Pat Kelly
Calgary Crowfoot, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“They are the same Liberals who spent the last 11 years actively preventing Canada from diversifying its export markets by systematically preventing the construction of the energy infrastructure necessary to export Canadian energy to the world. Canadian oil and gas is by far Canada's most valuable export. It dwarfs everything else.”
“I thought that might mean that a year after he made these claims, there would be some kind of approval on the horizon for a pipeline project. I could easily imagine that.”
“If it had been built, it would be carrying 525,000 barrels a day today to world markets. At today's prices, that would bring about $20 billion per year to the Canadian economy. Would we be in a recession today, if the Canadian economy had another 525,000 barrels a day in exported production?”
“Madam Speaker, the member brings up the Trans Mountain pipeline and, again, Conservatives were not calling upon the government to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline and build it themselves.”
“They ran up deficits in the eighties that were so big that by the time the Liberals were defeated in 1984, Canada was literally kiting interest payments by issuing new debt just to cover the interest on the existing debt.”
“She said that, based on the government's stress tests, which, “draws on decades of Canadian economic and fiscal history, including, recessions, financial crises, oil price crashes, and runs thousands of combinations to show the range of possibilities....that the likelihood that the deficit-to-GDP ratio will decline...is less than 1 per ce…”
The complete record
Every one of 352 lines we hold for Pat Kelly, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 8.
“Madam Speaker, the member, in his speech, suggested that perhaps I have been around long enough to know a bit about the history of housing affordability in Canada. He is right. I spent 22 years in the mortgage business before I became a member of Parliament. I am quite aware of affordability and how it impacts families. What I know is that before the government took office, wages and per capita GDP were rising. This is during the years of the Harper government, which included the current Leader of the Opposition . Wages were rising. The affordability of housing and the ability of Canadians to service debt and to buy homes and to afford rent were keeping pace. We had the construction of housing in those years. Everything has changed over the past 10 years, in which the government has allowed our productivity to fall into the—”
“We are in a market where sellers and builders cannot sell at the current cost of material and at current prices. They cannot build and make a profit. However, buyers cannot afford the prices in existing markets. We certainly need far more homes for supply, but the only way we are going to get out of this jam is to unleash the Canadian economy and have productivity increase. When it comes to productivity, we are at the bottom of the G7 and the bottom of the OECD. Until we unleash the Canadian economy by getting rid of all the laws the Liberals have passed to prevent oil and gas development, for example, or by getting major projects built that can allow us to get our energy to market, we are not going to have the productivity to grow into the unaffordable housing market that has come in under the last 10 years of the government.”
“Since that response and since the commitments the Liberals made during the election about housing construction, pre-sales of the homes in Canada's two most expensive markets, Vancouver and Toronto, have utterly collapsed. We heard about this at the finance committee. Pre-sales on condominium properties in Toronto are down 93% year over year. Think about that for a minute. When pre-sales collapse with a 93% drop, future housing starts are going to collapse. Without pre-sales today, there will be no financing and no construction in the years ahead. We are being set up right now in our most stressed housing markets for an utter collapse of housing construction at a time when Canadians cannot afford homes and need access to housing.”
“He was also the mayor of Vancouver when it was one of our most unaffordable cities and one of the most unaffordable places on this entire planet. The response we got was not very helpful. The government has presided over real estate prices doubling and rents doubling, while productivity and per capita GDP have remained unchanged over a 10-year period. People's ability to cover the cost of living, including housing, is no better than it was 10 years ago, while rents and prices have doubled. It was not the housing minister who responded; it was the House leader , and in his response, he made vague claims of building hundreds of thousands of homes.”
“Madam Speaker, back in the spring, I asked the housing minister an important question. I pointed out to him that what has happened under the government over the last 10 years is that Canada has become a country where there are just two kinds of families: families that already own real estate and families that have given up hope of ever owning real estate. That is because for young people today, the only path to home ownership is their parents: their parents' ability to share their equity, to give them large amounts of money for down payments and/or to co-sign for loans. A generation of Canadians has given up on home ownership, and that is what the government has presided over. The minister himself is, of course, a homeowner and a real estate investor.”
“Mr. Speaker, when it comes to trade with the Americans, the Prime Minister went from “elbows up” to “Who cares?” He backed down on countertariffs and on legal challenges to softwood lumber, but he got nothing in return when he went to Washington in October; well, he got nothing for Canadians. Days later, the Americans signed an $80-billion nuclear deal with the Prime Minister 's company, Brookfield. When is the Prime Minister going to get a deal for Canadians, not just a deal for himself and his company?”
