Roman Baber
York Centre, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, part 2 of Bill C‑22 would force providers to retain the metadata of all Canadians. Liberals say the data is no different than the phone book, but the phone book did not log every phone call in every location of every Canadian for the last 12 months.”
“They are heckling me because they cannot handle what they are doing here. I welcome their heckling. I wear it as a badge of honour. The only thing the Liberals would do is eliminate the religious defence to an allegation of hate speech, and it is all because the Bloc says a guy named Charkaoui was not charged for calling for the extermina…”
“The Liberals wanted to eliminate the Attorney General's ability to consent to prosecutions. They realized how bad an idea it was and rolled it back. They wanted to redefine the term “hatred”. It is a definition that the Supreme Court used for 40 years. I am proud of this.”
“For example, people could violate the digital safety act or the human rights code, and that may attract criminal prosecution. The Liberals are turning our democracy into a banana republic. (1155) Earlier, I heard the member for Whitby ask my colleague why she is opposed to a new hate-motivated offence.”
“It does not excuse incitement to violence. A religious defence does not apply to statements that are not spoken in good faith. Calling for the extermination of people is not good faith. This is a charade. The main operation of the bill is predicated on a lie.”
“This would be a Liberal government appointee reigning over what we do on the Internet, with unlimited powers over how we communicate and how the world's most innovative companies do business. Surely by coincidence, the same thing is now happening in England this week, and it just happened in Australia. I was trained in the common law.”
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“Now the Prime Minister refuses to table a budget, because he plans to rewrite the books: New books, everybody. He will override well-established public sector accounting principles. He will take out capital dollars because they are not real dollars: We do not pay interest on them and we do not add them to the debt. Abracadabra and boom, Canada's operational budget will balance itself. I started out as a commercial and bankruptcy litigator. The first thing to be asked when entering a distressed company is “Show me the books”. When the books are hocus-pocus, we can bet there is malfeasance. When we hear about a company doing a big accounting revision, the stock is dumped. Separating capital and operational expenditures never worked. It has been tried, and it failed.”
“Unless speech violates the Criminal Code, let Canadians hear all opinions and make up their own minds. That is democracy. The Communists also lied very well. They lie about everything. My grade 1 gym teacher said, “You don't need herring on your bread. Bread and butter is good enough. Maybe they have herring in America, but that is because America didn't fight in World War II.” What a terrible lie. Germany even lost World War II, but they have herring in Germany. Ironically, the Prime Minister also has difficulties getting his facts straight. He says one thing in English and another thing in French, one thing out west and another thing in Quebec. He had nothing to do with Brookfield's move to New York. He just signed the letter to the shareholders.”
“It does not matter how people voted; they do not want censorship in Canada. It is not up to the heritage minister , who calls himself a proud socialist, to decide what is true and what is not true and what is safe and what is not safe. The Liberals, like all radicals, think they know what is good for us. That is the difference between Liberals and Conservatives: Liberals want to tell people what to do; Conservatives say, “You do you.” In fact, communists use the word “disinformation” to come down on free speech. I say to just have the decency to call it lies. They can accuse me of lying. I dare them to. (1335) The best way to combat lies is not censorship, but more information and better information. Throughout history, those who impose censorship are always the bad guys.”
“They could not even pass around photos of supermarkets, so Soviets would not start asking why people have eggs in Europe but Soviets do not. That is why people called it the Iron Curtain. The Prime Minister talks about there being too much disinformation out there on U.S. platforms. What is he going to do? Is the Prime Minister going to censor Twitter? Is he going to put me behind the Iron Curtain again? Freedom of speech is the greatest right of them all, because through freedom of speech, we defend all other rights and all other people. However, freedom of speech is not just the right to utter speech; it is also the freedom to hear speech. When the Prime Minister threatens my ability to read Twitter, I am worried. Am I going back to the future again, like the Beatles song Back in the U.S.S.R. ?”
“The problem is that at a time of crisis, even when collectivism is well intentioned, it is just a step away from Communism. There are no limits to where collectivism will go, because the bigger the crisis, the bigger the government's solution, especially from the Liberals. They are determined to save us from everything. They will fit a square into a circle, even if they break the toy. Of course, mainstream media will applaud and tell us that it is working. Then, all of a sudden, we do not recognize our country. Do members know what else? In the Soviet Union, people were not allowed to listen to foreign radio like the BBC or the Voice of America. They were not allowed to read western newspapers or books.”
“After the Prime Minister 's “build Canada homes” fails, because we cannot trust the government with our dry cleaning, imagine what is going to happen when people have no place to live and the federal government declares housing a national emergency. We all have to do our part. People who own large homes should do their fair share. Why do they need all these extra bedrooms? Why not redistribute housing? I am not saying this will happen, but who knows anymore? My fear is the new phenomenon we are seeing in Canada called collectivism. It is accelerating, and it is exactly the path that Venezuela and so many other countries took, slowly, step by step. Everything is the biggest crisis ever now. We have a new crisis every week.”
““How many bedrooms?” is the precise question the Red Army asked my great-grandmother after the Bolsheviks barged into my family's home in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1918. It turned out my family had too much house, so the Bolsheviks settled in two more families. That was the hell that were communal apartments in eastern Europe. We already have a vacant house tax in Toronto. Some folks in Vancouver are talking about a vacant bedroom tax, and we are already asked how many bedrooms we have on the national census. Let me draw a scenario. An article in The Globe and Mail claimed that there is no version of reality where housing supply can meet the rising demand.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am sincerely grateful to the people of York Centre, to my supporters and to my colleagues. This is an honour of a lifetime. I thank them so much. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I rise in the House for my inaugural address with humility to share my unique story in the hope that I do not go back to the future. I clearly remember the Communist Soviet Union. I lived there until I was nine. Those of us who come from the eastern bloc are afraid. Please, do not dismiss us. I will begin by asking a question: How many bedrooms are in members' home? Are there more bedrooms than people? Why? It is because we have a housing crisis. Why do people need so many bedrooms?”
“We are grateful to the Toronto police for keeping us safe, but we demand of the Liberal government to end the incitement to violence on Canada's streets and to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community. I know that my Conservative colleagues will fight for the safety of Jews all across Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House of Commons for the first time. I am honoured to serve the beautiful riding of York Centre, located in the great city of Toronto. It is home to one of Canada's largest Jewish communities, to which I belong. An unprecedented wave of hate crimes is terrorising Canada's Jewish community. Under the Liberal government, hate crimes have gone up 250%, and anti-Semitic hate crimes have gone up over 400%. A Jewish school located a mile away from my North York home has been shot at three times. Enough is enough. Conservatives stand with Canada's Jewish community for its right to exist, to worship and to live free from violence and intimidation. Last Sunday, over 50,000 Jewish Canadians proudly marched through York Centre on the Walk with Israel.”