← LEADERSHIP TERMINAL

HOUSE OF COMMONS · FORMER

Cheryl Gallant

Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, Ontario · Conservative · Canada

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

We see the Iranian Revolutionary Guard agents hiring contract killers to shoot up synagogues. We see hate marches in our streets. We see places of worship burned to the ground. Stubbornly, the Liberals still refuse to admit their mistakes on this file. They have admitted they were wrong about carbon taxes.

SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

The Liberals were more than happy to deploy misinformation and disinformation around the use of a hate symbol to score cheap political points. The CBC worked hand in glove with the government to push this fake narrative.

SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

Between 2021 and 2023, there were 238 recorded arson attacks on churches. There are regular hate marches through Jewish neighbourhoods. Liberals even claim their own communities are hotbeds of hatred, where white supremacist rallies are held on a regular basis.

SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

However, when placed in the broader context of decades of Liberal political strategy that sought to paint all Conservative opposition as motivated by hate and the Liberals' continued desire to construct an entirely new bureaucracy to monitor Canadians' digital expression, this bill looks like a dangerous expansion of authority.

SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the big-hearted constituents in the caring riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C‑9 , the Liberal bill to ban symbols of hate. The bill is back here because the other place has amended the legislation to include a new symbol to the Liberal hit list.

SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

This example of the Liberals seeking to ban the symbol of the noose so soon after engaging in a bad-faith attack on a political opponent by claiming a lanyard was actually a noose does not stand in isolation. During the “freedom convoy” and the protests, we saw the Liberals deploy this exact same technique.

SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

The complete record

Every one of 290 lines we hold for Cheryl Gallant, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 6.

