Karim Bardeesy
Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, Ontario · Liberal · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the continuing work of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, the leader of the Green Party, on issues related to contaminants and leakage. I also want to thank her for the interventions regarding the work of the late Dr.”
“Mr. Speaker, treaty rights are sacrosanct to this government, as are the regimes that we have in place, including the regimes for non-compliance and the environmental damages penalties that we have under the legislation. Incidents such as the recent spill at Cold Lake are taken very seriously.”
“That work continues, with Environment and Climate Change Canada and indigenous groups working together through that working group to develop long-term, science-based solutions that will form recommendations to the minister . I think the hon.”
“It is a core responsibility of the current government, and, I would say, of government, both now and for future generations. We need to address risks associated with tailings management in a way that gives sustained attention and brings solutions grounded in sound science.”
“Mr. Speaker, we know that small businesses do well when consumer spending is up, and that is why we have made investments like the Canada groceries and essentials benefit. Wages are increasing faster than inflation, and we have cut taxes through measures like the superproductivity deduction to make it easier for businesses to invest.”
“I would add that, with some of the investments we have been making in science and research and some of the advances in technology, we hope this work can continue to accelerate and to inform policy-makers, government and hon. members in an even more timely fashion.”
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“It is something I wish we could get more support on from the other side of the aisle, from which we continue to hear nothing about the benefits of the Canada child benefit. However, in my riding, I am constantly hearing from constituents about the benefits of the program. (1040) The Canada child care program and the benefits that accrue to families and the real, meaningful cost of living change that has resulted have changed the lives of families. I was canvassing in the Bloor West Village area of Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park over the weekend. I spoke to some constituents on Armadale Avenue. When I run into families with kids under the age of 12 in my riding, there is not a family that that says this initiative has not changed lives. This initiative has changed lives.”
“This is some of the broader context, and there are probably some areas of agreement on what I have said with respect to the issues. However, a lot more has happened since the consumer carbon tax cancellation and the income tax cut, and I will go through a few of the measures, because when we add them up, they add up to a lot of support for Canadians. There are the new EI supports. In the commercial war that we are in with the United States, we have to support our workers in a more diligent way, especially in affected sectors, and so we have some new employment insurance supports. We also have the ongoing and increased support with the Canada child benefit, one of the signature initiatives of the former government.”
“There were different ways to design it. We could have cut a cheque and said, “Here you go” and had a very expensive process to get money back to people, but we did it in the most efficient way possible, which was lowering income tax rates for people in the lowest income tax bracket, saving them up to $840 a year by next year. It has a real impact on the pocketbook of our constituents. Additionally, I have the benefit of sitting beside my colleague, the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin , the parliamentary secretary to the minister of industry, who has some facts I know he will be wanting to share later. Because of lowering inflation in some circumstances, the overall economic circumstances around the consumer price index and a variety of other circumstances, the Bank of Canada was able to make its move to lower interest rates most recently.”
“The motion talks about food prices, although there seems to be a bit of confusion in the sense that, and I am just getting ahead of some of what I am going to say, the answer in the motion appears to be to abandon our climate commitments, which I do not think is advisable. I think we can do both. Let us situate this in the broader context of affordability. On day one, there was the cancellation of the consumer carbon tax. It was an important measure and something that affected and benefited folks in every one of our ridings. Definitely in Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, the impact was immediate and benefited our constituents. There was the lowering of income tax, which I am glad to see there was some support from the other side of the aisle. It had an immediate effect on July 1. We moved very quickly.”
“My colleague, the deputy government House leader , mentioned the GST holiday. The industry committee in its previous incarnation did a lot of work on competition in the grocery sector. Thanks to its work and the work of the previous industry minister, we now have a grocery code of conduct and some other measures that are coming to help address some of the issues that are talked about in the motion. It is important to realize what has been done, including the very first actions that the government took. On day one, the government cancelled the consumer carbon tax, and I want to situate the issue in the larger set of circumstances around affordability in this country.”
