Scott Reid
Lanark—Frontenac, Ontario · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, I hope that all colleagues have reviewed the seating plan that has been proposed for our return to Centre Block. Faced with a growing number of MPs in a fixed space, the government's solution is, number one, to expand by about 30% the size of the desks assigned to cabinet so the Prime Minister will feel like he is back home o…”
“This would result in wider seats, retention of desks instead of bleachers, and enough room for members to circulate behind each other's seat rather than over each other's feet. All we need for this to happen is to acknowledge the ancient principle that all MPs are treated and seated equally. Let us do that.”
“Mr. Speaker, first I am presenting 15 petitions, signed by a total of 3,357 Canadians, against the Alto high-speed rail project. I am being flooded with literally thousands of signatures on petitions on this subject. I have already tabled petitions on this topic from an additional 3,300 Canadians.”
“It calls for the High-Speed Rail Network Act provisions of Bill C-15 to be stopped, the provisions that allow for an expedited expropriation process that will remove the right of appeal and guarantee that landowners get far less for their land than they ought to be getting; for the cessation of further advancement of the high-speed rail p…”
“Mr. Speaker, the second petition relates to the Alto high-speed rail project. I am being flooded by literally thousands of signatures on petitions on this subject.”
“Mr. Speaker, to be honest, I think the measures that have been proposed would actually serve the same purpose, basically eliminating non-serious independent candidates. I do want to say, though, that we have to be a bit careful about what we put in there. I will just throw this out as a thought.”
The complete record
Every one of 139 lines we hold for Scott Reid, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 3.
“Madam Speaker, I am, like all members of the House who are not of indigenous background, the child of immigrants. We are all either immigrants ourselves, the children of immigrants or the grandchildren of immigrants. This is where I fit in. My grandparents came to Canada, and my grandmother came from a place called Bialystok in Poland. She was a Jew. Bialystok had, at the time she left with her parents in 1914, 10,000 people, and the majority, about 70%, were Jewish. When my mother returned to Bialystok in the 1970s, of course, a few things had happened, including the Holocaust and then several decades of Communist rule. There were no longer enough Jews in that town to form a minyan , which is a 10-man group of people to conduct prayers at the beginning of Sabbath.”
“If a member is not independently wealthy, the investigation itself can ruin them, even if it is completely vexatious. This is an outrage that exists throughout the administrative justice system in Canada, federal and provincial. It exist right here, and it is time to cut out this cancer.”
“This is great if an MP does it, but I did not get that right, because some anonymous person anonymously denounced me to a commissioner who kept protecting their identity after the fact, after finding out the whole thing was frivolous. I apologize for revealing a confidential conversation, but when I spoke to the member for Ottawa West—Nepean , I talked to her about how much it cost me in legal bills to fight this. I said that I am very fortunate; I have extraordinarily fortunate financial circumstances. The $40,000 in legal fees it cost me to fight this was something I could sustain. She said she had to pay a whole bunch too. The commissioner gets a salary for doing this stuff. She and I, and I assume the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore , had to pay out of our own pockets for this.”
“When I was on the procedure and House affairs committee, we changed the code to say that when an investigation is undertaken, both the commissioner and the member who made the accusation have to stay quiet so they cannot damage a person by launching an investigation right before an election, for example. This was put into the code in subsection 27(6): If the commissioner is of the opinion that a request for an inquiry was frivolous or vexatious or was not made in good faith, the commissioner shall so state in dismissing the request in a report under section 28(6) and may recommend that further action be considered against the member who made the request. (1235) That was done, by the way, when Charlie Angus launched a frivolous accusation against another member.”
“It was a vindictive attack on the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore just because he did not like the way the member was behaving. This kind of personal, petty vindictiveness creeping into an officer of Parliament so they can take advantage of the fact that there are no procedural protections for members of Parliament and abuse their authority is an outrage and should be dealt with. In the event that one member asks the commissioner to investigate another member, it can happen that the commissioner looks into it and says ultimately that it was frivolous, that the member's name was dragged through the mud for nothing.”
“He found her guilty of acknowledging that she was an MP when she was campaigning for her husband, who was running for Ottawa city council. It was a crazy interpretation of the code to say that people knowing she was a member of Parliament while her husband ran for public office represented an abuse of the code. The fact that her husband was going from a higher-paying job to a lower-paying one as an Ottawa city councillor, thereby making it a negative financial interest, was of no concern to the commissioner, who was simply looking for a way to find her guilty of something to justify himself and his salary. It was an outrageous pattern of behaviour that he repeated again when he went after the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore . Members can read both his report and my views on his report on my website.”
