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 do not know for sure what the status of that is. What sort of commitment does a person have to any country when they collect passports like trading cards? This is what the Liberal government is facilitating. For people whose primary affiliation or allegiance is to a different country, the Liberals want to make it easier for them to have Canadian citizenship. How does this build up Canada and foster pride and citizenship in this country? I will be voting against Bill C-3 , and I encourage all members of the House to do the same. It is the only way to protect the value of Canadian citizenship.”
“I am so proud to be Canadian. As I said, I have spoken to so many people who have spent generations in this country with their families, to people who came here for the first time as a child, or even as an adult, and became Canadian, and to every iteration in between. They are all frustrated by the devaluing of Canadian citizenship we have seen by the Liberal government. Justin Trudeau said that Canada is “the first postnational state”. That is the core idea anchoring the way the Liberal government is viewing citizenship and what it means to be Canadian. This is not a new idea. There is a class of globalist elites, and the Prime Minister has proudly identified with people who collects passports. The Prime Minister had three citizenships before he ran for the leadership of the Liberals, and potentially has them now.”
“The committee worked hard across party lines at amending Bill C-3 , and to take a bad bill and try to mitigate some of the harms and devaluation of citizenship. The committee, as I said, worked across partisan lines and sent an amended bill back to the House. The Liberal government, with the NDP, rejected those amendments outright. Despite claiming that they are willing to work with all parties, the Liberals now expect the House to rubber-stamp the original bill they were planning to ram through regardless. This is something that is tremendously concerning. If Canadian citizenship is to mean anything at all, we need to be able to ground it in a discussion about Canadian identity and a connection to Canada, ensuring we have a core identity and set of values that we all know, intuitively, are part of who we are as a people.”
“There are companies that, for a certain amount of money, will facilitate someone's coming to Canada to give birth to a child here who will then become a Canadian citizen automatically, by birthright, despite having parents who are not at all Canadian citizens or permanent residents. They do not even have work permits. They may be here on visitor visas, as international students or as temporary foreign workers. They are people whose relationship with Canada is temporary. When we put forward an amendment at committee to ensure that birth tourism would not be permitted as a path to Canadian citizenship, it was rejected by the Liberal government. By the way, many of its members, including the Minister of Immigration , said before the House, at second reading, that they would entertain amendments at committee.”
“I am saying that we need to make sure that those who become Canadian citizens truly want to contribute to Canada and be Canadian. We do not want what we have seen in the past, which is Canadians of convenience. When a crisis unfolds somewhere in the world, all of a sudden, someone with no desire to live or contribute in Canada pulls out a Canadian passport and demands that the federal government help them. These are people who do not want to be Canadians but who want, when convenient for them, the benefits of Canadian citizenship. We see the alternative of this happening: Birth tourism has been allowed to thrive in Canada.”
“Under Bill C-3 , the Liberals would view that as a substantial connection to Canada. (1215) Canadian citizenship is not something that should be freely given out to people who are not born here. It should be earned and, more importantly, given to people who genuinely want to build up this country and contribute to this country. Some of the proudest Canadians I have ever met are people who adopted Canadian citizenship after being born abroad. They came to Canada because they loved something here: our values, our freedoms or our opportunity. They learned our language or languages, chose to become Canadian and have contributed. We have members of this chamber who are proud, patriotic Canadians who were not born in Canada. I am not arguing that citizenship should never be available to people.”
“When we try to strip this away from what it means to be Canadian, we are left with the question of what it means to be a Canadian citizen and a Liberal government trying to make only tenuous connections between Canada and Canadian citizenship for people around the world. When we talk about citizenship by descent, we are not talking about the children of Canadian citizens who may be born abroad. We are talking about the children of children of Canadian citizens born abroad, who may have never resided in Canada, worked in Canada, desired to vote in a Canadian election or desired to run for office in Canada. They are people who have no connection here but who may have spent, at any point in their lives, a little bit of time here. Three years sounds like a lot unless we consider that it could be spread over the course of decades.”
“He said, “We are Canadian because we are not American.” No, we are Canadian because we have a shared set of values that are tremendously important, which we should, as a country, be so proud of. In my maiden speech in this chamber, I spoke about Canadians of convenience, people with a new-found patriotism who had new Canadian flags flying from their houses that still had the creases in them. They had never before in their lives identified Canadianism with something specific. It is not just about hockey, maple syrup and beavers. Canadian identity is about liberty. It is about individuality. It is about pluralism. It is about tolerance for different ideas, freedom of speech and democratic freedom. These are Canadian ideas. These are Canadian values.”
