Taleeb Noormohamed
Vancouver Granville, British Columbia · Liberal · Canada
“Taking away child care means telling the parents at Butterfly Kisses, a child care centre in his own riding that has brought fees down for working families, that those working families will no longer be able to access the subsidies that make it possible for children in his riding to access affordable child care.”
“Mr. Speaker, we all know we are living through one of the most dangerous and divided moments the world has seen in generations. We all know the pressure that is coming toward Canadians is not coming from just one direction, but all directions at once.”
“When the real thing arrives, that council is the one that names it, not politicians. Three days ago, the council looked at exactly the same data the Leader of the Opposition is brandishing, and it refused to use his word.”
“I want to take a moment to focus on a single word that is at the centre of it. The motion does not say “a difficult quarter”. It does not say “a slowdown”. It reaches, in the very first line, for the biggest word available: “recession”.”
“Let us ask the question that the motion was built to stop anyone from asking: Why? Why would the Leader of the Opposition reach past the experts, as is custom for him, for the most frightening word he could find? Why does he need a slowdown to be a catastrophe?”
“We all understand that. We all understand the concerns and the risks, and we all understand that it is our job to figure out how to make it better. No honest account of how we got here points to a single villain or a single year.”
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“The OECD, which is by no means a Liberal agency, projects that this country will grow the second-fastest in the G7 this year and next—”
“One side is working to convince Canadians, alongside premiers, Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats that it is time to work together and build things, and another side is saying the building we are trying to build together is condemned so that no one objects when they start tearing down the walls. On this side, we are going to keep building. That building is showing up in results where people live and in what they will experience. In B.C., which is my home province, the merger that created Anglo Teck has planted a new global mining champion headquarters in Vancouver, with thousands of Canadian jobs and billions of dollars in investment secured here at home. That is talent and capital choosing Canada at the very moment when the members opposite insist that Canada is collapsing.”
“That is what reversing the policies means once we start performing the word “recession” in pantomime or theatre in this place and start reading the fine print. They cannot rip the floor out from underneath people over a fraction of 1%. They can only do it if they first convince the country, as they are seeking to do, that the house is on fire. The Leader of the Opposition needs catastrophe. He needs the fire, but not because the data supports it. He does not. He needs it because without it, there is no excuse for what he is selling Canadians. Without it, there is little reason for toxic leadership from his side. That is the real divide in this chamber, and it could not be starker.”
“Taking away child care means telling the parents at Butterfly Kisses, a child care centre in his own riding that has brought fees down for working families, that those working families will no longer be able to access the subsidies that make it possible for children in his riding to access affordable child care. Reversing the policies means taking away the national school food program that feeds children before they sit down to learn. Whether they are in Carleton or Battle River—Crowfoot, Canadians are asking for the same things. They are asking for dental care, child care and certainty and stability in the government. They are looking for leadership that not only tells them that things will be all right, but shows them a path and takes the action to do so by building consensus. The Leader of the Opposition wants rubble he can stand in.”
“Let us ask the question that the motion was built to stop anyone from asking: Why? Why would the Leader of the Opposition reach past the experts, as is custom for him, for the most frightening word he could find? Why does he need a slowdown to be a catastrophe? Why is it valuable for him to cast fear into the hearts of Canadians, who are already facing challenging times, which we all acknowledge? It is because, for him, the catastrophe becomes a permission slip. (1825) A slowdown asks the government to steady the ship and keep building, but a catastrophe is the only thing that could ever justify what this motion actually demands, which is to reverse the policies. We should say what is clearly hiding inside that intention. Reversing the policies means taking away the dental care that seniors are using right now.”
“When the real thing arrives, that council is the one that names it, not politicians. Three days ago, the council looked at exactly the same data the Leader of the Opposition is brandishing, and it refused to use his word. It found the decline so slight, at a fraction of a single per cent, that it does not even come close to any recession it has ever declared, and it warned in very clear terms that it is precisely this kind of label placed upon it by politicians and stapled onto numbers like these that causes further problems, because it is designed to sound official and frightening. The country's own referees, the people who called the 2008 recession and the COVID downturn, looked at this and would not go there. The Leader of the Opposition decided that it is his job to go and write a bigger word than theirs into a motion.”
