What does my colleague think about the fact that, even right now, the Liberals are laughing at the idea that Christians could be the target of hate?”
“Mr. Speaker, I cannot thank my colleague from York—Durham enough, not just for his speech tonight but for his tremendous leadership on Bill C‑9 , meeting with faith communities, members of the Jewish community, the Muslim community, the Christian community, all across the country, people who have raised concerns, people whom the government says it is protecting but who feel the opposite is true. One of the comments that stuck out from what my colleague said was with regard to the selective nature of how we define hate and how hate laws are applied. I will note that, earlier in the House, a member of the Liberals gave an enumerated list of people who have experienced hate in this country, and both times he did that, he left out Christians, despite the fact that 123 Christian churches have been burned or vandalized over the last five years.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am grateful the minister is here. He and I worked at the same time in Canadian media, and I have a good relationship with him. However, his government's record on civil liberties and freedom of expression could not be worse. He talks about the horrors that have been inflicted upon the Jewish community, in particular, and I share those concerns. I have been sounding the alarm about those concerns when there has been a failure to act in enforcing existing laws. It is illegal to incite genocide. It is illegal to obstruct someone from entering a house of worship. It is illegal to threaten violence and harm. If existing laws are not being enforced, why does the minister think these ones will be?”
“Mr. Speaker, I will start with a quote: “[Bill C-9] has the potential to criminalize peaceful protesters and legitimate dissent. This bill, in its current form, gives too much discretionary power to law enforcement, allowing for subjectivity.” That was from the Liberal member for Nunavut a couple of months ago. I have a question for the Secretary of State for Combatting Crime. Her colleague, the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture , is a lawyer. He said the following: “In Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Romans, there are passages with clear hatred.... There should...be discretion for prosecutors to press charges.” Is he right or wrong in his interpretation of hate speech laws applying to scripture?”
“When the secretary of state says that this is all Conservative misinformation, is she saying the United Church of Canada, the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Canadian Muslims are misinforming, or is it just anyone they disagree with? This is a very important point, and the Liberal government has refused at every stage to listen to Canadians. Will it start now?”
“Mr. Speaker, I am grateful that the secretary of state just admitted that the government is thinking of this bill as a limit on freedom of expression. That means we are actually just debating whether it is reasonable. That is a very important concession, and it is the first time we have heard section 1 of the charter from the government in the context of Bill C‑9 . I will note that the secretary of state put on notice her intent to seek closure 12 minutes after the debate on this bill began. She and her colleagues have no interest in listening to Canadians, and there are a lot of them. For example, 4 My Canada, led by Faytene Grasseschi, shares that there have been 194,000 phone calls; 1,000 organizations that have signed a declaration against Bill C‑9 , representing 1.4 million Canadians; and 240,000 pieces of mail.”
“I believe that the standing order does not actually permit her to move this motion of closure or to introduce this motion today.”
“Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, Standing Order 57 says that: Immediately before the order of the day for resuming an adjourned debate is called, or if the House be in committee of the whole, any minister of the Crown who shall have given notice at a previous sitting of his or her intention so to do, may move that the debate shall not be further adjourned, or that the further consideration of any resolution or resolutions, clause or clauses, section or sections, preamble or preambles, title or titles, shall be.... It is a long sentence. The point of this is that Standing Order 57 is clear that a minister of the Crown must do it. This is the Secretary of State for Combatting Crime , who does not have a department and is not the minister sponsoring the bill.”
“Mr. Speaker, this point of order pertains to footnote 23 of section 22 of the green book, regarding presenting petitions. I think if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to return to Routine Proceedings for the sole purpose of allowing the presentation of petitions.”
“Mr. Speaker, if we took the tax off all used goods, their talking points would be tax-free. We asked the question four times, and got zero answers. We came with a solution: a Conservative bill to save Canadians thousands of dollars by taking the GST off used cars, which are taxed two, three and even four times, as many times as the Liberals avoided answering the question. It is a very simple question: In my part of the country and for MPs across the House, driving is not a luxury but a necessity, so will the Liberals join us and take the GST off used cars?”
“Mr. Speaker, we know how bad inflation has gotten in Canada. We know grocery prices are through the roof. Fuel prices are skyrocketing, and even the cars that Canadians need to fuel up are becoming more and more unaffordable for the middle class. The prices of used cars have doubled in the last seven years in this country, and the government is still putting the federal sales tax on them each and every time they are sold, sometimes collecting double, triple or quadruple revenue off the backs of Canadians. Conservatives come armed with solutions. We have Bill C-285 , which would take the GST off of used cars and save Canadians thousands. Will the Liberals support it?”
“Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. We disagree on many things, but he was right to point out that the Liberals have a tendency to impose their own solutions on the provinces and on Canadians. As for Bill C‑30 , the Liberals cut the debate short. They refused to give important witnesses the opportunity to appear before the committee and they tried to push through ideas that they did not campaign on. What does the member think that says about the Liberals' commitment to accountability?”