“The idea for this came from the Liberals. About Canada, former prime minister Justin Trudeau said, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada”. This is what he said: “no core identity”. There is no meaning to being Canadian. There is no meaning to Canada. He said, “Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.” A postnational state is a country without a national identity, without a core heritage and without a shared belief about what this country is. We heard the Minister of Canadian Identity unable to even describe what Canadian identity is. We heard the current Prime Minister unable to describe what Canadian identity is, except to make it relative to American identity.”
“We have to understand the idea from which this bill came. It is not just a response to an Ontario court ruling, because the government could have, as any government can, appealed that court ruling. For example, the Federal Court found that the Liberal government had violated the charter rights of Canadians in invoking the Emergencies Act, and the federal government is fighting that ruling tooth and nail in court. For this particular court ruling, the government did not mount an appeal. It did not combat it. It has accepted, at face value, some of the court's arguments. It expanded that now, in Bill C-3 , beyond what the court even sought, as a way to make Canadian citizenship easier for people to access and to make citizenship by descent easier, even for people who do not have a truly substantial connection to Canada.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise on behalf of the citizens and residents of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. I say that because citizens and residents are two different things. All of them are important to me as a member of Parliament, but they are different. As a country, we have always made a distinction between those who are citizens and those who are not. The reason for this is that citizenship has intrinsic value. Citizenship is not a right for everyone. For some, it is a privilege. We are here because we are discussing Bill C-3 , which is the Liberal government's attempt at devaluing Canadian citizenship by making it easier for people to access when they do not have, contrary to the way the legislation is framed, a genuinely substantial connection to Canada and to Canadian identity.”
“Mr. Speaker, we know that in Bill C-3 , after the Liberals rejected the amendments that were passed at committee across party lines, the bar for citizenship has been lowered. I would like to ask the hon. member, very candidly, a very simple yes-or-no question. Does she believe citizenship of this country should be easier for people to access?”
“Mr. Speaker, I do sincerely appreciate my colleague's understanding of the significance of the automotive sector in southern Ontario. Virtually every family has someone who has been touched by the sector. There is not a positive outlook right now and I do not think the people affected, from the conversations I have had, want to hear about supports. They want to hear about a plan for how they can get to work, how they can do what they love, and why the government has not lived up to its promise to protect these jobs in the first place. I will ask the parliamentary secretary a very simple question. There were 3,000 workers in Brampton, 1,200 in Ingersoll, 700 in Oshawa and 300 Sainte-Thérèse and those are all jobs lost on the Liberal government's watch in the span of a few weeks.”
“We have 3,000 in Brampton with Stellantis, we have 700 in Oshawa, 300 in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec, with Paccar and countless more, as I said, with the spinoff effects of this. I have had conversations with constituents in the last couple of weeks who do not know what they are going to do, who do not know how they are going to provide Christmas presents for their children with the holidays approaching, because of these job losses and uncertainty. When I asked the government about this, I asked for a plan. Instead, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry gave the Liberal government a pat on the back and said it was doing an exceptional job. Those numbers that I ran off were in just a few weeks of what the Liberal government trumpets as exceptional work on protecting the auto sector in Canada. My question is very simple.”
“Thomas and Delta Machine & Design, all dealing with slowdowns or, in some cases, outright halting as a result of the decline in the auto sector. I do not blame the government for decisions made by the United States, but I do put blame squarely on the Prime Minister for making a very simple promise. I am not even sure if he believed that Canada would have a deal with the United States by July. There is no deal. We have seen tariffs go up continuously. There is no deal and auto jobs have continued to be on the line. The state of manufacturing sector right now in southwestern Ontario, in my riding, is dismal. I will run off a few of the numbers that constitute the Liberal government's record. We do not just have the 1,200 workers in Ingersoll.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rose in this House a couple of weeks ago in the wake of the terrible news out of southwestern Ontario that 1,200 workers at the CAMI plant in Ingersoll were losing their jobs because of a failure by the government to fulfill a promise to stand up for and save Canada's auto sector. CAMI is not in my riding, but many of the workers of that plant do live in my riding, in St. Thomas, London and Elgin County. Several of the companies that supply CAMI are in my riding. When we hear that 1,200 figure of plant workers, that is just a fraction of the overall jobs in jeopardy across the region, not just from the CAMI closure but other declines in the auto sector as well, from Qualtech Seating Systems in London to Formet in St.”
