Pierre Poilievre
Battle River—Crowfoot, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, for over a century and a half, Canadians took for granted that when people came here from around the world, they left their problems behind.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the constituents of Battle River—Crowfoot in communities like Amisk, Hardisty, Hughenden, Czar, Metiskow and Lougheed and the MDs of Wainwright, Provost and Flagstaff, who have all raised significant concerns about problems with cellphone coverage and data service, adding to already limited connectivity in…”
“Mr. Speaker, I will tell the member what we are for. We are for an affordable Canada, a Canada with growing paycheques and safer streets, which is the exact opposite of what the Prime Minister has delivered. This is his record: Count them; there have been five consecutive quarters of declining investment.”
“Mr. Speaker, do people know why the Prime Minister cannot stand to answer a question in the House of Commons? It is because he has been wrong about every single economic issue of the last decade. He was wrong to push bigger and broader carbon taxes. He was wrong to say that we should keep half our oil in the ground.”
“Mr. Speaker, no, we do not plan for a restful summer. We plan to fight all summer long against the Liberal recession, Liberal inflation, the rising Liberal cost of living and the rising Liberal crime crisis in our streets. Let us take, for example, investment. The Liberal Prime Minister promised he would increase it.”
“Mr. Speaker, at least the Liberals listened for once. I explained to them that houses are built by plumbers, electricians and carpenters, and the members stood up and said that the building trades build homes. We know who builds homes, but do we know who blocks homes? The Liberals block homes.”
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“Mr. Speaker, the answer is that we did. We approved and completed four pipelines. Then we actually approved the northern gateway pipeline, which would have shipped half a million barrels of oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to the Pacific, before the Liberal government came along and vetoed and shut down that project. I was curious about what the now Prime Minister thought of that decision, so I hauled him before the industry committee. I asked him if he agreed with Justin Trudeau's decision to kill the northern gateway pipeline. He said that it was a sensible decision and that he agreed with it. As a result of that decision by Justin Trudeau and the present-day Prime Minister, those half-million barrels have to go at a price discount to the Americans, making us weak. That is exactly what the Prime Minister has delivered.”
“The goal in all of this is to make our people richer, to give them bigger and bolder opportunities and to make this, once again, a country that is strong and self-reliant, and that stands on its own two feet. This is a patriotic act. We call on the government to adopt it. We will work with anyone from any party to get this done because, as always, we put Canada first.”
“Here is what it is: We need to pass a Canadian sovereignty act that would get rid of the production cap, repeal the anti-pipeline law Bill C-69 , legalize shipping oil off the northwest British Columbia coast and axe the entire carbon tax, the industrial carbon tax, the fuel standard and all of the taxes that make our energy uncompetitive. We need to replace it with a law that would allow us to approve major projects in just six months and axe the capital gains tax for any business owner or person who reinvests their money in Canada. This would be rocket fuel for our economy. That is what we need. This is a plan for stronger take-home pay with a more powerful dollar that would buy food, fuel and homes at a more affordable price for our people.”
“He knows that the Liberals want to continue to hand over our resources to the U.S. at enormous price discounts. That is why Conservatives propose to get rid of the production cap. We are giving the Liberals an opportunity to vote here and now. If they vote to keep the production cap in place, it will be a signal that all of the flirtations the Prime Minister has done with the possibility of building pipelines were nothing but an illusion, a tragic and extremely costly illusion. Let us put the illusions behind us and get to the real deal.”
“These are two things that the current government has so far refused to do. To put this into context, the production cap that the government has imposed, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, will cause over 54,000 job losses and blow a $20-billion hole in Canada's GDP. It will also make it impossible for us to get our oil to any market other than the United States of America, making us ever more dependent on the U.S., which is exactly the opposite of what the Prime Minister promised. Here we have yet another Liberal bait and switch. The Prime Minister who ran on elbows up has been elbows down. Now he prevents us from shipping to overseas markets, making us even more reliant on the Americans. It is no wonder that President Trump said it would be a lot easier for him to deal with the Liberals. He was right.”