“I want to take a moment to focus on a single word that is at the centre of it. The motion does not say “a difficult quarter”. It does not say “a slowdown”. It reaches, in the very first line, for the biggest word available: “recession”. There is a body that all of us have recognized, whose entire job is to decide whether that word applies. It is the C.D. Howe Institute's business cycle council. Trusted by Conservatives and Liberals alike, it is the organization that has effectively been trusted as the organization that determines whether we are, in fact, in a recession, and it has not said that. It is not a Liberal organization. It is not a Liberal press release or a Conservative press release that gets to decide this. It is the council that called the 2008 financial crisis and the council that called the COVID downturn.”
“Here is the part that the members opposite will never mention, because it is not convenient: We are doing this with people, not against them. Premiers of every political stripe, Liberal, Conservative and New Democrat, and even Danielle Smith have found that this government is a partner with whom they can actually work. That is what governing in a time of crisis actually looks like. We put down the partisan cudgel, we pick up the tools and we work together. This brings me to the motion from the Leader of the Opposition that is before us today, because it was definitely not written in that spirit. It is not an offer to build. It is not an offer to think about how we might work together. It is not even an honest account of where we are. It is, yet again, performative theatre.”
“What this government has chosen to do is focus relentlessly on what is within our control. We have established a Major Projects Office to make sure that we can get nation-building projects built and that they do not die in a queue. We passed the One Canadian Economy Act to make sure that we tear down the internal trade walls that made it absurdly easier to trade with another country than with the next province over. Our productivity superdeduction gives businesses a reason to invest here and now. Build Canada Homes is already building thousands of homes. Through team Canada strong, we are putting $6 billion behind 100,000 new skilled trade workers, because we cannot build what we approve without the hands to build it.”
“We all understand that. We all understand the concerns and the risks, and we all understand that it is our job to figure out how to make it better. No honest account of how we got here points to a single villain or a single year. This has taken decades, across governments of every stripe in a country where it has become simply too hard to build, too hard to get major projects off the ground, too hard to keep our best talent, research and companies from leaving to go elsewhere and too hard to turn ideas into industry. These are not partisan accusations. They are an inheritance for every single one of us in the chamber from decades and decades of action. The question before the House is not whether the moment is hard. We all know it is. The question is what a serious government does about it.”
“Mr. Speaker, we all know we are living through one of the most dangerous and divided moments the world has seen in generations. We all know the pressure that is coming toward Canadians is not coming from just one direction, but all directions at once. We know our closest ally and trading partner has imposed tariffs at levels we have not seen in living memory. Wars are being fought in Europe and the Middle East. Supply chains that took decades to build are being fractured in real time. All of this is unfolding against a technological transformation that is defining what work and our economy will look like a decade from now and, indeed, in less than a decade from now. This is not a normal moment, and most Canadians know it. They feel it at the grocery till and at mortgage renewal. A young person feels it doing the math on a first home.”
“Mr. Speaker, in English, we say we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. [ Translation ] We believe we need to work toward resolving the issue of U.S. tariffs. That is what we are doing. At the same time, we believe it is important to diversify our trade with other countries. That is why we have succeeded in establishing agreements with other countries for Canadian products, thereby creating opportunities for Canada to diversify—”
“Mr. Speaker, if we look at the number of trade agreements we now have with countries around the world, we can see that countries are seeking to invest in Canada. Whether they are countries in the Middle East or Europe, or our partners in the EU, more and more countries are looking at Canada with confidence as the place to invest. Why? It is because there is a government they can trust and rely on. There are Canadian workers who have talent and are the best in the world. We have research and researchers in this country coming up with the ideas of the future today. They see the convergence of those three things as a recipe for success and a place where they can place a bet, and they know our word means something.”
“People who have actually built things know that is not how things get done in this country, and it is not how we build real, resilient infrastructure.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am not sure exactly what the question was. It sounded yet again like a litany of complaints and no new ideas, which is exactly what the opposition is devoid of. Perhaps I could tell them something they might be hopeful about. In my province of British Columbia, there are now four projects at the Major Projects Office. I understand that the Government of Alberta is looking forward to putting forward a proposition to be able to get energy resources to tidewater. It seems that the provinces, the country and the private sector are working together to ensure that we are building things. I understand the impatience on the other side. After all, the bill was passed less than a year ago. However, they somehow expect mines to spring out of the ground, mills to be built overnight and pipelines to randomly show up.”