“Mr. Speaker, this credit card budget loads today's spending on to tomorrow's taxpayers. Fitch credit ratings, which rates the government's credit, says the Liberal government frequently blows through its fiscal anchors and has “a high risk of further deterioration”. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says the government abandoned its previous fiscal anchor, which was there to preserve its AAA rating. How many more disastrous independent reports is it going to take for the Prime Minister to rein in his spending?”
“Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer spared nothing in pointing out how terrible and how low the credibility of the government is. There is a 92.5% chance the Liberals are not going to sustain their anchor, so their anchors mean nothing and they have no credibility. The member is absolutely right. The Liberals, including a moment ago with the member for Winnipeg North , claim that their budget contains generational expenditures on military procurement, yet it is not in the budget. They talk about procuring submarines without doing so. I do not even have time to get into the debacles of procurement for the armed forces under the government, but the barracks are crumbling, there is only a handful of tanks and we do not produce enough munitions. We do not produce enough of any of the things we need. Procurement is a disaster.”
“Mr. Speaker, I mentioned the energy industry, and I support that industry as an economic driver of this country. I am appalled by the approach of the government to the industry. The government's approach has been to regulate it into the ground. All the energy industry needs is for the government to get off its back and allow private investment to return in order to employ Canadians in the highest-paying and most productive jobs the Canadian economy offers.”
“Mr. Speaker, of course I support that objective. The problem is that the government has no credibility on executing any of the things it promises. The government has been in charge for 10 years, and we have no significant upgrades on military equipment. The Prime Minister travels all over the world, and every time he goes somewhere, a week or two later the country he has been to imposes a new tariff. There is no credibility, no execution and no follow-through from the government.”
“This budget would cut loose all of the Liberals' past fiscal anchors and bring in two new ones: balancing operating spending with revenue by 2028-29, and maintaining a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio. How much credibility does the government deserve with its history of cutting the line on its anchors? Based on history alone, I say none, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer did give the government a 7.5% chance of maintaining the anchor of a declining deficit-to-GDP ratio. That is getting close to 20:1, if the PBO is giving betting odds on the government's keeping this anchor. These anchors mean nothing when the government's operating budget relies on accounting trickery as well. This budget would add $80 billion to the national debt at a time when interest is choking out all other expenses.”
“Fiscal anchors mean nothing if they are not attached to anything. The government was literally only a few weeks old in 2015 when it broke its promise of a limited deficit. The Liberals pretended that it never made any such promise and replaced their 2015 election promise with their first so-called fiscal anchor at the time, which was that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio would never go down. They said it hundreds of times in this chamber. At the end of 2019, they cut that anchor, brought in a new one and said that their new anchor was our AAA credit rating. Then Fitch Ratings downgraded Canada to AA+, and in the COVID recovery, the Liberals came up with a guardrail, which was a maximum deficit. They blew through that and then went back to claiming that a declining debt-to-GDP ratio was their fiscal anchor.”
“For a moment, let us set aside the government's mismanagement of the Canadian economy, the fiscal deterioration of the national balance sheet that it is presiding over and the cost of living crisis that has been triggered by the government's overspending, and let us talk about fiscal anchors. On a boat, an anchor is used to hold the boat in place. If we cut the line that connects the boat to the anchor, the boat drifts aimlessly until it runs aground somewhere. If the government were a sailor, it would be the kind of sailor who brings a new anchor on board the boat, a shiny new piece of equipment that it shows off to everybody, and then throws the anchor overboard without attaching it to a line that connects it to the boat. That is exactly what the government does, and it wonders why it is adrift.”
“She talked about how excessive regulation drives out investment from Canada's number one industry, which is the energy industry. Energy is by far Canada's biggest and most valuable export, and the government spent 10 years trying to regulate it into the ground. There is nothing in this bill that would deal with the root cause of Canada's productivity emergency. There is a lot of talk about major projects, but when the Liberals talk about major projects, the government acts like it is having an out-of-body experience and has no idea who has been in charge of the government for the last 10 years and who introduced Bill C-69 , Bill C-48 , the carbon tax, the emission cap and a host of other major and minor acts that have chased $606 billion out of Canada to the United States, even before Trump was inaugurated.”
“The cost of living has shot up while Canadians' productivity has not, and as the Bank of Canada told the finance committee earlier this month, the productivity crisis and the cost of living crisis are the same thing. Canadians increasingly cannot afford to live because the government keeps growing, choking out consumers and absorbing more taxes while creating laws that chase investment out of Canada, leaving workers less productive than in the rest of the developed world. The government spent 10 years passing anti-business laws that have left Canadians with fewer and fewer jobs in Canada's most productive industries. One full year ago, before the tariff war, the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada called this a break glass emergency.”