“There is just not a market case for it. That's too bad.” I guess we can just move on to another money-losing corporate welfare project that will make the Prime Minister 's friends fabulously wealthy and make other people poor, because no one wants to build a pipeline. I guess pipelines are just out of fashion. Forget that they are being built far and wide outside of Canada, including by Canadian companies. In Canada, they are not being built. Why is that? It turns out that nobody wants to build a pipeline when the government bans companies from producing the oil to put into it and from shipping what comes out of it. They ultimately have to get rid of the production cap that is preventing the oil from going in, and the shipping ban that is preventing the oil from coming out.”
“Liberals would retort that they could still get a pipeline built without removing all of the destructive laws and rules that are in place because their new powers would allow them to go around those laws and rules, but here is the problem: Even if the Prime Minister were to use the powers in Bill C-5 to lay out a path to build a pipe from, say, Hardisty, Alberta, the biggest tank farm in Canada, all the way to the Pacific to either Kitimat or Prince Rupert, no one would build that pipeline today because the government bans the production of the oil going into it and the shipping of the oil coming out of it. It is another illusion. We see what the Prime Minister is setting us up for here. He wants to be able to say, “Geez, we would really love to build a pipeline, but there are no proponents. No one wants to build it.”
“Grant fast permits so that our workers, our prodigious welders, pipefitters, industrial carpenters and labourers, can get busy earning six-figure paycheques so they can build our country and make us independent from the Americans. In other words, get out of the way. (1230) I will split my time with the member for Edmonton West .”
“Therefore, we agree that laws and bureaucracy are the obstacle. Here is where we disagree. The Prime Minister 's view is that to solve the problem of Liberal laws and Liberal bureaucracies, we need more Liberal laws and Liberal bureaucracies, which is to say he confuses the problem with the solution. We believe that if there are Liberal laws and bureaucracies roadblocking development, then get rid of those Liberal laws and bureaucracies. Put simply, get out of the way. Let investors pour the hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment into building the projects of the future, projects that will pay tax rather than take government handouts. Get out of the way.”
“We all agree that Canada has the most resources in the world. We all agree, at least Liberals and Conservatives agree, that the only reason we cannot build pipelines to move those resources to tidewater is federal bureaucracy and federal laws. One might ask how the Liberals could agree with that proposition. The answer is that they passed Bill C-5 , the foundation of which is that we need to go around all the Liberal laws and bureaucracies in order to get things built. The law literally allows the Prime Minister , through the stroke of the pen, to go around all of the environmental and public safety laws and associated bureaucracies, which means that he believes those laws and bureaucracies are neither necessary to protect the environment, nor possible if we want to get anything done.”
“The problem with someone pretending to believe something he clearly does not just to get elected is that after the election is over, he reverts quickly to his original course. This is what we have seen. While there have been many illusions that the Prime Minister would change course, that he would approve projects, that he would build at unimaginable speeds, none of this has materialized in any form of reality. Here we are six months into the latest Liberal term, and there is not a single new project that was not already in the works and had been given the green light, and certainly not one that is under construction. Today, we have an opportunity to find out what the Liberals' real position is on the subject of a pipeline, because, yes, this motion is about our ability to ever build a pipeline. Let us break it down.”
“He argued not only that there should be a carbon tax, but that the tax should be raised even further, only to promise that he would get rid of it, a promise that he is already in the process of breaking. He campaigned around the world to defund the energy sector, convincing financial institutions to stop loaning and investing in Canadian energy, writing that he believed that “as much as half of oil reserves, proven reserves, need to stay in the ground if we're going to get to where we are.” He further said that it was a “sensible” decision to cancel the northern gateway pipeline, stating, “I think it's the right decision.” Those were his positions up until about two months before he launched his campaign for prime minister, at which point he suddenly reversed them and tried to plagiarize the positions of the Conservative Party.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberal illusion is now on a collision course with reality. See, the Prime Minister ran an entire election campaign promising to be the opposite of who he was and to do the opposite of what he had been saying and writing and what the Liberal government had been doing for the prior 10 years. It was not just on the question of developing our resources; it was on questions of fiscal policy. He had obviously caused a massive inflation and housing crisis in the U.K. by printing nearly endless sums of money over there, and then he came back here promising that he would spend less, a promise he promptly broke. The Prime Minister advised the then prime minister of this country, Justin Trudeau, to do likewise and then promised to do precisely the opposite.”