“The petitioners are calling on the government to repeal Bill C-21 , devote greater resources to policing to combat these sources of illegal firearms and not go after law-abiding Canadian citizens.”
“Mr. Speaker, as a proud, law-abiding firearms owner, I have the great privilege to present this petition to the House. It comes from law-abiding firearms owners who are concerned about past legislation from the Liberal government and a stream of orders in council that serve no other purpose than to target the law-abiding community of gun owners in this country. The petitioners say that Bill C-21 notably does nothing to tackle firearms violence; rather, it adds red tape and regulation to law-abiding Canadians. The petitioners also describe how the bill does not tackle the true sources of firearms used in crime, which are gangs, organized crime and a porous border.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member for Bowmanville—Oshawa North 's speech was incredible. He and I had a similar experience, starting out working in restaurants. I would rather be scraping crusted lobster off plates than listening to some of the talking points from the member for Winnipeg North . The reason I bring this up is that my hon. colleague was one of the first people in the chamber to identify how harmful the temporary foreign worker program has become for Canadian youth, and I was hoping he could expand on that and on how we can fix the problem after 10 years of the Liberals' creating it.”
“Madam Speaker, with respect, the member is obfuscating. That is not the cause of the problems we are seeing in the TFW program. It is the fast food and hospitality sector and some unscrupulous immigration consultants, not all of them, who have abused the system to the point where our plan is very clear.”
“Madam Speaker, I believe the temporary foreign worker program has been so destroyed by the Liberal government that the only way forward is to abolish it. I am very clear, especially as the member of Parliament for a lot of rural constituents and farmers, there needs to be a stand-alone stream for temporary labour for the agricultural sector. That is important and it is part of a long-standing initiative in Canada that has been working. However, having temporary foreign workers fill jobs in fast food and hospitality, which is forcing youth out of the job market, is not what the program is for and it has to stop immediately.”
“Madam Speaker, I will say no to my hon. colleague; I noticed it before I got here. It is one of the reasons I wanted to come here, because we do see from the Liberal government a sense of breaking something, then showing up and all of a sudden it is the one we are supposed to trust with the solutions. Again, on the immigration file, I would be remiss to not point out the Liberal government promised it would cap temporary foreign worker permits this year at 82,000. In the first six months of this year, it issued 105,000. That is not even including what is going to come in the third and fourth quarters of the year. It already broke its promise in the first half of the year and is telling us it has the situation under control. Madam Speaker, through you, I would tell it to “get real”.”
“Madam Speaker, I am relatively new to this chamber, but I sense a trend, which is that there is no shortage of words from the member for Winnipeg North on any issue imaginable. Not all of us in this chamber, especially new members, have had the opportunities this member has had to engage on issues in this place. I am here speaking about an issue that has been tremendously relevant to youth and their families across my riding. This is not something I will just dismiss because it is inconvenient to the Liberal government's narrative; I will continue to talk about this and demand action from the government on this file because our youth deserve a future.”
“Will the Liberal government listen to the countless youth, like Zain and many others across my riding and across the country, and secure a future for young Canadians to get jobs and know that they have a future in this country?”
“By the way, it was at that hotel job where I first met Stephen Harper who was staying as a guest at that hotel. Perhaps that first job set me up on the path I took in several other ways as well. I will close with an email I got from a constituent a couple of months back. It is from a man named Zain who said: I've spent the last four years actively searching for employment in fields such as administration.... I hold postsecondary credentials from Conestoga College, and I've volunteered for three years to gain additional experience. Yet, despite my ongoing effort, I—like many Canadians—remain unemployed. The federal government promotes employment support programs and encourages workforce participation, but the real experience of job seekers tells a different story.”
“We need to make sure that an eager, keen, young person with a credential in Ontario can go to Manitoba, someone from Alberta can go to Ontario and vice versa so that they can go where the jobs are. Also, we need to make sure that housing is built where there is a need for labour so that housing prices, another consequence of 10 years of Liberal reign, are not making it so that a person is unable to live where they want to work. This is the legitimate, concrete plan; a plan that I am begging the Liberal government to adopt. The Liberals have enjoyed many of our other policies, whether on crime or taxes. Let them take this as well, because I want Canadian youth to have a future. I want them to have the same future that I had from the time I was 14.”