“Before I get into the substance of the debate, I think it is important to show appreciation for all people in our community, in our country, including the member for Middlesex—London , who are involved in the food sector, whether it is retailers large or small, people who are bringing their wares to farmers' markets, people who grow and supply the food, or people who work on the packaging of the food, whether those workers are unionized or non-unionized. It is a big ecosystem and something of which Canadians are rightly proud. It is also an export market for us. I want to give thanks for the work that has been done in the House both by the current government and by our predecessors on the industry committee, on which I sit, to really start to look at and tackle the issue. Some of the measures have been mentioned already.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to the motion. I appreciate the concern that is underlying it. Like a lot of members on both sides of the House, I tend to do grocery shopping with or for my family on weekends when the House is sitting. Recently I shopped at the No Frills in Bloor West Village at the corner of Bloor and Runnymede on Saturday night, and I met some of my constituents there who were doing their shopping. In the case of our family, we also do a lot of shopping at Maple Produce for fruit and vegetables and the Hot Oven Bakery on Roncesvalles Avenue.”
“Mr. Speaker, that is exactly how it is used on a daily basis. We have seen this in all democracies. [ English ] When we try to limit rights in a way that stops being exceptional, that is when real concerns about what is happening to democracy are likely.”
“Mr. Speaker, when one stands for rights, one has to stand for them when it is unpopular. One has to stand for rights when no one else is looking. It may be the case that the residents of the hon. member's riding are not plugged into this issue, and that may be the case for the residents of most of the ridings on this side of the aisle as well. The question is, are we going to be defending those rights? The question is, would this use of the notwithstanding clause be normalised in a way that is concerning? On this side of the House, we have some concerns with that.”
“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member for Joliette's comments. I think my opinion is consistent with the notice and factum that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada submitted. We need to know what constitutes reasonable limits for the notwithstanding clause. [ English ] The notwithstanding clause is in the charter. It is in the Constitution. I think the appropriate question is, what are the appropriate limits of this? Let us take the understanding of the charter and the Constitution as a living tree. [ Translation ] I do not know how translatable this is, but, if we imagine the Constitution as a living tree, I think daily use of the notwithstanding clause in a way that could jeopardize the collective rights people fought for—”
“If the shoe were on the other foot and the Government of Canada passed a law that tried to limit some of the rights that were felt to be in existence in Quebec, if this Parliament threatened to or used the notwithstanding clause in that process, I would hope the Government of Quebec would indeed present its litigation and not withdraw its memo as is being asked of us by the Bloc. I believe that this party on this side stands in the interest of continuing to advance rights. That is why I will be opposing this motion.”
“It does not necessarily take a lot for some members of this House, on this side of the aisle anyway, to rise to attend a protest, but the use of the notwithstanding clause on Bill 124 in Ontario, which put a severe limit on collective bargaining rights, led me to the lawn of Queen's Park to say that this was wrong. The progress we are making with respect to the rights that are guaranteed under the charter faces a risk under the serial use of the notwithstanding clause. I will be opposing this motion because I believe that, on this side of the House, we are the party of the charter. We are the party that is for standing for Canada.”
“Again, when we had this understanding of the charter, notwithstanding the very important historical basis on which the Bloc has raised its concerns about the original implementation of the charter, we had this dialogue among different groups in Canada that allowed us to discover and see the emergence of rights. This is something that is in a very strict space of constitutional interpretation, which the member for Québec Centre explained very well. Where are we now? We are in a situation in which we have a constitutional issue that is before the Supreme Court, with lots of interest. There are 13 appellants, I understand, and more than 60 interveners. We have the use of the notwithstanding clause in a more aggressive fashion in a number of provinces, including pre-emptively.”
“[ Translation ] I noticed that the expansion of rights at the time of this legal interpretation often followed protests and social movements that started in Quebec. [ English ] The social movements in Quebec were a key part of the way in which our understanding of the rights grew under section 7 of the Constitution. I am thinking of collective bargaining rights, gender and sexual rights, and all rights under some of the other freedoms that we understand, particularly under section 7 and under section 2. Those fights were led by Quebec social movements.”
“[ Translation ] At the same time that the notwithstanding clause was being used by the Government of Quebec—a provincial Liberal government at that—the charter continued to evolve. [ English ] The use of section 1 became one of the ways in which we could achieve a balance between parliamentary supremacy and the protection of rights. Despite the use of section 1, there was an evolution toward more and more rights protection, and there was an evolution toward the understanding of minority rights protections in particular. The equality rights under section 7, as we discovered through the charter's interpretation in a variety of courts, were about a slow expansion of rights to recognized groups that had not been previously explicitly enumerated in section 7.”