“We went out and collected all of the evidence required, including going through our financial records and numerous legal documents, and in the end, he concluded that my wife had no financial interest in the matter and that I was therefore not guilty of misusing my office. By the way, the way I had misused my office, to be clear, was that I had sent an email from the email address scottreidmp@gmail.com, and he concluded that this represented a misuse of my office because it implied that I was a member of Parliament. That implication and the authority of Parliament somehow represented a misuse. To say the mere mention that a member is an MP represents a misuse of their office is a ludicrous interpretation, which he previously used in the investigation of the member for Ottawa West—Nepean .”
“Subsection 27(1) says: A member who has reasonable grounds to believe that another member has not complied with his or her obligations under this code may request that the commissioner conduct an inquiry into the matter. Alternatively, subsection 27(3) says: The House may, by way of resolution, direct the commissioner to conduct an inquiry to determine whether a member has complied with his or her obligations under this code. There is no other mechanism for initiating investigations. Anonymous denunciations are not listed as one of the bases for doing this. I could have pointed that out to the commissioner, but he was in the process of beginning an investigation that, to me, could have resulted in the destruction of my career, so I was not in a position to fight back on technicalities.”
“To this day, I still do not know who the anonymous denouncer might have been, although, as I pointed out to the commissioner, it was clearly one of a limited number of people: the members of the council, their senior staff or their lawyer. I could list off the names. One of them was formerly a staffer to the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands who had engaged in a similar action against her when he worked for her. I have a suspicion it is that individual, a man named Rob Rainer, but I do not know for sure. Initiating an inquiry on his own initiative or on the basis of an anonymous denunciation is not permitted under the Standing Orders, under the conflict of interest code. Here is how the commissioner may engage in an inquiry.”
“If you don't satisfy me, I will launch an inquiry.” The nature of the evidence he then cited justifying his course of action included a number of documents I had written. One of them was an email I had sent to members of the council of a rural township where my wife was involved in a zoning dispute. I had sent an email to them asking them to conduct themselves in a certain way regarding the zoning. (1230) It was addressed to a limited number of individuals. Only those people, our lawyer, my wife and I had seen this letter, so I knew he was taking this from an opposed party in an ongoing legal dispute and decided to weigh in on a private legal dispute on one side based on an anonymous denunciation.”
“The non-disclosure form would then be used to silence the member, who would be unable to say how the investigation had been conducted or whether the commissioner had gone too far. I was never the subject of an inquiry from the commissioner, but I did have the experience of, again, the commissioner's acting in contempt of Parliament, in sending me a letter in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. I cannot remember the exact date I got the letter, but I believe it was in September 2020. The letter effectively said, “I was approached by a member of the public who tells me that you may have used your office for the benefit of a family member. You have a limited amount of time to convince me otherwise.”
“This ensured that if he engaged in any abuses of his investigatory power, a person had no recourse and would not be able to speak out against what he had done. I think this is an absolutely outrageous abuse. It is part of a pattern of administrative justice in this country, in which all the normal protections that exist under the criminal law or civil law are stripped away when it is an administrative matter. This is a fundamental problem we see not just with this commissioner or the previous one, but also with the integrity commissioners, for example, running Ontario's municipalities, where there is widespread abuse, to the point that the integrity commissioners have, frankly, less integrity than the people they are investigating.”
“I will give an example. I do not know how many of the forms exist, but one form that Commissioner Dion put out is a non-disclosure agreement. When the Commissioner Dion would conduct an inquiry into a member of Parliament, his office would submit a non-disclosure form, which he told them they were required to sign, because we are all required, under section 27(8) of the code, which states: “Members shall cooperate with the commissioner with respect to any inquiry.” If the commissioner started investigating someone, they would be required to co-operate. Part of this co-operation, in the commissioner's mind, was signing a form, a non-disclosure agreement, about the way in which he conducted an investigation.”