“It is a fix on the immigration system, which the Liberals have allowed to get so broken that only a Conservative government is capable of repairing it, making sure that Canadian jobs go to Canadian workers. This is not a radical proposition, but the Liberals treat it as though it is. We need to fix training. Right now, one in six workers with post-secondary credentials is unable to find a job in the field in which they have been trained. We need to make sure that federal student training and funding programs are going towards employment-centred training, education and training that directly will help young people get into the workforce. Last, we need to do more to bolster mobility and do what we can to harmonize credential recognition from one part of the country to the other.”
“It is not just an immigration problem, but we cannot separate what is happening to drive young people out of the workforce from what the Liberal government has done on temporary foreign workers. It is a problem that has become so big that the Conservatives came out with a very bold, but very necessary, position to scrap the temporary foreign worker program while keeping a stand-alone program for the agricultural sector for jobs that genuinely cannot be filled by domestic labour. We have seen this for decades; it is not just a trend in the last 10 years. We do have a jobs plan for youth in this country. It is a plan that will open up the economy and eliminate the red tape and regulations that are making it difficult for employers, especially small and medium-sized businesses, to hire.”
“It depresses wages and makes it more difficult for anyone commanding a market rate in Canada to get a job at a fair wage, because employers can find a temporary resident who is so grateful to have a foothold into Canada that they will work for the bare minimum. We have also heard of examples of abuse of the program where even the stated dollar value, the stated wage of a position for a temporary resident, is not the take-home pay. There are schemes and kickbacks. We have heard of this happening. This is not to impugn all employers who use temporary labour, but it is to point out that there is a problem in the system that the Liberal government has allowed to fester.”
“The temporary foreign worker program has been a crucial part of the agricultural sector, but that is not the portion of the temporary foreign worker problem that we are seeing now drive young people out of having employment opportunities. The widespread expansion and abuse of the TFW program has become so bad that coveted first jobs are simply not available for Canadian youth. (1710) Temporary foreign workers have ballooned now to nearly 2% of the total private workforce in Canada over the last decade. Three-quarters of temporary residents in the workforce earn less than the median income for Canadians, which means that we know temporary foreign labour drives down wages.”
“They will send out dozens or hundreds of résumés even and not get a single interview, let alone a job offer. The abundance of jobs that employers cannot find people to fill in certain skilled trades is a consequence of government policy from the Liberal government, and so too is the shortage of jobs for young people. These are both a direct consequence of Liberal government policy. It has stifled growth, has stifled mobility for workers, has made it more difficult for immigrants who come to Canada with credentials to be recognized and work, and has made it more difficult for young people to get a first job. This is because of unskilled temporary residents filling jobs that have Canadian workers lining up to take them. In my riding, I represent a lot of farmers.”
“This has been, in my inbox anyway, a story I have been hearing since I was elected. If I am not hearing from the youth, I am hearing from their parents, saying their son or daughter cannot find a job. To be clear, there are two seemingly contradictory trends happening in the workforce right now. I also hear from a number of employers who say they cannot find people to fill the job postings they have. There are some regional variations, most certainly, and there are some differences when it comes to sector. Employers are having a difficult time finding people to fill certain skilled roles. For entry-level jobs, which we would traditionally refer to as jobs in the service sector or hospitality sector, young people cannot get a foothold.”
“Then they are finding out the place that would not hire them has temporary foreign workers working for it. I know the Liberal government will say that is not the way the system works, but there is a wide chasm between how the system is designed and how it is unfolding in real time, right now, not just in my riding but in communities across the country. The reason we are having this debate in the House of Commons right now is that there is a youth jobs crisis. Over 460,000 young Canadians are out of work. The unemployment rate for Canadian youth is nearing 15%. Youth employment is at its lowest point in over 25 years outside of the pandemic. This is, in fact, a crisis. It is one we do not learn about as members of Parliament simply because Statistics Canada has released the data.”