“It is a great honour to present this private member's bill. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)”
“Bill C-285. Introduction and first reading moved for leave to introduce Bill C-285, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (used motor vehicles) . He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise for the first time as a member of Parliament to present a private member's bill. I will give a little bit of context. Since 2019, the price of a used car in Canada has doubled. Even though new automobiles are taxed at the full rate, when cars are resold, Canadians have to pay tax yet again, being doubly taxed for something, and potentially being taxed triply or quadruply. For most Canadians, especially in rural areas, driving is a necessity. This is a very important affordability measure I am putting forward in the bill, which would cut the GST on used cars, saving Canadians thousands of dollars and standing up for the middle class.”
“Clearly, when the Prime Minister told Canadians to make sacrifices, he was talking about common people feeding their families and not his mile-high caviar and champagne menu. Why is it that we always get lectures and gaslighting from the elitist net-zero banker class while ordinary people who build the country are the ones who have to pay the price?”
“Mr. Speaker, Canadian food banks continue to see record increases. Back home, the St. Thomas Elgin Food Bank's demand has tripled in just five years. Canadians do not need Liberal talking heads on TV or members across the aisle to tell them that we are in a recession. They feel it every day when trying to feed their families. We have two out of five Canadians struggling to put food on the table, 60% feeling anxiety about their personal finances and 40% literally losing sleep wondering how they are going to make ends meet. At the same time, the Prime Minister has spent nearly $1 million on inflight catering over the last year, a catering bill that could feed a Canadian family for years.”
“Mr. Speaker, I recall that in one of my earlier interventions in this House, I wanted to do a history of Liberal censorship, but I had only 20 minutes and I knew I would run out of time. We have now seen four iterations of the online harms act: Bill C-8 , Bill C-22 , Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 . It may sound like I am rhyming off numbers in a bingo game, but all of these bills would restrict the rights of Canadians. I mentioned censorship, and the Minister of Public Safety appeared. It is like Beetlejuice . At the end of the day, we all have to stand firm for freedom in this House and this chamber. We need to fight against 10 years of a Liberal record of pushing against it.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is such an honour to work alongside my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley. I have been such an admirer of his work for a great many years. I look across the aisle, and the eye rolls I see and the giggles I hear make me think that perhaps we do not have a huge amount of faith that the motion will succeed, but I hope that the Liberals who are not perhaps listening to this right now will do the right thing. My colleague has made some tremendous observations, in and out of the chamber, about the government's history with indigenous peoples, and this is something I value learning more and more about. I think the takeaway is that regardless of someone's beliefs, regardless of their identity, the very worst thing the government can do is impose its value system and its belief system on them.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am so grateful to be able to work alongside my colleague from Yorkton-Melville. I believe I said it in my remarks today, but it bears repeating: Religious freedom for one is religious freedom for all. It includes the right of people of all faiths to live out their values. It also includes the right of people of no faith to criticize religion. Sometimes I may find that hurtful, but I do not trust the government, nor do we want a society in which the government is the arbiter of values and beliefs. Often people will bring up the idea of the separation of church and state. By opposing Bill C-9 , we would actually be protecting that sacred separation by keeping the state out of places of worship. I hope my Liberal colleagues will support our amendment to the motion, to get rid of this bill once and for all.”
“If we take away the right for faith communities to live out their values and beliefs, we also have to be prepared to give up that philanthropic benefit that gives us so much in this country.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for his support on this and for the work he has done in standing up for freedoms. I will say two things on this. The first is that where the problematic parts of the bill are coming from is itself a signal. It shows that the Liberal government does not fundamentally respect the role that faith plays in society, and religious freedom. When that is the frame the Liberals have already established for their outlook, we have to be very concerned about how that is going to unfold in other ways. The second is that all of us see, or should see, in our constituencies the work that faith groups and people from across the faith spectrum do, from food banks to homeless shelters, all of this.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will just say to my colleagues and constituents that there is one saving grace in all of this, which is that any law that can be passed by the House of Commons can be repealed by the House of Commons. A Conservative government will repeal every single Liberal censorship law at the first opportunity.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his important work on this. I actually had the opportunity to meet with people in his riding in Newfoundland, including faith leaders, back in January who were very concerned about what the Liberals are doing. One of the questions that at least one person asked me was very much in line with what he just said there and was from a place of fear: “If we have Liberal government ministers saying that certain verses of scripture are not allowed, what am I allowed to preach? What am I allowed to do?” That was, interestingly enough, before he was a minister. He was just the chair of the justice committee at the time, and he was promoted after making those comments. I go back to how it is clear that the Prime Minister welcomes that very divisive and anti-free expression thinking on his team.”