“I was on the committee when we adopted the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, and I was there for various amendments. I chaired a subcommittee dealing with gifts and where that issue fits into the code. I also dealt with and was part of the writing of the report in which we concluded that Commissioner Shapiro was indeed guilty of contempt of Parliament in his actions. There were very serious consequences of the unauthorized investigatory activities he undertook, including devastating consequences for people who were not members of Parliament. Mr. Speaker, you can read the report to learn more about that. When I say that this is part of a pattern that goes back to Commissioner Dion, what I am referring to is the use of unauthorized forms, which includes other forms that the House has never seen.”
“Mr. Speaker, I did not know that the hon. member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes would be rising on this question of privilege, but it is a very important point he raises. I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the problem the member is pointing out to the House is a long-standing one. It did not begin with the present commissioner; it goes back certainly to his predecessor, Mario Dion, who violated and acted in contempt of the code on a number of occasions. Before I get to that, I will say that I have personal knowledge of a number of the things that have been referred to by the hon. member with relation to the history of the code. I served for 15 years on the procedure and House affairs committee, which I think is a record. I do not think anyone here has ever served that long on that, or any other, committee.”
“These include such things as community services and ministries, food banks, soup kitchens, refugee resettlement, climate and social justice initiatives, day cares, schools, hospitals, pregnancy care, long-term homes and palliative care centres. Replacing these would require many billions of dollars and would be enormously socially disruptive. It is based, frankly, on anti-religious bigotry. They oppose these measures and so do I.”
“Mr. Speaker, the petition I am presenting today concerns recommendations 429 and 430 of the Standing Committee on Finance. These meetings happened a long time ago as pre-budget hearings, but because of the delay in the budget until the week after next, they are highly relevant. These recommendations were supported by the Liberal members of the finance committee but not, I note, by Conservative members of the committee. The recommendations would single out a specific subgroup within the charitable sector, penalizing organizations that are based on moral stances different from those of the governing party in the country and effectively taking away their charitable status. A fact pointed out by the petitioners is that faith-based charities represent the majority of charitable spending and community activity in Canada.”
“That was 12 years ago, when the man who went on to become one of several now Liberal ministers in his portfolio said this should be done. How much study does it take? That is a decade, and at 300 lives per year, that is 3,000 lives. We could fill every seat in the House with 10 bodies, because the government has failed to act. That is shameful. I ask the member to defend that record.”
“Mr. Speaker, certainly, we should take our time and think this over carefully. Ralph Goodale, when he was in opposition, before he became minister of public safety, when the government changed hands in 2015, put forward a private member's motion in 2013, saying: That in the opinion of the House, the government should address the wide variation in the availability of defibrillators throughout the buildings and facilities owned, operated or regulated by the Government of Canada, and the equally wide variation in the training of appropriate personnel to use defibrillators properly, by adopting and implementing a policy of: (a) installing an appropriate number and calibre of automated external defibrillators in all such buildings and facilities; and (b) training the appropriate personnel to use such defibrillators properly, with priority being assigned to all RCMP offices and vehicles.”
“For $10 million, we could save 300 lives a year. There is literally no other measure I can think of that would save that number of lives for that small an expense. This is a government that is willing to spend many billions on other issues, to create a few jobs, for example. Saving 300 lives for $10 million is a bargain. Why does the government not take action on this?”
“If they are from the City of Ottawa police, the Toronto police, the Smiths Falls police or literally any of 100 other municipal police forces across Canada, they will be able to say they had an AED at their disposal and were able to attempt to save a life. It does not necessarily mean they saved it, but it might mean they did. The fact is that a significant number of lives are saved, and based on the save rate for various municipal police forces in Canada, we can take that and multiply it by the number of cruisers the RCMP has. If the RCMP had defibrillators, they would perform, on average, 300 saves every year. The cost to equip every police cruiser in the RCMP would be about $10 million. It would be a one-time cost, although the defibrillators have a finite life of about 10 years, and there is some upkeep, but it is minor.”
“In the cruisers of that small police force, they have been used on a number of occasions and have saved some lives, nowhere near the number of lives saved in Toronto because that has a very large police force. However, whether it is a small police force or a large one, the cops are frequently first responders. When an emergency call goes out, not just for a crime in progress but also for a health emergency, the paramedics are notified, the fire departments are notified and so are the police, and there is a bit of a lottery. Sometimes the police have the closest vehicle. Sometimes they arrive first. If I talk to an experienced police officer, they will usually be able to say that they were the first person on site at some kind of cardiac emergency.”