“Mr. Speaker, these are not new markets. The member might have been asleep. Actually, he seems like a very young man. Maybe he was not born when Brian Mulroney negotiated NAFTA with the Mexicans. Maybe the Prime Minister was sleeping the day the Conservatives negotiated a free trade agreement with the Europeans. He is going around taking credit for things that he never did while his economy collapses here at home. Canadians cannot eat or heat and house themselves. Will the Prime Minister stop making excuses and taking fake trips and get down to his job?”
“Mr. Speaker, we have had free trade agreements with all of those countries and regions for over a decade, yet the Prime Minister is busy looking busy, flying around, grip and grin, pretending to do a lot while doing very little. He could make use of all that expensive travel by asking all of those other places why their economies are so much stronger than the one that he now leads. We have, under his leadership, the second-highest unemployment in the G7, the worst economic growth in the G7, the worst household debt in the G7 and the worst housing costs in the G7. Why is it that when he promises to be the first, he is the worst?”
“Mr. Speaker, we have had a free trade agreement with Mexico for almost three decades. The Prime Minister is going for nothing more than a photo op, another fake engagement. The minister talked about interest rates; the Bank of Canada said the reason it is cutting rates while inflation is rising is because our economy is collapsing. The Liberals promised the fastest-growing economy in the G7. They have delivered the fastest-shrinking economy in the G7. They promised more home building. It is falling by 13%. They promised to spend less. Their deficit spending is 100% more. Talk is cheap, but why is it so expensive when the Prime Minister does it?”
“Mr. Speaker, we support workers, especially the 86,000 workers who lost their jobs because of Liberal policies that are causing our economy to collapse. Mexico boosted its economy by 1.4% in the last quarter. Canada saw a decline of 1.4%. Mexican exports to the United States increased while ours saw a drop of 18%. Our unemployment rate is three times higher than Mexico's. Why?”
“Mr. Speaker, this is the time in the life cycle of any Liberal government when it goes from making promises to making excuses. It is blaming its collapsing economy on global tensions. Interestingly, Mexico shares the same neighbour as we do. We are both right next door to America, so we can compare performance. However, in the most recent quarter, the Mexican economy has actually grown by 2.4% and the Canadian economy is down by 1.6%. Our unemployment is three times what Mexico's is. Why?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is in Mexico today for a photo op and fake agreement, but it is a great opportunity to compare, because both countries are neighbours of the United States. In the last quarter, Canada's economy shrank by 1.6% while the Mexican economy grew by 2.4%. Canadian exports to the United States crashed by 18%, while Mexican exports to the U.S. are up 1.4%. The Canadian unemployment rate is three times higher than Mexico's rate. Will the Prime Minister ask his Mexican friends what they are doing right that he is doing so wrong?”
“Mr. Speaker, allow me to begin by thanking the member for his kind words at the very beginning. He stated half a sentence that was right, which proves that even a broken clock is right twice a day. For the rest of the day, he gets it wrong. He asked me if I would be prepared to fast-track the passage of bail reform. Where is it? He wants me to fast-track the passage of a law his government has not even introduced. Has he totally lost his marbles? Did he mean to say that he would fast-track the law that Conservatives are bringing forward, which is “three strikes and you're out”? Let us put partisanship aside. Let us pass that law now so we can lock up the worst criminals and throw away the key.”