“It is because premiers of all parties have recognized that this is a government that is prepared to work hard for Canadians, build things for Canadians and invest in the type of economy that Canadians want to see built in this country for a future their kids can look at and be proud of. Yes, we all know that times are tough. When times are tough, we work together. We are providing solutions to people to give them the supports they need to get through this period. We are showing them a path to a brighter future with the dollars, supports, commitments and, most importantly, the compassion and hope to be able to deliver on big things. We are doing that. We are backing it up by having the provinces and the private sector working with us. I encourage the Conservatives to stop the slogans and get to work for Canadians with us.”
“It comes with governments that are prepared to match the ambition Canadians have with what they need, which are the resources and the support to be able to get to those places. Danielle Smith talked about how working with this Prime Minister is a joy. David Eby talked about how working with this government is a joy. I am really curious to know how provincial governments, from Wab Kinew's and David Eby's to Doug Ford's and Danielle Smith's, look at this government and say this is a government they can work with, yet the Conservatives sit there and wonder why their poll numbers keep going down and Canadians refuse to return them to office.”
“They expect us to put aside pettiness and all of the things we cannot do to focus on the things we can and should do. They expect us to show up with solutions. All of us who have kids know that when we have difficult conversations with them, a temper tantrum is not the way to a solution. Resolution comes through doing things together and showing by example. The Conservatives would have us believe that by ripping up the paper, tossing our toys and walking away, we are somehow going to build a stronger economy. That is not how economies are built. They are built by people who are prepared to invest in this country, which we are seeing now in record numbers. We are seeing that through workers who are prepared to be retrained today for the jobs of the future. That is what we are seeing.”
“After this many years and decades of building too little, Canadians have every right to be impatient, but impatience is not a reason to stop building and tear out the scaffolding. It is a reason to build faster. A family having a tough time does not need a politician to name their fear back to them, only louder. They have lived that fear. They do not need it performed as political theatre. The young person wondering if there is room for their future in this country does not need another performance of outrage from the members opposite, which has, sadly, become the only thing they seem to know how to do. Young people need us to build something worthy of their trust, and that is what our government has chosen to do. In times of crisis and in times of difficulty, Canadians expect us to come together and build big things.”
“While he is at it, let him tell that family at the kitchen table which of their savings he means to take back. Is it the national school food program, which his own party has called “garbage”? Is it the child care that his party leader calls a “slush fund”, which has benefited people in his own riding? Is it the dental care that seniors in his communities are currently benefiting from? Are those the programs he would choose to roll back? To the Conservatives, the help that gets a family through the month is a line item that they sneer at. It is something to be looked down upon. To us, it is precisely the point. It is lifting families up so that they can build success. We cannot rip out the scaffolding and claw back what families are counting on and call that a plan to build. I understand the impatience.”
“Canada has now surpassed the United States as the most attractive market in the world for infrastructure investment. Our economy is now projected to grow the second fastest in the G7 this year and next. To me, this is not the portrait of a country in retreat, but a country that has decided to build again. The member opposite asked the government to “immediately...reverse all the economic policies” that got us here. I would ask him to be honest about what that actually means. Does it mean reversing the Major Projects Office? Does it mean eliminating the superdeduction that rewards firms for investing in this country? Does it mean eliminating the work to tear down the walls between our provinces or the $6 billion for 100,000 new tradespeople?”
“The Conservatives are gleeful about the fact that there are challenges in this country. They propose no solutions and they continue to tear down, but what the rest of the world is seeing, through foreign direct investment, companies moving their headquarters here, talent coming to this country and researchers coming to this country, is that this is the place to build a future. That is because we have a Prime Minister and a government that are focused on that, know what it takes to build big things and are prepared to do the heavy lifting to get it done. (1220) The wider proof is real. Wages have outpaced inflation every single month this government has been in office. Foreign investment, as I said, is flowing to us faster now than it is to any of our closest peers. It is at an 18‑year high.”
“We have $6 billion and 100,000 new skilled trades workers through team Canada strong so that we have the hands to build what we approve. We have Build Canada Homes, which is not another task force, but an actual builder with more than 7,500 homes already under way in this country. Here is how I know it is working. It is showing up in my own province. Anglo Teck is choosing Canada as its headquarters, bringing blue- and white-collar jobs to British Columbia. Torys is opening up a new office in Vancouver. Lululemon is keeping its headquarters in British Columbia. These are companies that could plant their flag anywhere on earth, and they are choosing here because they see what British Columbia and Canada have to offer. They are betting on our prosperity. They would not place that bet on a country in decline.”