“I worked for years in a variety of restaurant jobs, doing things that, again, were not glamorous, but gave me a bit of money and gave me responsibility. That helped me on the path so that when I applied for my first job with a higher barrier to entry, I had a résumé that had on it years of work experience that I only got because there were jobs available to me when starting out. To go back to the very first job I had at the hotel, years later, that hotel started filing labour market impact assessment requests and hiring temporary foreigners. There are youth that could not now do, at the very same place, what I did to start out on my vocational path when I was a teenager. This is something I am hearing about from youth all across my riding. They are sending out résumé after résumé and cannot get a job.”
“Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. I remember so fondly the first real job I ever had. I was 14 years old. I did not get a glamorous job. I was busing tables in a hotel restaurant in south London. I was occasionally doing room service if they needed someone to pitch in. When they opened a new café, I got to try my barista skills, which were so subpar that I have ended up now as a member of Parliament and did not take my work pro. I developed some incredible skills through that first job. I had a sense of purpose. I had a bit of money in my pocket at the age of 14. I made connections there that helped me get other jobs.”
“Mr. Speaker, Canadian youth are struggling, but Liberal elites have never had it so good. Youth unemployment is at 15%. Young people are writing off the dream of home ownership as simply a fantasy, but the gravy train is chugging along for the Prime Minister 's friends. Seventy-nine per cent of Export Development Canada executives cashed in bonuses averaging $143,000 each. BDC executives got bonuses averaging $216,000 each. The Prime Minister's housing agency paid out over $30 million in bonuses. Will the Prime Minister ask his elite Liberal insider friends to make sacrifices instead of young Canadians?”
“Mr. Speaker, I note that the Guelph Police Service's board in my hon. colleague's riding was pushing for bail reform years ago, endorsing a nationwide campaign of police service boards joining police chiefs and municipalities, calling on the Liberal government to act on this and to recognize the shortcomings in Liberal government policy that have gotten us here. I fully share the hon. member's desire for public safety and improved measures to deal with criminality. Does the hon. member acknowledge that it was Bill C-75 that got us here and made this a crisis demanding a response from the government?”
“Mr. Speaker, this is a very important issue; in fact it is one the Conservatives have been sounding the alarm about for many years, urging the government to take action on it. Would the member acknowledge the failures of previous Liberal bills, notably Bill C-75 , which law enforcement officials have said has directly allowed for the catch-and-release bail policies that have necessitated the response from the government in Bill C-14 ?”
“Madam Speaker, sadly, the member's experiences in his community are not rare. They are the same things I hear from the police officers I work with in my riding and what my colleagues have been hearing as well. This makes it all the more shameful that the Liberal government has ultimately ignored what they have been saying for so long. Even now, it is falling short. I would love nothing other than for Bill C-14 to work and answer these key concerns, but it needs a lot more. That is why the committee process will be very important. I intend to put forward these solutions, and I hope the Liberals do not obstruct them.”
“Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. [ English ] This is a debate about the Liberal government's legislation, Bill C-14 . However, on three-strikes laws, we put a motion before the House that would call for one. I would ask my hon. colleague if his constituents agree about this for people who repeatedly flout and violate the law, terrorize communities and are back on the street. How many strikes does he think are enough before they should be kept behind bars?”
“Madam Speaker, I already said, in my remarks, that I look forward to working on this bill in committee. I welcome the member for Winnipeg North joining us for a meeting, if he would like to contribute. I find it interesting that the member for Winnipeg North said, in a previous intervention in the House, “Bill C-75 actually made it harder to be released on bail.” That is the precise opposite of what law enforcement told us in our consultations. I would encourage the Liberal government, if it is so committed to this, to support the three bills I mentioned by the members for Oxford , Lethbridge and Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola .”
“I am committed to working with government members if they are serious about wanting to reform and genuinely fix these problems, but they need to acknowledge their role in creating them. They need to acknowledge what law enforcement has been saying, which is that so much of what we are dealing with on the streets now, which has led to Bill C-14 , is a consequence of Liberal laws, notably Bill C-75 . I am committing to the people of Canada, the people in my riding and the members of this House that I will work in the justice committee to beef this bill up to what it should be, but Canadians deserve more.”