  1. Madam Speaker, I can say that since the bill has been introduced, I have received more mail with reference to the bill and that particular amendment and the removal of religious freedom than for any other bill. In fact, it almost comes to the level of the firearms registry back in the late 1990s, Bill C-68 . There was such upheaval that it changed the course of the election in my riding, where lawful firearms owners felt that the legislation the Liberals were bringing in was unjust. They feel the same way about this.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  2. Yes, Madam Speaker, under the Liberals, and this hatred that they are promoting, I can believe that this incident happened, and it is unacceptable. However, given how the Liberals expand laws and try to encompass innocent people into law–breaking, they cannot be trusted with adding these symbols to the bill.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  3. They have cut off debate on this censorship bill. Now they want to create a new bureaucracy to monitor harmful content, yet they tell Canadians to trust the cabinet to determine what is and is not harmful. If Canadians did not even trust the Liberals with a majority, we definitely do not trust them with the power to decide what is and is not hate.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  4. We see the Iranian Revolutionary Guard agents hiring contract killers to shoot up synagogues. We see hate marches in our streets. We see places of worship burned to the ground. Stubbornly, the Liberals still refuse to admit their mistakes on this file. They have admitted they were wrong about carbon taxes. They have admitted they were wrong about the need for tougher bail. They have admitted they were wrong about the need for adult supervision of our immigration system. What will it take for them to realize their approach to combatting hate has only created more hate? The positive elements in this bill that would protect people attending religious places are completely undone by the decision to remove the religious speech defence. We have recent examples of Liberals spreading disinformation about fake nooses and Nazi supporters.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  5. Between 2021 and 2023, there were 238 recorded arson attacks on churches. There are regular hate marches through Jewish neighbourhoods. Liberals even claim their own communities are hotbeds of hatred, where white supremacist rallies are held on a regular basis. Ever since the Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker introduced the Canadian Bill of Rights and restored voting rights to indigenous Canadians, which the Liberals had removed, this country had been on a steady march toward greater inclusion. That all changed in 2015. The decision by the Liberal government to abandon Canada's multicultural approach in favour of an imported American ideology of racial essentialism is at the root of the problem. When combined with out-of-control immigration and soft-on-bail policies, we see the inevitable result.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  6. However, when placed in the broader context of decades of Liberal political strategy that sought to paint all Conservative opposition as motivated by hate and the Liberals' continued desire to construct an entirely new bureaucracy to monitor Canadians' digital expression, this bill looks like a dangerous expansion of authority. Layer that atop the Liberals' decision to support the separatist motion to eliminate the religious defence, and the expansion of state powers starts to look threatening to many Canadians. I agree with my Liberal colleagues when they say hate has grown under the Liberal government. Before the Liberals were elected, there had not been a documented case of a noose in a workplace in decades. Now the Liberals claim it is so common the symbol must be banned.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  7. These two recent examples, the fake noose and the protesters who were labelled as Nazis for calling the Liberals authoritarian, are precisely why we cannot trust the government with this much power over expression. Even last night during debate, the member for Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas engaged in a bad-faith attack on my colleague for highlighting the different history between Canada and the U.S. That member provides an example of a type of affliction common to Liberals, what we might call the progressive man's burden. They see it as their moral duty to defend those they view as weak while educating the uncivilized among us. If this bill was a one‑off viewed in isolation, a reasonable case could be made to support it.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  8. The Liberals were more than happy to deploy misinformation and disinformation around the use of a hate symbol to score cheap political points. The CBC worked hand in glove with the government to push this fake narrative. (1055) No one needs to agree with protesters' views comparing the Liberals to the Nazis, but if we want to keep our democracy, we have to protect the right to express those views. Instead, the Liberal‑funded media, in close coordination with the Liberal government, sought to discredit the protesters as hate‑mongers before a single truck had arrived in the city. Before my Liberal colleagues reach for their favourite talking point, I just want to remind them that the Liberal staffer emails to the media are all available online on the evidence page of the Public Order Emergency Commission website.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  9. This example of the Liberals seeking to ban the symbol of the noose so soon after engaging in a bad-faith attack on a political opponent by claiming a lanyard was actually a noose does not stand in isolation. During the “freedom convoy” and the protests, we saw the Liberals deploy this exact same technique. Some protesters had likened the public health restrictions to Nazi‑era policies. Some had even desecrated the Canadian flag with the Nazi hooked cross as a way of illustrating their point that the Liberals were acting like Nazis. When one of those protesters walked behind a Conservative MP doing an interview with the CBC, the Liberals pounced. They accused us of supporting Nazis. Trudeau literally accused a Jewish MP of standing with people who wave swastikas.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  10. During Justin Trudeau's 2021 superspreader election campaign, the Liberal war room found a pliable journalist to publish the Liberals' pathetic lie that I had depicted the prime minister being lynched. University professors wrote op-eds condemning the so‑called depiction of political violence, except it was a fake noose news story. There was no noose. It was a picture of Trudeau pulling on a thin red lanyard while mugging for the camera. Having had the recent experience of the Liberal Party of Canada lying about a noose and then having it reported by the Liberal‑funded media, I can speak from my own experience about how troubling it is for the Trudeau Senate to add something as vague as the word “noose” to the list of prohibited terror symbols.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  11. All four incidents generated considerable media attention and widespread condemnation. In one of the three cases, a person was arrested and charged. Hanging a noose on someone's workplace locker is unambiguously a death threat, regardless of ethnicity. If the intent was to foment hate, then the act is already a criminal offence. If this bill becomes law, the police and the Crown prosecutors will still need to prove that the display was intended to promote hate to lay a charge under this act, yet to hear the Liberals speak, one could easily be misinformed into believing that the simple act of displaying a noose is now a hate crime. Given the Liberals' own recent history of bad‑faith claims of noose sightings, this should concern Canadians.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  12. Both spoke of the legacy of lynching in the United States and how the noose became a symbol of terror and violence. They both cited specific, well‑documented historical facts about the history of the noose in the American context, yet when it came time to speak about Canada, the specificity stopped and they moved to speak in generalities. I am in no way suggesting the members were engaged in a repeat of the outlandish claims made by the Liberal member for Vancouver Centre when she claimed crosses were burning on the lawns of Prince George residents. There have been at least three documented cases of nooses being left at workplaces since the summer of 2020 and the death of George Floyd. Prior to the summer of 2020, there had been only one documented case.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  13. As I said during the debate at second reading, the rise in hate is real under the Liberals. The measures in this bill to protect places of worship and cultural centres and add penalties for obstructing or intimidating people from entering those places are a step forward. The removal of the safeguards around religious expression is vile. The criminalization of specific symbols would be less alarming if the Liberals were not the ones pursuing it. They have a long track record of engaging in bad‑faith attacks and outright fabrications when they see a chance to smear their political opponents. I would encourage the Canadians watching this debate at home to listen to the powerful speeches given by the member for Terrebonne and the member for Hull—Aylmer .