“It has chosen to back our champions, keep our IP here, keep jobs here, build talent here and let Canadian companies scale without having to leave Canada to do it ever again. We have made it easier to build big things again with the Major Projects Office so that nation-building projects stop dying in the queue. Ground has already broken on projects, like the port expansion in Montreal, which will move Canadian goods to the world for decades, and there are four major projects in my own province of British Columbia. The One Canadian Economy Act tears down the internal trade walls I just described. We have a productivity superdeduction so that businesses can write off investment right away and have a reason to make it here. We have a plan to unlock $1 trillion in investment over the next five years.”
“There are tariffs at levels not seen in generations and supply chains are fracturing under conflict in Europe and the Middle East. The Prime Minister has called this what it is: a rupture, not a transition. I did not come to this chamber as a political staffer. I did not grow up in politics. I came from building companies and creating actual jobs. I know what it takes to start something, to make payroll and to scale a business past the point that it is fragile. I know the patterns the members opposite never name. In this country, we generate world‑class research. We build competitive firms and then, sometimes, we watch the industrial scale, the intellectual property, the jobs and the talent migrate somewhere else. This pattern is not a law of nature, but a result of choices. This is a government that has finally made the other choice.”
“The pressure did not arrive all at once. It built slowly over decades, through what successive governments of all stripes and at all levels chose to do and, far more often, chose to put off. There were too few homes built year after year, infrastructure was deferred and deferred again and productivity was left adrift while other countries pulled ahead. The one I know best is that, for decades, we let it become too hard to build big things in this country. Governments left the walls standing between our provinces so that it stayed easier to trade with another country than to trade with one another. None of it was inevitable. It was the accumulated cost of choosing not to act. The bill for everything that was waiting came up at the very moment the global economy was being torn up and rewritten.”
“That worry is real, and it deserves a serious response, which is exactly what this motion is not, so this is where I part ways with the member who put this motion forward. The Conservative Party offers that family a story that all of this is the fault of one or two people, conjured in a single year, and that the cure, which the member just spoke about, is to simply tear things down. It is a tidy story. It asks nothing hard of the party that is telling it. It is a bid for power and a social media clip dressed up as an answer, but it is wrong. It is wrong about how we got here, and it is emptiest precisely where it ought to be the fullest, which is on what they would actually do instead. The members opposite are just about everything they are not and have no ideas about what we should be doing. Let us give that family an honest answer.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Madawaska—Restigouche . I would like to begin where this motion does not. I will not begin with the numbers, but with the people this motion is supposed to be about. Somewhere, today, there is a parent at a kitchen table, running the math on a mortgage renewal for a second time because the first answer could not possibly be right. There is a young person in the same house who did everything they were asked to and is now looking at the cost of a home and wondering whether this country still has room for them. I am not going to tell either of them that these things are better than they feel. They are actually not, and we all know that.”
“I urge every member of the House who has a conscience, who cares about the coastline of British Columbia and who cares about our environmental future and about building a prosperous economy to do the same.”
“It looks like pricing carbon, cutting methane, respecting indigenous rights and our natural environment, and protecting our coast. It looks like building big things and protecting what no amount of private sector intervention can replace. What it does not look like is a one-line bill repealing 50 years of conservation policy because it polls well in a fundraising email for Conservatives. We owe Canadians better than that. We owe the next generation better than that. My son is in the lobby watching this speech today. I owe him better than that. We all do. We owe the coastal communities of British Columbia better than that. The case for repeal has not been made. I will be voting against Bill C-264 .”
“We have launched a joint electricity working group with Alberta to build a net-zero grid by 2050, including transmission interties that will finally allow British Columbia to export clean hydroelectric power eastward. Let us also look at the facts. From 2014 to 2025, bitumen production in this country grew by 63%. Alberta's royalties from 2021 to 2025 totalled $58 billion, nearly four times what they were in the previous seven years combined. At the same time as this happened, under a Liberal government, we were also able to preserve and protect 6,700 square kilometres on the north coast of British Columbia, larger than the size of P.E.I., in a nature reserve. That is how intelligent, managed, evidence-based energy policy works. It looks like signing an MOU.”
“This is a government that believes in evidence. It is a government that believes in science. This is a government that believes in building a strong economy and protecting a healthy future for our environment. We believe these are not opposites. Quite the opposite, in fact, we believe they are part of the same future. We have demonstrated that. We have ensured Trans Mountain's viability. We signed a Canada-Alberta memorandum of understanding, which put a $130-per-tonne price floor under industrial carbon pricing in Alberta. We have secured an agreement in principle for a 75% reduction in methane emissions from Alberta's oil and gas sector by 2035.”