“We will bring in “three strikes and you're out” to keep these dangerous offenders in the slammer. We will lock them up and throw away the key.”
“Mr. Speaker, first of all, I thank that member for his incredible and distinguished service to the Canadian Armed Forces. He is a very distinguished member. The other heroes who also wear a uniform are police officers. They tell me they are exhausted from arresting the same offenders over and over again. They say that the criminals laugh at them. They say that, often, criminals now confess to their crimes in the back seat of the car because they do not care if they get convicted, knowing that there will be no penalty whatsoever. This is the direct result of a Liberal law, Bill C-75 , requiring the immediate release of the offender at the earliest opportunity and under “the least onerous conditions”, and of Bill C-5 , the house arrest law. What I say to those police officers is that we want them to have fewer return customers.”
“That will unclog our justice system, so that the courts can hold other trials rather than simply trying the same criminals over and over again. [ English ] We need a “three strikes and you're out” law so we do not have to recycle the same group of criminals again and again through the system and cause delays. After three strikes, there is no bail, parole, probation or house arrest, and at least 10 years behind bars.”
“Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question, and I share my colleague's concerns about the Jordan principle, which has even enabled some offenders to avoid trial and prison time. Why is it taking so long for cases to be heard by the courts? It is because there is a small group of criminals who keep coming back into the system again and again. Why do they keep coming back? It is because they are released. If these criminals were kept in prison, then they would not be back out on the streets committing more crimes, getting arrested and standing trial, consuming court resources. Let us keep repeat offenders in prison with a “three strikes” law. These criminals will stay in prison for at least 10 years without parole, bail or any other form of release.”
“The Liberals are bringing in a new carbon tax, which will not only harm consumers but also harm farmers because farmers use fuel in order to produce food. We are against all carbon taxes. We want to get rid of all carbon taxes for everyone, for real and for good.”
“Mr. Speaker, the standard the member talks about is actually a new carbon tax. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who relied on information supplied by the government itself, it will add 17¢ a litre to the cost of fuel at the pump. That 17¢ a litre is exactly the price that Canadians were paying on the previous Liberal carbon tax. Thankfully, the Conservatives forced the Liberals to reverse themselves after they brought in and increased that tax, and after the current Prime Minister had written about the need to raise that tax. At the time, I said thank goodness we have a short reprieve, but if the Liberals are re-elected, they will bring in another carbon tax. Sadly, I regret to inform the House that I was right about that.”
“We will put our country ahead of party, as always, because we are Canadians first. We love our country and we want to restore its promise.”
“We do this not out of hatred for the criminal but out of love for the victims, and out of determination to make our communities safe again. We as Conservatives want to restore a country where hard work pays off with beautiful homes, nutritious food and safe streets where people are united under a proud flag. We set four main priorities for our return to Parliament: stronger take-home pay, safer streets, secure borders and a self-reliant nation. We are here to oppose the bad the government does and expose its corrupt behaviour, and also to propose solutions that will improve the lives of the Canadian people. We call on the government to stop the obstruction, put aside the partisanship, work with us on the solutions that all Canadians have asked for and bring about the real change that Canadians are demanding.”
“On August 31, 25-year-old Daniel Senecal was arrested and charged by Niagara police after a violent sexual assault on a three-year-old child who was in her own bed, the place where she should have been safest. He was out on release even though he had already assaulted a 12-year-old. All of these scumbags should have been in jail, and if Conservative laws had been in place, they would have been in jail. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister thought his summer vacation was more important. Even since he has returned, he and his justice minister have been obstructing our efforts to lock up these criminals and change the law. Once again, if the Liberals are not prepared to reverse their own mistakes, then get out of the way and let Conservatives make Canadians safer.”
“McQuarrie, who had an extensive criminal history dating back to 2001, was in jail in the months leading up to Sprung's murder on separate charges but was released at the height of COVID. Tyrone Simard killed his sister and attacked several others in Hollow Water First Nation in Manitoba on September 4, 2025. He had been charged with violent offences, including assault with a weapon, sexual assault, sexual interference and invitation to sexual touching, which are all offences that happened before his release and alleged instances going back over eight years. He was out on bail when he carried out his attack. In March, a suspect in a trio of unprovoked stabbings was found to have been previously released on bail.”