“I noticed that the leader of the Bloc Québécois, the member for Beloeil—Chambly , gave a great speech on Mr. Rocher's recent death. [ English ] Those of us on this side of the House try to reach across the aisle, and at that time, I was able to get a better understanding of what this constitutional battle was about. There was Bill 101, which resulted in real gains on behalf of Quebecers, and we had the use of the notwithstanding clause, which became a serialized use of it. I remember that in my engagements with this issue, this was a surprising thing to me. As someone who understood the charter in a certain context and that the notwithstanding clause had a certain role, I was surprised that it was being used in this way.”
“A number of us on this side of the House, like my colleague who is going to be speaking, came of age around the same time and perhaps politically came of age around the same time, experiencing this in the eighties. (1745) [ Translation ] When we were in our twenties, we saw on television, in demonstrations or in politicians or our own leaders, that the fight was ongoing. [ English ] Whether it was the Meech Lake accord or the Charlottetown accord, we experienced decades of constitutional challenges. [ Translation ] I arrived in Quebec in 1993 to study art at McGill University, where a person could take courses in French and answer in English. That was where I took a course with Alain-Gustave Gagnon. We read up on the discoveries of Guy Rocher and his memoirs.”
“[ Translation ] Francophone students, Acadian students in particular, had their own schools that were well protected by the charter. Where I lived, it was half anglophone, half francophone. For anglophones, there was an anglophone school, where the French language and the French fact in New Brunswick and in Canada were recognized. [ English ] Some of my other colleagues on this side of the House and I took it upon ourselves to enjoy the fruits of the charter and to see ourselves reflected in this new reality, this new set of values that was being experienced in Canada, a Canada of equal rights where the march for rights continued year after year. We experienced this despite the fights that were happening and despite the very real wounds that were experienced in the fight of 1982 and in the fights previously.”
“In particular, in my case and in my family's case, we enjoyed the language protections that were afforded in the Constitution based on previous fights, in particular that of the government of Louis Robichaud, which in the 1960s established the equality of French and English in New Brunswick. I know that some of my colleagues on this side of the House had this benefit, but being a child of the charter, I had the chance to go to an English-language school, with French-language schools fully protected later through the charter. However, there was an effect that came from the charter being in our lives. One thing that was important, combined with the official languages of New Brunswick, was that in English-language schools, there was a priority on French-language education and French immersion.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate. I will be sharing my time with the member for Ajax . [ Translation ] I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this Bloc Québécois motion. I will talk a bit about my history as a child of the charter. In our caucus, several newly elected members are children of the charter. I believe that is also the case across the way. I was born to immigrant parents from Egypt and England. They arrived in Newfoundland in 1974 and then settled in New Brunswick. I am the only member of my family who was born in Canada. [ English ] I was six years old when the charter was proclaimed. A lot of us on this side of the House were not party to the debates described in this House, but we experienced the effects of it.”
“100 Sunset was also screened last week at the Revue Cinema in the Roncesvalles area of Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park, where hundreds of members of our community joined in celebration to see their friends and family on the big screen. It is hitting more screens in Canada next year. How did all of this happen? Three years ago, Kunsang Kyirong was able to make this film through support she received from Telefilm Canada's talent to watch program. She is a brilliant Canadian artist supported by an essential Canadian institution.”
“Mr. Speaker, today I rise to recognize Kunsang Kyirong and the cast and crew of her debut feature film, 100 Sunset . The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won honourable mention for the Best Canadian Discovery Award. 100 Sunset is set in a pair of apartment buildings in the Parkdale neighbourhood in our riding. It is brought to life by non-professional Tibetan Canadian actors. In the words of the award jury, “we experience the gossip, rivalries, and intrigues through the eyes of an observant young thief who rarely speaks but seems to register everything.” I saw the movie two weeks ago, and it is still with me. It is an intimate exploration of the Tibetan Canadian immigrant experience.”