“It has access to the markets that it needs to be going to, and we are working hard to ensure that, in the cleanest, greenest way possible, we continue to make that possible under the right conditions. It does not need access at the cost of a coastline that this Parliament, 50 years ago, declared inimical to Canadian interests to put at risk. Unless every single box is checked and all of the criteria are met to the satisfaction of all parties involved, there is no reason for a new pipeline to go through the north coast. If the science has changed, if science tells us something different and if indigenous consultations tell us something different, then we should all be having that conversation, but a one-line bill that proposes to change history just because it would look good is not how serious governments should make decisions.”
“The Coastal First Nations alliance has made its position clear, repeatedly, for decades. They are rights holders whose constitutional position is at the centre of it. Those nations have spoken loud and clear, and I would encourage members opposite to speak to them directly to hear their voices. The fourth pillar is, of course, the alternatives. There is already a pipeline to tidewater in this country, TMX. Expanded and operational, it is moving Canadian energy to global markets through the port of Vancouver, where the safety architecture, the spill response capacity, the marine traffic management and the indigenous consultation frameworks are all built around that infrastructure. Canadian energy has access to the Pacific.”
“The waters from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border are some of the most biologically productive seas on the planet, habitat for over 25 species of marine animals and spawning grounds for salmon runs that sustain ecosystems. This is not any ordinary coastline. (1755) The second is the nature of that risk. Crude oil tankers are vessels carrying volumes of persistent oil that, in the event of a failure, cannot be cleaned up. A herring fishery collapsed after the Exxon Valdez , and as I said earlier, it has still not recovered. The Nathan E. Stewart tug ran aground near Bella Bella in 2016. There was a diesel spill, and the Heiltsuk Nation is still measuring the consequences of that a decade later. The third is the obligation to coastal first nations, something that seems like an inconvenience to members opposite.”
“If I were being cynical about it, I might encourage members opposite to proceed and encourage us to vote for it, to tie that up in the courts. Passing this bill would be the single most effective way to ensure that no pipeline ever gets built to the north coast of British Columbia, because the legal and political response that this bill on its own would trigger would be exactly that. That is not how to build big things in this country. That is how to make sure they never get built, and the proof of that is the years of Conservative government when not a single pipeline was built and no progress was made in protecting the environment, all at once. It was quite remarkable. Let us talk about the substantive case for why this moratorium should stand. First is the nature of the coast itself.”
“I want to make a point that I think the members opposite have not fully thought through, and I say this in the spirit of genuine concern for the credibility of debate in this institution. If the members opposite truly believe that a pipeline to the north coast of British Columbia is the future of Canadian energy, passage of this bill would be the worst possible way to pursue that future. The moment that this bill comes to a vote, it would galvanize every coastal first nation, every B.C. municipality, every environmental organization, every one of us who is concerned about the environment and every legal team in the country who has spent decades preparing for exactly this fight. It would guarantee injunctions. It would guarantee litigation. It would guarantee gridlock.”
“It passed the House with support from members of four of five parties represented. That is the history, and that is what this slogan, or this bill, proposes to overturn. The members opposite are not making a science-based case for repeal. They are not bringing forward new evidence about the risk on the north coast. They are not presenting a new technology or a new spill response capacity that changes that calculus. They are not pointing to a change in the vulnerability of that coast. They are bringing forward a one-line bill, with no consultation, no indigenous engagement and no environmental review, that asks Parliament to undo half a century of careful policy because it might look good in a social media clip.”
“Marine ecosystems were damaged in ways that are still being studied today. That disaster reinforced what Canadian governments had already concluded: The risk on that coast is unique, and the consequences of failure are too great. Members from British Columbia, particularly, are concerned about this. While I appreciate the concern for the environment from our members from Alberta, this is a particular problem that affects British Columbia, but it should affect the sensibility of all Canadians. For 34 years, this voluntary moratorium held, through four Conservative prime ministers and four Liberal prime ministers. None of them moved to repeal it, and none of them tried. In 2017, our government introduced Bill C-48 , the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, to give that 34-year consensus the force of statute.”