“In Vancouver, 40 offenders were arrested 6,000 times, which is 150 arrests per offender per year. How is this possible? Well, they are automatically released under a Liberal law, Bill C-75 , which requires judges to release the offender at the earliest opportunity under “the least onerous conditions”. Here are the stories of the catch-and-release system. Myles Sanderson stabbed 11 people to death and injured another 18 on the James Smith Cree Nation reserve and in nearby Weldon, Saskatchewan. This is an offender who had already been arrested for 46 prior offences, including things like armed robbery and assault. He also had a pattern of domestic abuse before he was released. Matthew McQuarrie was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing Emerson Sprung to death and burying him in a shallow grave in a park in Meaford, Ontario, in May 2020.”
“Speaker, they have obstructed action. There is obstructionism by the Liberal Party to keep in place the failed laws that are unleashing chaos on our streets. (1210) Conservatives said in the spring, right after the election, let us immediately reverse catch-and-release Liberal laws and lock up the criminals that the government was turning free. Instead, the Prime Minister said we would go on vacation. What has been the consequence of that decision? It is real a human cost. In Kelowna, 15 people were arrested 1,300 times in one year, which is almost 100 arrests per offender per year. In Penticton, there is one guy named Levi who does so much crime that police told me that when he is out of prison, he raises the crime rate for the entire city. That is one guy.”
“The fact that he would name Justin Trudeau's worst minister to be in charge of crime shows that he is happy to continue with the disastrous criminal justice policies that got us into this mess. This minister was in charge of immigration when population growth went up 300%. He single-handedly destroyed our immigration system, overcrowding housing, our job market and our health care system. The Liberals then moved him over to housing, where he delivered the most expensive housing costs in Canada's history and in all of the G7. As a punishment for all of this failure, the new Prime Minister has now appointed him to be in charge of crime. We can imagine the results we will get. What have they done together ever since? An hon. member: Nothing. Hon. Pierre Poilievre: No, they have not done nothing; they have done worse than nothing. Mr.”
“Violent crime is up 55%, gun crime is up 130%, extortion is up 330%, homicides are up 29%, hate crimes are up 258%, sexual assault is up 76%, auto theft is up 25% and overdoses are up 152% under the catch-and-release Liberal justice system. All of this happened as a direct result of Liberal laws that turn criminals loose on our streets so they can reoffend with no consequences. We warned of this when these bills were first passed, but the Liberals went ahead anyway. Every single member of the current Liberal caucus who was here before the last election voted for all of these laws and voted to keep them in place, including the new Liberal justice minister , whose very appointment is a signal that the Prime Minister is not serious about reversing the damage his party has done.”
“Let us preserve purchasing power by ending the money-printing and allowing our dollar to go further. These are among the positive solutions that we ask the Liberal government to get out of the way of and support. Increasingly, people feel endangered in their own communities. I saw this in rural Alberta, where people did not even lock their doors 10 years ago. Now they worry about burglars breaking in and about thieves siphoning fuel and stealing copper wire on their properties. In big cities, people are terrorized by story after story of increasing crime. The Liberals love to say that it is just sensationalism and that all the brainy experts will tell us crime is down. I am sorry, but that does not work either.”
“We as Conservatives want to slash the bureaucracy, the consultants, the foreign aid, the corporate welfare and the handouts to phony refugees to bring down costs so that government will no longer print money and we can preserve the purchasing power of our dollar. Our purpose is to have stronger take-home pay, which means we have to unlock paycheques by repealing Liberal antidevelopment laws to make this the fastest place on earth to get a building permit and by unlocking the free enterprise system with an open-for-business policy. We ask the government to accept our positive solutions. We ask it to adopt the Canadian sovereignty act, which would make our economy strong, self-reliant and stand on its own two feet. Let us cut income taxes so that hard work once again pays off and people bring home more of each dollar they earn.”