“Mr. Speaker, again, I continue to share the concern of the member for Calgary Centre and appreciate some of his points. I will just observe that in our provinces and our country, we have some really great assets to be proud of. A number of my colleagues in the Ontario caucus and I went recently to visit Canada's warehouse capital, so to speak, in southwestern Ontario, in the Windsor-Leamington area. There we could see fresh food being delivered and grown at scale in such a way that it can reach lots of Canadians. We also realize there are a broader set of policy issues. I will refer, of course, to our income tax cut that reached 22 million Canadians, which took effect on July 1. That is another measure that we think can help with affordability, including food affordability.”
“We are working hand in hand with industry and partners to continue to ensure food price stability, including with the measures that my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food , mentioned. We will continue to take concrete actions to ensure Canadians pay fair prices for groceries.”
“Our engagement with industry has been focused on ensuring the continuous improvement of food affordability. After many years of collaboration with provincial and territorial ministers of agriculture and a lot of industry engagement, lots of which we talked about in this House in the previous parliament, we were pleased that in July 2024, all of the large grocery retailers committed to the grocery sector code of conduct. The code is a positive step toward uniting supply chain partners to operate under a set of ground rules and bring more fairness, transparency and predictability to Canada's grocery supply chain and to consumers.”
“For instance, changes to the act have required vendors to be more truthful in their advertising, recognizing that showing prices without all mandatory fees is a form of dishonesty. This practice of drip pricing makes it harder for consumers to do price comparisons to find the best value. It also penalizes the vendors that are most up front with how much things cost. We know that in this era of limited attention, those kinds of sleight-of-hand pieces divert people from finding the best options. We have also made amendments that affect how the Competition Bureau can investigate anti-competitive conduct and deceptive marketing. A strong Competition Bureau and good competition policy help consumers. It is as simple as that. However, we have work to do with the players in our grocery sector.”
“More generally, increased consumer choice with increased competition in the grocery sector is a key, and I would even say the key, to improving food affordability. That is why in recent years, we have modernized the Competition Act in Parliament. A number of members from all parties have just come back from an industry committee meeting where we heard from competition commissioner Matthew Boswell. When we asked him how the changes to the act are helping him promote competition, he essentially asked in return how much time we had. He has a long list of measures that he is already implementing with the supports and resources given by the government to help the bureau do its job, in part to help tame food prices.”
“Actually, we agree that the government does have an important role in creating good economic policies to help address some of these challenges. That has to do with promoting competition, primarily in the portfolio that I assist the Minister of Industry with, and some related policies to help those who are most in need. First is targeted spending that actually reaches the people who need it so they can get the food they need. I cannot help but mention the national school food program, which will put $1 billion over five years into programs and projects that will provide meals for up to 400,000 more kids per year. Unfortunately, the party opposite voted against that measure, but we think it is an important measure that is helping many people in our communities.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Calgary Centre for the intervention and for his concern with respect to some of these matters. I am happy to respond with some of the actions our government is taking to stabilize food prices and help Canadians with the cost of living. We recognize that food affordability continues to be a critical issue that all Canadians are faced with. The hon. member across cited some statistics and some trends. We know that food inflation was a global phenomenon during and after the pandemic, but happily, price increases have slowed considerably. Food inflation for groceries has fallen from a peak of 11.4% in January 2023 to under 3.5%, as the the hon. member cited, in August 2025. The hon. member talked about good economic policies and spending.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think there are lots of projects that are going to be potentially covered by this piece of legislation. What is important is what is an investable project. This bill would provide a framework for all kinds of investable projects, including perhaps the ones that the member mentioned.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think the five criteria that are in the bill, and I commend them, but I am not going to read them back into the record right now, are really what nation building is all about. If we get these five criteria right, not only for the portfolio of projects that arise from the bill and that are directly nominated through the bill, but also those that are more generally the kind of economic resurgence that I hope we can see east to west, with that imaginative, creative investment, that would create a real and important framework. There is a real stress on indigenous benefit and participation. There is a real stress on meeting our climate objectives. There is a stress on achieving our economic targets from coast to coast.”
“Mr. Speaker, I recognize the concerns and challenges raised by my colleague. I believe this bill is essential and is a big part of our response to the tariff war, although it is not the only response. What union leaders and employers are telling us is that this bill will encourage the use of aluminum and the work these individuals do. I think that is why the Liberal members from Quebec support this bill.”