“In 1985, a Conservative prime minister named Brian Mulroney established a voluntary tanker exclusion zone along the north coast of British Columbia. It was a Tory prime minister, a Tory cabinet and a Tory decision, and a good one at that. In 1988, that exclusion zone was formalized through coordination between the Canadian Coast Guard, the United States Coast Guard and the Reagan administration. A Conservative government and a Republican government worked together to protect the environment, imagine that. Now a Conservative opposition in Ottawa is working to undo exactly that. Let us think back to 1989. The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound. Thousands of kilometres of coastline were contaminated. A herring fishery collapsed and is still not yet fully recovered.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-264 , and I will say at the outset what the central problem with this bill is. It is a one-line proposition dressed up as serious policy. It is a slogan in legislative form. It asks this Parliament to do something that the legislative record, the scientific record, the consultation record and the conservation record of this country have all decided against repeatedly over 50 years under prime ministers of every party. Perhaps we should take a walk down memory lane and look at history. In 1972, the House passed a resolution declaring that “the movement of oil by tanker along the coast of British Columbia...is inimical to Canadian interests”. It said “inimical”. That was the language of this Parliament in 1972.”
“Mr. Speaker, yet again, it is either misinformation or disinformation coming from the Conservatives. Either way, Canadians need to understand the facts. The facts are that the government is appealing the Cowichan decision in the courts today and that the government has stood up for the rights of private property owners. It is also important that Canadians understand that not a single Canadian has ever lost any private property in any agreement with an indigenous community. Conservatives are spreading misinformation, risking substantial economic growth in British Columbia and putting at risk true reconciliation and economic growth.”
“It is affordable housing on prime land in Vancouver. Above all else, it is reconciliation in action. Sen̓áḵw reminds us that when we work with first nations, when first nations lead and we partner, we do more than build homes. We build trust, we restore belonging and we build the future.”
“Mr. Speaker, earlier this month, I attended the blessing ceremony of Sen̓áḵw, a housing development in my riding of Vancouver Granville. When complete, Sen̓áḵw will bring more than 6,000 rental homes to Vancouver open to everyone, including much-needed affordable and below-market housing units for families, workers and newcomers alike. However, Sen̓áḵw is more than a housing project. It is a homecoming. More than a century after Squamish families were forcibly removed from their ancestral village, the Squamish nation gathered once again on their land. They gathered with elders. They gathered in language, in song, in ceremony and in strength. I was honoured to be a witness to that ceremony, that blessing, as the first tower prepares to welcome families into 333 new homes. It is high-quality housing.”
“If the Conservatives focused their attention on that, perhaps we would have committees in which we felt like we could work together, which is what the Conservatives simply have no interest in doing.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is sad that we have to rise in the House to even address this issue. I suppose when we are dealing with an opposition party whose leader once said that indigenous people needed a better work ethic, not support, this is what we get. There are members across the way who have made comments that have disparaged indigenous people, directly and indirectly. Their arguments about this case, which are being litigated with absolutely no basis in judgment, are causing people to look at indigenous people as the cause of a problem, to blame them and cast dispersions upon them, when in fact what we need to be doing is working through this toward reconciliation in a way that creates prosperity but also ensures private property is protected.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am so pleased the member opposite chose to hang his entire argument on the word “viable”. The whole premise of our legal system is based on viable argument, on the fact that we make arguments that can stand up in court and that we win or lose decisions on the basis of the quality of our arguments and our understanding of the law. I would invite the member opposite to look at the agreements with Musqueam that he claims were done in secret to understand the Cowichan decision and the basis of the appeals. What he would see is a government that is vigorously defending private property rights and doing the work that is required to run this through the systems designed by our Constitution, which are the courts.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think the simple answer is no. I would invite members opposite to read beyond the first line of the directive because they would see there is substantial depth there. They should choose to look at the facts. I know my hon. friend here, who is a lawyer, has read the entirety of the decision and would understand why we have to read the whole thing, not just the headlines.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank the member opposite for yet again, like his colleagues, making light of what is a very serious situation for folks in Vancouver and across British Columbia. There are people who listen to the debates in this Parliament and expect serious discussion and serious debate. What they hear is misinformation, which leads to market uncertainty. Market uncertainty leads to builders not wanting to build affordable homes and to jobs not being created. The Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves. They should be asking themselves what they will tell their constituents when they ask if the government is going to stand for property rights or not when the answer is yes.”
“We are advancing every legally viable argument to defend the security of fee simple. We have been clear, from the Prime Minister on down, that protecting private property is fundamental to who we are as a country, and we will always stand for that.”