“He has a terrible record on the subject. Of course, when he was the governor of the Bank of England, he had the second-highest inflation rate in all of the G7, and only worse than what the Liberal government provided here in Canada. He caused the housing crisis there by printing cash, and of course, the British media said that he was the unreliable boyfriend of central banking, constantly changing his mind and engaging in decisions that drove up costs and drove down growth. Here he is repeating the same mistakes in Canada that he made over there, the same mistakes he advised Justin Trudeau to make. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
“Why not just accept that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line? If there is an obstacle, get rid of the obstacle. Put simply, he should get out of the way. (1205) That is one example of how he blocks people from earning paycheques, and if they should be lucky enough to earn any paycheque at all, he takes a big bite out of it. Liberal taxes now represent a higher cost than food, clothing and shelter combined for Canadians, meaning that government is the single-biggest cost in their lives, a cost that has risen dramatically in the 10 years of Liberal government. What is left of people's take-home pay gets eaten up by Liberal inflation, which occurs when governments create cash faster than the economy creates the goods that cash buys. The Prime Minister is a notorious inflationist.”
“In the six months the Prime Minister has been in power, a net $50 billion of investment has fled our country due to his high taxes and increased regulation and red tape. In fact, just this week, 96 energy CEOs wrote that nothing he has done will reverse the damage the Liberals have exacted on our energy industry. The only way forward is to remove these terrible laws. The irony of his approach is this. He admits that his laws block energy production, but instead of getting rid of those laws, he passes another law to go around the bad law. He admits his bureaucracies block energy production, but instead of getting rid of those bureaucracies, he creates a new bureaucracy to get around the old bureaucracies. It seems that he confuses the problem with the solution.”
“The Prime Minister promised that he would be different after his protege, whom he advised, drove hundreds of billions of dollars out of our country, but in fact he has been worse on matters of energy. There have been many photo ops and meetings, papers have been shuffled and new offices have been created, but all of that has created a show that has amounted to nothing. In reality, he is blocking 38 projects that are currently sitting before federal regulators. He has kept in place the industrial carbon tax, the energy cap, the new carbon tax under a different name and the fuel standard, and he has created a new bureaucracy that will further slow down progress on these projects.”
“The people of Battle River—Crowfoot are a microcosm of the suffering that has unfolded over the last 10 years of Liberal government. Let us start with their paycheques and take-home pay. In Battle River—Crowfoot, energy workers are under attack. They have seen Canada's biggest industry under a direct assault by a federal government that sought to “keep it in the ground”, an objective imposed by previous prime minister Justin Trudeau on the advice of the current Prime Minister . He wrote that 50% of Canada's oil would have to stay in the ground and testified against building a pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta, to the Pacific to allow us to go around the Americans and reach 2.5 billion customers overseas.”
“They are the soldiers at CFB Wainwright, who are willing to lay their lives down for their country, and the prison guards in Drumheller, who keep the most dangerous people away from our children and communities, taking risks every day with their lives that none of us would be prepared to take. It is because of these soldiers and prison guards that we can live in a safe country, and it is a privilege to represent them. It is for them and all Canadians that Conservatives are here fighting today. Our purpose is to restore the Canadian promise, to make this a country where hard work is rewarded, where food and homes are affordable, where streets are safe, where borders are solid and where we are all united under a single Canadian flag, Canadians first, regardless of our origins.”
“The great ranchers who put their herds onto the great grasslands of eastern Alberta are second to none in the world, and I pledge to forever be their most loyal customer. It is not just that. These are the people who power our country. There are oil workers of all different trades. I will give just one example. The 600 people of Hardisty, Alberta, live in a town where there is a tank farm that moves over $90 billion of petroleum products. This $90 billion is more than the GDP of about 50 of the world's countries, if anyone can imagine. It is 600 people who move this oil through roughly a half-dozen pipelines, an amount that grows every single day. Finally, we have those who protect our country.”