“My amendment would give the Liberals and all members of the House one final opportunity to do the right thing: to end the division, to end the assaults on liberty and to end the attacks on people who just want to live their lives free of government intrusion and censorship. The amendment would end this charade once and for all. I move: Amendment That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the order for the consideration of the amendment made by the Senate to Bill C-9 , An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places), be discharged and the Bill withdrawn”.”
“I hope the member will remember her roots and vote against this. Lori Idlout: How could I forget my roots? Andrew Lawton: Mr. Speaker, I hope she will remember and actually respect the core fundamental freedoms and values that led her to giving such an impassioned speech previously. Many Liberals probably wanted Bill C-9 to skate through. Several Liberals are probably quite unhappy that it has come back to the House and that once again they have to address it. However, they have the opportunity to do the right thing. I am about to introduce an amendment to this bill. It is actually an olive branch to my Liberal colleagues.”
“When their expressions and their actions rise to the criminal level, they need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. (2050) However, I also believe that the issue is not about whether people themselves want to use their freedom to spread hate. It is about whether those who disagree with them will agree not to use the word “hate” to malign them or silence them. I am so grateful for the leadership of some people who now find themselves in the Liberal Party. I mentioned, for example, my former colleague from Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong , who was a fierce crusader against Bill C-9 . I also have to recognize the Liberal member for Nunavut , who was a tremendous crusader against Bill C-9. I applauded her second-reading speech, when she spoke about the powers the Liberal government was trying to give itself.”
“These are central things not just to Canadian identity but to the human experience. Freedom of expression is, in many respects, the most important freedom. This is not my thought, but it is one that I have shared a great many times: If all other freedoms were stripped away but one, the freedom of expression, we could use that to fight to win all the others back. I am standing up today, in what will more than likely be my last opportunity in the House to address Bill C-9 , to say that we cannot let our freedoms be eroded. We cannot. It is not just about whether people believe a faith, beliefs or values to be hateful. I do not believe that the majority of people in this country are hateful people. I believe it is is a small minority, and I believe that small minority needs to be addressed.”
“All of this is speaking to what I believe is the most central reason that Bill C-9 was so vociferously opposed by so many Canadians. It was not because of all these dog whistles that the Liberals like to use: conspiracy theories, obstruction or certain people wanting a licence to hate. People want freedom in this country. They want to know that their rights and freedoms are protected. They want to know that the Liberal government is not just going to pay lip service to the charter but is actually going to live and embody it in all it does. The values of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and the right to privacy, all of these things, are not just slogans that the Liberals can discard at their whim when they run up against a policy they want to champion.”
“It is because of a distrust of the state in general that Canadians have. We should not be happy giving the Liberals any power that we would not want Conservatives to have, that we would not want the Bloc to have, that we would not want New Democrats to have and that we would not want the Greens to have. It is not that all of these parties have an equal likelihood of forming government, but I am just using them as an example here. All should agree with that. All should understand that. We can think of the Emergencies Act. Did anyone honestly think that the Liberals would be so gung-ho to use the powers that they used that act for? What if a Conservative government was doing it against a group of protesters that they felt were more aligned with the left?”
“Quite frankly, earlier today during Oral Questions, a very influential, powerful minister, the minister responsible for the public service, the President of the Treasury Board , was asked a simple question about his file, and he looked through his papers for 30 seconds to find the answer and could not. In the end, he sat down and let someone else answer the question. We can imagine a minister like that put in a role where they get to decide what Canadians say online, or what telecom companies have to do. We can imagine the power that other people in the Liberal government would have, with a minister who will just read whatever is on the page and, if it is not there, will just sit down. That is why we have to restrain government power, and it is not just because of a distrust of the Liberal government.”
“The Liberal government has to make its case that it is trustworthy and that it is not going to abuse its power and its authority. Let us imagine a parallel universe here in which the Liberals do not want to weaponize their authority against political dissidents. I know that seems like a very fictional, hypothetical scenario, but let us just imagine that world for a moment. What is to say that the next government would not? This is the problem, and we can look at the Emergencies Act as an example, with laws that give the government power that is supposed to be constrained only by its goodwill. This is why we are so concerned about other legislation in which ministerial discretion is so central to the powers and authorities vested in the laws. It is because we do not trust these ministers.”
“I have had a great many discussions with people where we can disagree on nine out of 10 other things, but on this, we are united. I do not actually think that is any testament to my ability to attract friends and whatnot. I think it is a testament to how well the Liberals have mastered creating enemies, because the Liberals do not have the goodwill from these communities either. The Liberals know they do not have the benefit of the doubt, and we have seen this in the context of other legislation too. (2045) The Liberals' Bill C-8 and Bill C-22 were both subject to their same pre-emptive defence that they made with Bill C-9 , which is, “Don't worry. You can trust us.” Canadians look at that and say, “Oh no, we can't,” and I agree with those Canadians.”