“By contrast, the City of Ottawa police, the City of Toronto police and the City of Kingston police, in the local area, have defibrillators. The City of Ottawa police have had defibrillators for over 20 years. In the case of the Toronto municipal police, the defibrillators were installed when the former minister of national defence was the chief of police in Toronto. I spoke to him once about it. He said that he was very proud of the fact that he got them put in. He said that they have saved a lot of lives. Indeed they have. I, likewise, am responsible for putting defibrillators in a much smaller police force. The last independent police force in my constituency is in Smiths Falls, and I arranged the fundraising drive that allowed defibrillators to be placed in all its cruisers in 2005.”
“Mr. Speaker, on Friday last week I asked a question regarding automated external defibrillators, AEDs as they are called. I asked about placing them in RCMP cruisers. I just want to talk for a while about some of the things that are hard to discuss in the 35 seconds allocated for a question in question period, in order to explain some of the benefits that would accrue from RCMP cruisers' having defibrillators. The RCMP, of course, is the largest police force across Canada. It is the de facto provincial police force in every province except Ontario and Quebec, and even in Ontario and Quebec it has a limited presence, in national parks, the national capital region and so on. RCMP cruisers are not equipped with AEDs.”
“Mr. Speaker, if we install automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, in police cars to be used when the police are the first on the scene in a 911 call for a heart attack, we can save a lot of lives. Municipal police across Canada have been saving lives with AEDs for years. RCMP officers are already trained on how to use AEDs. Equipping all RCMP vehicles nationwide with AEDs would save upwards of 300 lives per year. Therefore, after 10 years in government, why have the Liberals not installed AEDs in all RCMP cruisers?”
“I had coffee with them that morning. I would not betray my friends. I wonder if the member, or any of his colleagues, took in a Ukrainian family. I sincerely doubt it. They are full of hypocrisy. They do not help Ukrainians any more than anybody else, and they should not engage in hollow rhetoric to that effect.”
“Mr. Speaker, of course my hon. colleague has no specialized expertise in agriculture and is reading prepared remarks, which ignore everything I just said about how Russian supply still comes via the U.S. and an upcharge occurs. North American demand remains the same and prices remain high. This is a completely futile policy. I want to take a moment, though, to make another point. I am so sick of hearing these self-righteous Liberals talking about what great things they have done for Ukraine and lecturing Conservatives about how we are not supportive of Ukraine. Shortly after the invasion, my family took in a family of six Ukrainians from Dnipro in the eastern part of the country. They were our friends and stayed with us for a year and a half. On the day I raised my question, we had their nephew and niece staying in my house.”
“If the foregoing is correct, why on earth are we retaining the tariff on Russian fertilizer and fertilizer precursors? Surely, Canadian farmers do not need to be further impoverished by a completely ineffective policy that does not make any difference at all to Russia or Ukraine.”
“The vast majority of US urea exports to Canada enter the country through inland border crossings, but that doesn’t mean the urea received can't be a blend of imported Russian tons with domestically produced American tons. The report goes on to observe that even when Russian product is not being transited to Canada via the U.S., the need to import from our southern neighbours hurts Canadian farmers and enriches American middlemen without actually reducing the net North American demand for Russian product. It states, “American companies are essentially able to benefit from both sides—importing cheap Russian urea and exporting expensive American urea.” It then says, “the Canadian farmer ends up being the one to foot the bill”.”
“Since 2023, direct Canadian imports of Russian fertilizer and fertilizer precursors like urea have largely dried up, but this has not had the hoped-for effect of driving down the total worldwide demand for Russian urea or monoammonium phosphate. Here is what has happened instead. Canada now imports about 50% of its urea and about 60% to 70% of its monoammonium phosphate from the United States, up significantly from four years ago. In the meantime, the U.S. has increased its own direct imports from Russia, making up the demand shortfall. A position paper prepared earlier this year by the Grain Farmers of Ontario reports as follows on the implications of what I just described: Granular, fertilizer grade urea is an indifferentiable commodity, meaning individual tons are very difficult (if not effectively impossible) to trace.”
“But for tariffs on fertilizers, there was no evidence that Russian companies were affected at all.” By the start of 2023, Canadian agricultural organizations were calling for the tariff to be lifted, pointing out that Canada was alone among G7 nations in imposing tariffs on Russian fertilizer. I do not see any evidence that our farmers are any less supportive of Ukraine than the rest of Canadians, but I think they wondered, quite reasonably, why in this country, unlike the rest of the world, farmers were being singled out to pay a vastly disproportionate share of the financial burden for supporting Ukraine.”