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  14. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the big-hearted constituents in the caring riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C‑9 , the Liberal bill to ban symbols of hate. The bill is back here because the other place has amended the legislation to include a new symbol to the Liberal hit list. The Senate used to be called the chamber of sober second thought. Unfortunately, under the democratic reforms by Justin Trudeau, that chamber has come to resemble a critical studies faculty lounge. It is less sober second thought and more quick hot takes. While the Senate had sufficient sobriety to reject one amendment on so‑called denialism, the decision to include the symbol of a noose highlights a broader problem with the Liberal approach to combatting hate.

    SITTING 137 · 2026-06-15 · READ IN HANSARD

  15. Mr. Speaker, I have not seen such public upheaval over legislation since the gun registry was introduced in the late 1990s. The fact of the matter is that we have had anti-hate legislation on the books since the 1970s, and under former justice minister Vic Toews it was more clearly defined; that has been in place. The real problem is that the government does not want to enforce this and law enforcement is not enforcing what already exists. When we see protests, right outside this building, with people screaming at the top of their lungs that they want to see our Jewish population annihilated, there is a refusal to act on that, even on the grounds of the House of Commons. Is this bill not really about trying to make it look like the Liberals are doing something about combatting hate instead of really doing it and having it enforced?

    SITTING 136 · 2026-06-14 · READ IN HANSARD

  16. Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' pay raise for the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces is a farce. The Liberals are slashing the housing benefit by up to 72%, while upping the rent by 5%. CAF members in the national capital region will see their housing differential cut by up to $4,200 a year. In Kingston, they will see their housing differential cut by up to $7,200 a year. When will the defence minister reverse these harmful changes?

    SITTING 133 · 2026-06-09 · READ IN HANSARD

  17. Madam Speaker, the annual report from housing advocate Marie-Josée Houle, who is also a cabinet adviser, says that “the current pace of building deeply affordable homes is so slow that it [will] take over 1,000 years” to get to where we need to be. Housing is a provincial and municipal jurisdiction. All these agencies are working as fronts for private interests. What we need is for the government to cut taxes and just get out of the way so that we can get the homes built.

    SITTING 132 · 2026-06-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  18. Madam Speaker, my colleague mentioned that this includes any organization or any company that transmits electronic data on behalf of a client. Would this include physicians, the medical field, where they either fax or email prescriptions to the drugstore? They are transmitting electronically on behalf of a client. Would that be subject to part 1 of Bill C-22 ?

    SITTING 132 · 2026-06-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  19. Mr. Speaker, Bill from the valley is a home renovation contractor. He called me to tell me that, by the end of May, he is usually fully booked for the entire season. It is June, and he has just two projects booked. People are more worried about putting food on the table than about fixing a leaky roof or a broken porch. He thinks he may have to take on an extra line of work. Will the Prime Minister tell Bill that Canada is in a recession, or is he going to tell Bill that he is just technically running out of work to do?

    SITTING 131 · 2026-06-07 · READ IN HANSARD

  20. Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the fact that a far more common-sense alternative to using up steel in Canada would be to have Via Rail acquire its own dedicated line, the Prime Minister 's rupture, which he wants to be permanent, with the United States has come with his suggestion that we do more business with Europe. Could the member explain to me how much steel Europe and our new strategic partner, China, might take from us instead?

    SITTING 117 · 2026-05-04 · READ IN HANSARD

  21. Mr. Speaker, it is clear from this old Liberal response that the Liberals are incapable of rising to the occasion. They have become a broken record of vapid slogans. The Liberals are spending more, leaving Canadians to invest less. They are growing the economy from the heart out, the elbows up, the eyes down, but always against the fight for freedom. If one dares to question them, they suggest that person is mentally ill or, like the national “spend more” minister, will accuse them of hating their country. This illustrates the choice Canadians have: They can choose the nationalism of the Liberal Party, which treats criticism as treason, or choose the patriotism of the Conservatives, who seek to repair what is being broken in the country we love. That is the choice. We choose patriotism over nationalism. We choose humility over arrogance.

    SITTING 116 · 2026-05-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  22. Unfortunately, Canadians are stuck living in the church of climate socialism for the next three years. This is a choice Canadians will face next time: our Conservative approach, rooted in reality and humility, or the Liberal approach, based on economic arrogance defensible only through personal insults.

    SITTING 116 · 2026-05-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  23. They can rebrand their concrete slab into a sovereign spaceport and wait for the government to give them a 10-year exclusive, sole-source contract. Unlike the arrogant Liberal approach, our Conservative economic plan is based in humility. We cannot know the future, so we let a thousand flowers bloom. We create the conditions where anyone with a sound business plan has a chance to build a successful venture. We do not pick and choose who gets special political exemptions from Liberal red tape. We will cut the Liberal red tape and lower taxes for everyone equally. This is the same approach millions of Canadians take to investing. They do not try to pick individual stocks. They purchase exchange-traded funds to buy the market. This agnostic approach to economic growth has proven to be superior to the Liberals' faith-based approach.