“Mr. Speaker, I worked in provincial government for many years and my interpretation of both the question and these programs is that the programs are best coming from the ground up with the professions, which are working hard to put down some of their more parochial concerns, and have provinces and governments that are behind them. Therefore, I believe this legislation would create that framework and that inspiration for more of this kind of work is to be done.”
“Canadians at large, including Canadians in my riding, are taking the broader perspective. They know how important the north-south relationship is, and they continue to guard and cherish those relationships and friendships, as well as the business ties and academic ties, but they know that what we took for granted in that relationship is at risk. They know that John F. Kennedy's formulation of the allyship, and the economic and security benefits we have from that relationship, are at risk. They are pleading with us to pass the bill to get going on these major nation-building projects from coast to coast, and for their elected leaders, business leaders and union leaders to put capital and their shoulders into this work. I commend the bill to the House.”
“They include leaders such as Finn Johnson of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, who said, “These nation-building projects are going to be essential to Canada's growth in the short and long-term—and UBC members will be there to build them”. There are also leaders such as Goldy Hyder of the Business Council of Canada, who said that Bill C-5 can enable us to leap out of the starting block allowing Canada to finish first in the global race for trade. There is also the Hon. Lisa Raitt, who used to sit in the chamber with us, from Coalition for a Better Future. She said that she believes Bill C-5 can play a role in strengthening Canada's long-term economic foundations. These are some of the leaders who are inspired by what the bill proposes and the mandate that we had in this election to be bold and ambitious and build the Canadian economy.”
“The building Canada act is a strong bill, improved by the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, with an engaged Parliament, which we are engaging with today, with protections both in the bill and in the Constitution, to make sure we do nation building more quickly and do it right, in the way the Minister of Indigenous Services said so well in the House earlier today. However, as much as the individual provisions of the bill are important, it is the imagination and the possibility that it has already unleashed that I am looking forward to. Provincial premiers are working together and working with us to propose new projects to build. Business and labour leaders are standing up and standing together to build.”
“That means the one Canadian economy act . As the House knows, the one Canadian economy act is in two sections. There are two new proposed pieces of legislation: the free trade and labour mobility in Canada act and the building Canada act. The free trade and labour mobility in Canada act would build those east-west ties that we all neglected, and here are some examples: a farmer in Saskatchewan grows organic produce and wants to sell it in Alberta, but the certification rules just do not line up; a certified welder in Nova Scotia is offered a short-term job in a federally regulated project in Newfoundland and Labrador, but they have to reapply for recognition; or a tech firm in Ontario builds an energy-efficient appliance that meets the highest standards, but when they market it in B.C., they are told to go through another process.”
“History continues to make us friends, even if some of those individual friendships or family connections have been tested, but the new U.S. administration is breaking our economic partnership vocally and explicitly. It is threatening our sovereignty vocally and explicitly. (1230) This means that we need to find new allies. We have a necessity to find new allies. Our government is doing this every day, and we are showing leadership on this through our G7 presidency, but we need to find and build new allies, new economies and new ties in the place we should have been looking to all along, which is at home. No matter how strong the family relationships are across the border, no matter how close the border is or how closely tied our economies continue to be, we have to look east-west for our economy, our security and our sovereignty.”
“However, again, generally, this country has succeeded. Indeed, this country exists and has survived because we were able to manage both our east-west relationships and our north-south relationships and not let one be destroyed by the other. For decades and centuries, we have been able to keep these two sets of relationships balanced. As long as those basic collective benefits of the north-south relationship of economic and security were there, we had the luxury of focusing our conflict on the east-west relationship here, but that has changed, and now we have to change. President Kennedy's description of our north-south relationship no longer holds, at least not all of it, anyway. Geography continues to make us neighbours, now both physically and digitally.”
“Kennedy in his address to this chamber 64 years ago when he said, and I think some of us have heard these words before, “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.” Whenever we had a difficulty with the north-south relationship, we could generally make progress on it, not necessarily solving it, but continuing to work on it. All the time the north-south relationship developed, our economy, along with our web of connections, which each of us and our constituents had with our neighbours to the south, also grew. From time to time, we would hear from people in Canada that not all was well with the north-south relationship for Canadian artists and creators, our softwood lumber industry, refugees and Canadian innovators.”