“Heinous criminals who have been convicted should be serving their sentences consecutively, which is a proposal we offered to the government. I ask the Liberals to please take our idea and put it in law if they are serious about these measures. My colleague from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola introduced Bill C-225 , which would create new offences pertaining to intimate partner violence, provisions that Jennifer Dunn of the London Abused Women's Centre told the justice committee yesterday should be passed by the House of Commons to protect women. Victims are being failed by the justice system as it is now, and Ms. Dunn said in her testimony that many of the women she sees do not even refer to the justice system as the justice system anymore.”
“We have provided three pieces of legislation in this House already. While the Liberals were still trying to figure out where they wanted to go with Bill C-14 , my colleague from Oxford introduced the jail not bail act, Bill C-242 . It would put front and centre the role of public safety when talking about bail. It would also prohibit someone from serving as a surety to help other accused offenders get out on bail if they themselves have been convicted of a serious criminal offence within the last 10 years. Reform of the surety system does not appear at all in Bill C-14, which is another shortcoming that has already been identified by witnesses testifying before the justice committee in its bail study. We also have, from my colleague from Lethbridge , Bill C-246 , which would put consecutive sentences in place for sexual offenders.”
“They have attempted to gaslight Canadians into thinking the problem is not as a bad as it, which makes me ask the question about Bill C-14 of why now. Are the Liberals finally acknowledging that they got it wrong with Bill C-75 , Bill C-48 and Bill C-5 ? With each of these bills, there has been a trend. Some members of law enforcement have looked at them and said they looked like they had some good things in them, but years later, when they see the application of them, they realize they did not actually deliver on the promises made and what the government said it would do. That is, of course, a concern I have with Bill C-14 , as with any legislation. We need to make sure these are not just things that exist on paper that do not translate in the real world. We have given the government the answers.”
“For example, the principle of restraint needs to first and foremost be a principle that makes public safety its primary obligation, not the rights of the accused but the right of the public to feel safe and secure in their own communities. This is very important, and it is a direct response to months and months of consultation by Conservative members with law enforcement officials, who have said they feel ignored by the government and that morale has taken a massive hit. Officers feel it is not even worth arresting people, knowing that under the law on the books right now, they are just going to be released. For years, Liberal government members, when we have sounded the alarm about this, have said that it is not really an issue.”
“The Liberals are just saying that it does not mean what we think it does, that this section does not mean what police officers have been saying it has done to them and what attorneys are saying it has done to the justice system. To be fair, the Liberals made some acknowledgement that there is a problem when they expanded the reverse onus. This is something I welcome, but when this bill goes before committee, it is incumbent on the Liberal government to accept the very significant measures Conservatives have already proposed in this House that would be genuinely and seriously tough on crime, measures that would provide real solutions, real resolutions and concrete reforms to fix the Liberal bail system.”
“On the principle of restraint, we have another key issue, which is that the bill offers, and I will read it precisely, the following language on the principle of restraint: For greater certainty, section 493.1 does not require the accused to be released. The Liberals are basically giving a little asterisk for judges and police officers to tell them not to worry and that the principle in the Criminal Code that says we must release people at the earliest opportunity and on the least onerous conditions does not mean they have to release them at all. (1135) Everyone knows that. No matter how critical someone is of the justice system, they know that 100% of people do not get bail, although the Liberals have certainly tried to get as close to that figure as possible it seems. This is a clarifying note; it is not a meaningful change.”
“What the Liberals have delivered falls short in some very key areas, and I think this is important because they said they needed time because they wanted to get it right. They needed time because they wanted to cover all the bases. We had before the justice committee on Tuesday the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, Thomas Carrique, a very decorated officer. He is also the president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and commissioner Carrique said that he was disappointed the legislation did not tackle sentencing in a meaningful way. The bill was supposed to tackle bail and sentencing, and with the exception of beefing up the penalty for contempt of court, it has not really touched sentencing head-on when we are talking about sentences for violent offences. That is a key shortcoming of this bill.”
“I bring this up because for months, when we have raised these issues in this House, the government has said not to worry and that bail reform legislation is coming, but this was not a significant priority to the extent that other bills were. We saw Bill C-9 , which was the first priority, as far as justice legislation goes, of the government. That came out and was tabled in this House weeks before the bail legislation was. Now we see Bill C-14 . I will say first and foremost that I am grateful the Liberal government recognizes there is a crisis unfolding in our criminal justice system. I am grateful that the Liberal government has finally responded to the calls from law enforcement, municipal governments, victims' rights groups, ordinary citizens and Conservative members of Parliament that action is needed.”