    SITTING 116 · 2026-05-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  24. The supercluster strategy was just the Liberals' doubling down on the failure of the cluster strategy. The Liberals continue to fail over and over again yet never learn a fundamental lesson: One cannot beat the market. It does not matter if one has a Ph.D. in economics from Oxford. No one is smarter than the collective decision-making of 40 million Canadians. Unfortunately, while no one person can outsmart the market, someone can outsmart a government. Call this the Enron-Brookfield business model. Rather than compete in the market, they lobby the government to regulate a market into existence and to then regulate out the competition. They do not need a secret cabal to execute this strategy. They just need to put the word “sovereign” before our business pitch and watch the CBC lobby for them.

    SITTING 116 · 2026-05-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  25. I am not raising a question of privilege. This is no place for a thin skin. I am happy to throw partisan haymakers, and I can appreciate a sharp, devastating rejoinder. The secretary's ad hominem attack was just blunt and boring. It was less Cicero in the forum and more Archie Bunker in the La-Z-Boy chair. After 11 years of failure, all the Liberals have left are tired, worn-out personal attacks. This should not be a surprise, considering their policies are just as tired and worn out. The Liberal sovereign debt fund is just repeating the failure of the clean growth fund. The clean growth fund is just repeating the failure of the Canadian Infrastructure Bank. The Infrastructure Bank is just repeating the failure of the supercluster strategy.

    SITTING 116 · 2026-05-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  26. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the answer-seeking Canadians in the riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke. Last week, I asked the government if it would end the corporate welfare spending spree and balance the budget. The response from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance was a misogynistic personal attack. This has become a recurring talking point from the Liberal bro caucus. The Liberals cannot defend their terrible policy, so they resort to invoking the “hysterical woman” trope. This sexist pattern comes straight from the top. The Prime Minister does not like to be questioned by women. He gets chippy and condescending when pressed. He even deployed a classic gaslighting technique when he told Rosemary Barton to look inside herself when she asked about his conflicts of interest. Let us be clear.

    SITTING 116 · 2026-05-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  27. Mr. Speaker, Liberal spending is out of control. Liberal overspending means higher inflation today and more taxes tomorrow. The money is not getting to Canadians who need it. It is going to well-connected Liberal companies and corporate welfare queens, like Brookfield. Canada has the highest grocery inflation in the G7, the worst household debt, the highest housing costs and the second-highest unemployment in the G7. Will this Liberal Prime Minister end this costly credit card budget so Canadians can afford to live?

    SITTING 112 · 2026-04-27 · READ IN HANSARD

  28. Under the Brookfield government, corporations can claim an investment tax credit for spending a government grant. Which former colleague or friend will the Prime Minister appoint this time?

    SITTING 112 · 2026-04-27 · READ IN HANSARD

  29. Mr. Speaker, once again the Prime Minister is taking a page from President Trump's playbook. It is not enough for him to sign fake executive orders or hype a memo and call it a trade deal. Now he is importing an American-style sovereign debt fund to enrich his friends. Norway and Kuwait use their national oil revenues to fuel a sovereign wealth fund. Unless the Liberals plan to steal resource revenues from the provinces, the only thing feeding this fund is more debt. Another Crown corporation just means more bureaucracy. This is the same failed approach we saw with the Infrastructure Bank and the Trudeau growth fund. They give corporate welfare to well-connected Liberals to build solar panels, while Canadians' energy bills go up.

    SITTING 112 · 2026-04-27 · READ IN HANSARD

  30. Mr. Speaker, we saw in Bill C‑11 , the military justice system modernization act, that even though the committee had unanimous agreement on amendments, when it came to report stage the amendments were all stripped out. The government is already all-powerful in here, in what it wants to get done. What other aspects of committees will the government now control, besides amendments and the other things we do in committee, for example, scrutinizing bills?

    SITTING 111 · 2026-04-26 · READ IN HANSARD

  31. Mr. Speaker, the motion has to do with the number of positions the Liberals are putting on committees, not what a party is. That is not the discussion here. It is the number of people allowed on a committee.