“While our predecessors in these seats debated these issues, Canadians continued to build north-south ties, including businesses, conferences, holidays, research partnerships, shopping and, most importantly, the family ties in immigration that define our two nations. These are among the Maritimes, Quebec and New England, the Canadian prairie provinces, and the U.S. Midwest and west. They are among Niagara and Buffalo, Windsor and Detroit, Waterloo and Silicon Valley, Tsawwassen, B.C. and Point Roberts, as well as Washington, and the Mohawk nation of Akwesasne. These are all north-south connections that define the Canadian-U.S. relationship. The north-south relationship was captured so well by President John F.”
“The north-south ties are not always the daily concern of the House or of Canadian leaders, but it is a set of ties that so many of us live with every day, and we cannot understand the monumental east-west shifts without having the context of our north-south relationship, because the north-south ties predate the creation of the Dominion of Canada, too. There is the war of independence and the arrival of the United Empire Loyalists, the War of 1812, the threat of the Fenian raids and the American Civil War. We have had to manage the north-south relationship since July 1, 1867, and occasionally we have taken great strides, whether it was with the Auto Pact, the acid rain treaty, the free trade agreements or our participation in the Afghanistan mission.”
“There were the debates that arose from our different regional perspectives on those projects, including the building of businesses and family ties, as well as the many constitutional battles that brought some of us here, or scarred us, which were often focused on Quebec or the rest of Canada's relationship with it, but it is one on which we have all engaged. There are, again, the injustices that have been or are being done with respect to indigenous peoples, and they are part of the east-west relationship that we continue to live. To build Canada from east to west took imagination, commitment and conviction, and this new government, this 45th Parliament, along with our constituents, are all beneficiaries of that hard work to build the country from east to west.”
“The complex set of relationships between different indigenous peoples on this continent and between indigenous peoples and settlers continues to define both sets of relationships, but both of these east-west and north-south ties were fundamental to the growth of Canada. The east-west relationship is the one that we generally learned in history class and that we continue to live and work on in the House. On this side of the House, with members from every province and two of three territories, it is one we take incredibly seriously. We know how that east-west relationship evolved. It was with the expansion of the country, first west and then north and then back east. There was the building of infrastructure, including railways, highways, waterways, and energy and electricity connections.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the one Canadian economy act. We are here with this bill on these timelines because the government was given a mandate to unite, protect and build Canada. I do not think we expected to be in this place with this bill, but necessity is the mother of invention, and this crisis has created an opportunity for us to find and build the new solidarity we need to build Canada in the coming years. We did not expect to be in this place with this bill because, for centuries, generations of Canadians, immigrants to and from Canada, generations of Canadian leaders, had managed to balance our north-south relationship with the United States and the east-west relationship within Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2) and in accordance with the policy on tabling of treaties in Parliament, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the treaty entitled “Final Acts of the World Radiocommunication Conference of the International Telecommunication Union”, done at Dubai on December 15, 2023.”
“Mr. Speaker, we are in a trade war against these unjust and illegal tariffs. That is what we are fighting every day. That is what the Prime Minister is taking on in Kananaskis. We are fighting for workers and their investments. Let us remember on this day, when we just remembered Buzz Hargrove in this House, what he would be fighting for. Let us fight together for the things that will keep us together strong, fighting for those investments and fighting for those workers. I invite the members opposite to join us in that fight.”
“Mr. Speaker, we are fighting these illegal and unjustified tariffs every day. They are hurting workers on both sides of the border, including Canadian workers and Canadian companies. The government will not be bullied. We are going to fight against these tariffs, defending every job and every business in Hamilton, in the Soo and across Canada.”
“I think the set of issues and initiatives that we see in the estimates, that we see in the work that has been done, is having an immediate impact in Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park. I look forward to asking the minister for a few more details.”
“I know that this is a result of what is in the estimates, but I think a lot of people on this side of the aisle and, really, Canadians across the country and people in my riding, are really excited about the prospect of the local jobs that are going to come from this housing construction activity. I heard on the other side of the aisle, earlier this week, the comparison of modular housing with tents. I do not think that this is what we see. I am from a town where there was a proud history of people growing up in modular homes, in trailer homes, places that are decent places to live. We know that this can catalyze an industry and that can create jobs right here in Canada. I am very excited to hear about how that will roll out through the “build Canada homes” program.”