“Mr. Speaker, in the past two weeks, I have twice asked the government why there is still a 35% tariff on Russian fertilizer when it is clear that this is not causing a net decline in Russian exports, nor a fall in the price paid worldwide for Russian product. The purpose of the tariff, when it was imposed in the spring of 2022, was to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. That year, a total of $115 million in tariff revenue was collected on fertilizer and fertilizer precursors, but because the contracts with Russian suppliers had already been signed and the fertilizer had already been loaded onto ships, the cost ended up being borne not by the Russians but by the Canadian farmers who were on the hook for these purchases. This debacle prompted one contemporary analyst to observe in December 2022, “Sanctions should be punitive.”
“Mr. Speaker, last week, I asked why there is still a 35% tariff on Russian fertilizer when it is clear that it is causing neither a net decline in Russian exports nor a fall in the price paid worldwide for Russian product. In Canada, no meaningful displacement of Russian imports with domestic production has taken place, so the result is that eastern Canadian farmers pay more for imports from third countries, creating a shortage in their markets, which is then filled by a full-priced product from Russia. No other G7 country imposes this burden on its farmers. Why does the Liberal government continue to do so?”
“Madam Speaker, in 2022, the Liberals imposed a 35% tariff on Russian fertilizer. By December of that year, Canadian farmers had paid $115 million in tariffs, which the government donated to Ukraine. In the three subsequent years, the tariff has remained in place, and a further $300 million has been paid to the government by farmers, but the funds are no longer being donated to Ukraine. Because replacements are not available, imports of Russian fertilizer have not gone down. If the tariff does not actually hurt Russian exports or help Ukraine, why is the government still extracting hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Canadian farmers? An hon. member: Are you a Russian asset?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is a broken record of broken promises, and the list keeps on growing. There are broken promises on spending, and we still do not have a budget plan. There are broken promises on consultants and on consulting with Canadians. There are broken promises to have his elbows up with the Americans. Instead, what the Prime Minister has lifted is his middle finger to Canadians on affordability, inflation and Liberal policies. Canadians need real change from the Prime Minister , not pocket change in tax cuts, not broken promises and not false hopes. Will the Prime Minister table a real budget plan this spring or will he not?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister 's first four weeks have been filled with broken promises on spending, consultants, defence spending and relations with the U.S. Now the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed another broken promise, this time on tax cuts. He advises us that the average Canadian will save only $7.50 a month and low-income seniors will save even less, under five dollars a month, under the Liberal proposals. Perhaps it is not a surprise the Prime Minister will not table a budget this spring, because so much of what he is saying now is so different from what he said during the election. I am curious: Did the Prime Minister deliberately mislead Canadians during the election, is he misleading them now or is it both?”
“I encourage the chairs of the two other recognized caucuses to rise in the House, as I have done, and, in their respective reports to the Speaker, make clear whether or not separate votes were held in each question, as subsection 49.8(2) of the law explicitly requires.”
“The Conservative caucus voted in favour of this as well. The third vote establishes whether a caucus will give itself the authority to conduct a leadership review vote, a power that the Liberals in the 44th Parliament may perhaps have regretted not adopting. At its May 6 meeting, the Conservative caucus voted in favour of this one also. The fourth vote establishes whether a caucus will, in preparation for the eventuality that an interim leader will be needed, give itself the authority to elect that interim leader. The Conservative caucus also voted to adopt this authority. Subsection 49.8(5) of the act specifies: As soon as feasible after the conduct of the votes, the chair of the caucus shall inform the Speaker of the House of Commons of the outcome of each vote. I have now discharged this obligation.”
“Mr. Speaker, pursuant to subsection 49.8(5) of the Parliament of Canada Act, I rise to discharge my obligations as the chair of the Conservative caucus and to inform you of the recorded votes of the first Conservative caucus meeting, which took place on May 6, 2025. Division C.1 of the act requires that four votes be taken at the first meeting of every recognized caucus following a general election. The first vote establishes whether, for the remainder of that Parliament, members may only be expelled from the caucus by means of a majority vote among their colleagues. At its May 6 meeting, the Conservative caucus voted in favour of adopting this provision. The second vote establishes whether a caucus will elect its own chair and retain the right to replace that chair with another, also by majority vote.”