    SITTING 111 · 2026-04-26 · READ IN HANSARD

  32. Mr. Speaker, I think the Liberals are having a hard time understanding why it is so important that even the low- and mid-level assaults be addressed. Could the member give examples of what this entails and why they should not just be let go?

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  33. Mr. Speaker, the member referred to low- and mid-level assaults and the Liberals getting away with it. We had a prime minister who was a known groper and he just wrote it off, saying he felt it differently or she felt it differently. I am wondering if this is what—

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  34. Mr. Speaker, the member said that all the sexual assault cases since a certain date have been transferred to the civilian courts. I wonder if he knows how many have been transferred, and of those, how many have been heard, how many are still waiting to be heard, and what happens to the so-called low-level sexual assaults of groping that will not meet the threshold to be heard in civilian court.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  35. Mr. Speaker, the problem is that the civilian courts are full. Already, cases of sexual assault in the civilian domain are not being heard, because too much time expires between a case's starting and its coming to trial, so the perpetrator gets off scot-free.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  36. Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, who does yeoman's duty with different cases serving the armed forces. We heard from many people, but we need to listen to what the victims said that did not align with what is in the recommendations. It is not fair to them, and it is not fair to accuse people who are named in a snitch line and then have to face a court. When a case is taken out of the military system, there is no support for the accused, and there is no guarantee that there is going to be any sense of justice for the victim, because their case may never be heard. The Jordan framework may require that the case be put aside altogether.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  37. Mr. Speaker, we respect the recommendations made by Justice Arbour. However, while Justice Arbour listened to the victims of sexual assault, she did not have as much breadth as we did in listening to the testimonies of law enforcement, of people who are in the military and of people who had direct involvement in those proceedings, such as former judges and former lawyers in the system. We heard more testimony, and that is why we proposed some amendments, which have been rejected.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  38. Canada's armed forces cannot recruit its way out of crisis. It must legislate its way out of it, honestly and courageously. That is the standard this bill must meet, and that is what Canadians expect.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  39. If the government truly wants to rebuild trust, it must do more than move files between systems. It must control the culture of defensiveness, information control and procedural gatekeeping that allowed known predators to remain on the base and allowed victims to be discredited for demanding better. Women are watching this debate, as are their families and as are potential recruits who want to serve their country without sacrificing their safety or their dignity. They will judge us not on the title of this bill, but on whether its substance reflects reality. Bill C-11 is incomplete. It is not beyond repair, but repair requires humility, transparency and respect for Parliament. The experience of Elvira Jaszberenyi deserves more than a legislative shrug. It deserves a justice system that learns from failure rather than papers over it.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  40. First, reforms must protect the victims, not just symbolically but procedurally and substantively. Second, reforms must preserve fairness for the accused because a system that cuts corners will not survive constitutional scrutiny. Third, reforms must strengthen, not weaken, institutional accountability. Bill C-11 would make progress on the first step by removing jurisdiction over sexual offences committed in Canada, but it would fail on the second and third by refusing to fix the structural flaws exposed by cases like Ms. Jaszberenyi's. A justice system that forces a survivor to pursue a private prosecution because internal accountability failed is a system already in crisis. A system that responds by narrowing scrutiny and striking committee amendments is a system interested in optics, not outcomes.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  41. They dealt with real issues, including access to trauma-informed training, independent oversight, support for both the victims and the accused, and ensuring key positions within the military justice system could not sit vacant indefinitely. The government chose not to persuade the committee. It chose to erase its work. On Monday, in debating Bill C-22 , I spoke about the government's new-found majority and the choices it faces: to govern and to govern collaboratively or to rule by decree. Bill C-11 gives us the answer. This is not collaboration. It is control. When that instinct is applied to legislation dealing with sexual assault, oversight and victims' rights, the consequences are profound. The Conservatives believe that reforms to military justice must do three things.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  42. Then, nearly 10 weeks later, the government asked the Speaker to intervene, not to clarify drafting but to strike down amendments, including amendments supported unanimously by committee members. The Speaker ruled them out of order. I respect the ruling, but I do not accept the government's conduct. Committees exist to do the hard, detailed work that the House does not have time to do, clause by clause. When the government invites committee members to engage, votes against them and then asks the Speaker to erase that work after the fact, it undermines parliamentary accountability. This matters because those amendments were not abstract procedural tweaks.