“In fact, when many of the early pioneers arrived in the special areas of eastern Alberta, they were told not to bother, as there was not enough rain or soil to farm there. They said they would do it anyway. Five or six generations later, those same family names are engraved on signs that we can see up and down the highways and byways of this incredible community. Through all the hardship, it has been because of their dedication to their families, by passing on to the next generation what they inherited from the previous, that these incredible families continue to make the dry, thin soils of the region blossom and bloom, and take food from their farms to feed families across the country.”
“I got inside and asked question after question. Eventually, I could see he was getting impatient with me. He told me, “You know, this machine depreciates at a rate of $400 an hour, so in the time you've been asking these questions, it has cost me 100 bucks.” I am not a farmer, but Damien told me that if I were, I would be outstanding in my field. Oh, come on. I get at least one dad joke, maybe a laugh. It is a tough crowd around here. These are the people who feed, power and protect our country. Farmers and the ranchers feed our nation. These are not just any farmers. Many of them are century farmers, meaning their families have been there for over 100 years. They survived through boom and bust, through depression and drought, on some of the toughest farmland in the entire world.”
“They welcomed me with open arms, even though they knew I was a city boy from Calgary and that Calgary is a long way from consort, coronation or even Camrose. They brought this city boy in and gave him some good rural education. They schooled me in much wisdom, whether it was at the bronc matches, the rodeos, the farmers markets or the other gatherings. They taught me and reinstilled in me the great values of hard work, of family, of community, of self-reliance, of strength and of patriotism. To them, I will always be grateful. Most of all, I will be grateful to the great Damien Kurek, a wonderful patriot who put his country before himself. He is a father and, of course most of all, a farm boy. He brought me to the farm and taught me a few lessons. He even brought me into his new seeder at the beginning of the season.”
“We are very grateful to them. I also want to thank our children, Valentina and Cruz. I am sorry that their father is often away. He is often in a hotel, a plane or an important meeting far from home. I know that my son Cruz says that he is mad at daddy, because daddy works too much. I want Valentina and Cruz to know we are working for an important cause: the country in which they will live for the rest of their lives. Our country is worth the sacrifices and effort we make each day. (1200) [ English ] I want to thank the great people of Battle River—Crowfoot. Some people said it must have been a burden to go straight into a by-election campaign right after a national election. I say it was a blessing to spend time with such amazing, extraordinary people. These are the people who feed, power and protect our country.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is great to be back in the House of the common people. This will be my first speech in the current Parliament, so let me begin with thank yous. I thank my brilliant and beautiful wife, Anaida, a fierce fighter and a problem-solver. She is our very own MacGyver; she can solve any problem. She is an entrepreneur, the love of my life, the greatest adviser I have ever had, someone who inspires me to keep on going through all hardship, and most of all, a courageous and strong mother who is always there for our kids, Cruz and Valentina, fighting every day and in every way to make sure our little Valentina has all of the opportunities every other child enjoys. [ Translation ] I also want to thank tío Pablo and tía Maria, who are there to help us and take care of our children so that we can do this work.”
“On behalf of my family and our Conservative caucus, may she rest in peace, in the peace of God, and may her Irish eyes be smiling at us all from above.”
“She will rightly be remembered as a great Islander and a great Canadian. (1620) I was honoured to attend the mass and funeral that Islanders put on for Gail a few weeks back. It was a celebration of life that then carried over, as all Irish funerals do, to the local Legion, where it went on into the very late hours of the night. They say of the Irish that they are the only people who cry at every wedding and laugh at every funeral, and so it was once again. On behalf of all Conservative MPs, ministers, volunteers and others who served with Gail and experienced the wonderful warmth of her personality and her faith, I wish my condolences, thoughts and prayers to the entire Shea family and to all Islanders who cherish the memory she left behind.”