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  43. (1310) No recruitment campaign, no slogan and no equity strategy will overcome a justice system that retraumatizes victims and shields decision-makers from scrutiny. That brings me to the procedural context of this debate. How this bill has been handled matters almost as much as what is in it. Committee members from multiple parties worked in good faith to strengthen Bill C-11 . Amendments were adopted to improve oversight and support the accused fairly, and to address long-standing gaps identified by survivors and experts alike. Those amendments were passed after the committee overruled the chair's initial rulings, exercising its legitimate authority as a master of its own proceedings.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  44. Women are not choosing to walk away from military careers because they lack patriotism or resilience. They are walking away because they do not believe the institution will protect them when it matters most. Ms. Jaszberenyi is now retired. After her attack, she was removed from her unit and tasked with painting walls. She was not given work commensurate with her skills and training. She was effectively forced out of service when the Canadian Forces was facing a retention crisis. Imagine the kind of message that sends to our serving women and men. Now she has to deal with Veterans Affairs. After giving testimony on this bill last fall, she was informed by Veterans Affairs that her paperwork had been lost. She needed to resubmit her application. There was no pension and there were no benefits, just more process and paperwork.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  45. Victim advocates warned us that Bill C-11 risks creating a jurisdictional void. Military police leaders told us civilian police services lack the capacity to absorb these cases. Prosecutors cautioned that removing concurrent jurisdiction might mean that fewer cases, not more, actually proceed. Ms. Jaszberenyi herself warned us that changing the forum without fixing the evidence handling, oversight and accountability would simply shift the harm from one system to another. If we want women to serve, we must give them reason to trust. That trust is already fragile. Canadians recently learned the Canadian Armed Forces is not on track to meet its own targets for recruiting and retaining women. The numbers are not just disappointing, they are damning.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  46. It would not require the military police to preserve and fully disclose investigative records to civilian authorities. It would not guarantee that oversight bodies would finally receive the information they need to do their job. It would not ensure that civilian prosecutors or judges are properly equipped to understand military power dynamics, chain of command pressures or the realities on base. Crucially, it would not address what happens after a civilian conviction. A service member could be found guilty of a sexual offence in civilian court and yet face no court martial, no automatic consideration under the code of service discipline and no transparent process to protect others still serving alongside them. That is not a survivor-centred system. This is administrative offloading. We heard this repeatedly at committee.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  47. The fact that she continued to demand accountability was reframed as an agenda. She lost. For the government, that may be a completed file. For women watching from within the ranks, it was a reminder. For those looking to join, it was a warning. That is the context in which we must judge Bill C-11 . The government tells us this bill would restore trust by transferring jurisdiction for sexual offences committed in Canada over to civilian court. Conservatives agree that this change was necessary. It was recommended by justices Deschamps, Fish and Arbour and reflects the years of advocacy by victims and experts. However, jurisdiction alone does not equal justice. Bill C-11 would remove cases from the military justice system while leaving untouched the very accountability gaps that failed Ms. Jaszberenyi in the first place.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  48. She reported her rape. She co-operated with investigators. She trusted the system that promised to protect her. Instead, the system closed ranks. Her assailant was already known to military authorities for sexual assault. Evidence went undocumented or disappeared. Key decisions were shielded from oversight. The Military Police Complaints Commission was denied access to critical prosecutorial briefing notes, despite clear recommendations from Justice Fish that this information be disclosed. When the military declined to proceed, Ms. Jaszberenyi did something few victims can afford to do, emotionally or financially. She pursued a private prosecution in civilian court. That trial did not vindicate her; it exposed her. Her credibility was questioned. Her advocacy was used against her.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  49. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the brave women and men in the Canadian Armed Forces who call the Ottawa Valley their home to speak to Bill C-11 , the military justice system modernization act. Before we get lost in clauses, subclauses and government talking points about modernization, I want to centre this debate where it belongs, which is with the people this legislation is supposed to support and protect. Bill C-11 is not abstract, theoretical or merely administrative. It is about whether a woman who is sexually assaulted while serving her country can expect justice, dignity and protection, or if she will be left to fight alone against the very institution that failed her. That reality is embodied in the experience of retired corporal Elvira Jaszberenyi. Ms. Jaszberenyi did exactly what we tell service members to do.

    SITTING 109 · 2026-04-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  50. Mr. Speaker, actually, no, I cannot determine what the lowest threshold would be. It is not specifically mentioned. However, having dealt with the Liberal government for 25 years, I would say that the absolute least amount of suspicion would be required.

    SITTING 106 · 2026-04-19 · READ IN HANSARD