“Ten years ago the budget was balanced, homes were relatively affordable in Canada, outside of Vancouver at least, and Canada's middle class was doing all right, much better than in its peer countries. Over the last 10 years, though, Canada alone among G7 countries and alone among members of the OECD, with the exception of Luxembourg, has had no increase in per capita GDP, none. That means that in Canada, we have been left behind by our peer countries. The value of everything produced in Canada divided by all the people in Canada is now the same as it was 10 years ago, but during that time, the cost of food has gone up, the cost of housing has doubled and the cost of rent has doubled.”
“Some might ask what is wrong with that if it helps Canadians differentiate between the administration of government and capital costs. What is wrong is that the Liberals' definition is grossly misleading. The PBO says it is “overly expansive”. What is wrong with it is they are deliberately trying to trick Canadians into thinking the government is building infrastructure when it is actually hiring bureaucrats or connected insiders with consulting contracts or is dispensing corporate welfare and calling it capital investment. What is wrong is that the Liberals are not following internationally recognized definitions. What is wrong is that the government, which has done so much over the last 10 years to compromise its fiscal credibility, is now resorting to accounting trickery to try to fool Canadians and the finance community.”
“What do Canadians get for this staggering new debt that every Canadian knows they have to pay off with interest? Is there any new money in this budget to pay for the so-called generational investments that the government keeps talking about? The answer is no. This act we are debating does not contain money for transformational new productivity-improving spending. It simply grows the size of government. The Liberals keep saying that they are going to reduce spending on the operations of government in order to spend more on capital projects. This budget says these words, but this act does not do these things. The main way the government plans to fulfill its unbelievable claims about its investments is through accounting trickery.”
“The Liberals have tabled a budget, the first in nearly two years, that sets a new non-pandemic record of $78 billion in deficit expenditure. That is double the size of the deficit that triggered the resignation of the member for University—Rosedale when she was the finance minister. Do members remember that? Do members remember chaos this time last year and the consternation and hand-wringing over Trudeau's $42-billion deficit? I will point out that I intend to split my time with the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek . Let us remember the 2025 election, when the Prime Minister promised Canadians that he was the guy who was going to rein in public spending. The deficit in this budget is the equivalent of adding $5,300 of new debt to every Canadian family.”
“The amount spent on Liberal consultants ballooned out of control despite the federal public service increasing by 100,000 employees, while service levels for Canadians declined. The armed forces still have rusting ships, 40-year-old fighter jets, only a few dozen operational tanks and crumbling barracks and housing. The CRA still cannot answer the phone or give accurate information to Canadians. Now, 10 years after the Liberals promised transformational, generational public expenditure to boost productivity but delivered the lowest per capita growth in the G7 and the OECD, they have tabled a budget promising the same broken promises recycled from 2015. Let there be no misunderstanding. This is a credit card budget.”
“That same year, the Liberals alone campaigned on a promise to run what they called modest deficits for three years that would fund unprecedented generational investments that would boost productivity and allow the budget to balance itself. That was the year the Liberals destroyed the consensus that successive Liberal and Conservative governments shared: that deficits matter, that debt matters, that fiscal discipline matters, that productivity matters and that all of these things directly impact everyday Canadians and their struggles to make ends meet. Here we are, 10 years later, and no historic transformational public investments occurred. During that time, the budget was never balanced and the national debt doubled.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think everyone here is old enough to remember the year 2015. That was the year the Harper government brought the budget back into balance after successfully steering Canada through the great recession and when the New York Times congratulated Canada for having the world's most prosperous middle class. This was a few years after the Liberals tried to topple the government because Harper's government refused to run larger deficits than were necessary to steer Canada through the 2008-09 financial crash. He had run a disciplined government, one focused on core government services and responsibilities.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of a number of my constituents. I have a petition signed by hundreds of Canadians, most of whom reside in my constituency of Calgary Crowfoot. They draw attention to the transnational repression of Falun Gong practitioners here in Canada by the Chinese Communist Party. They call upon the Government of Canada to publicly call on the Chinese regime to end its persecution of the Falun Gong and to continue to impose sanctions and take stronger measures to protect the Falun Gong community targeted by the CCP. I am pleased to table this on behalf of many of my constituents, who have brought this petition to my attention.”
“When it comes to machinations around the delay of Bill C-4 , is the member aware that his own caucus colleagues have delayed the reporting of the bill to the House?”
“Madam Speaker, in the member's speech, he repeatedly asserted that it was somehow because we had moved a concurrence motion, at the appropriate time, to give the House the opportunity to debate the business of a parliamentary committee and allow members to vote on it, that this was filibustering Bill C-4 . Is he aware that his own caucus colleagues spent last week filibustering Bill C-4 at the parliamentary committee, where they refused to even allow amendments to go to a vote? They did not co-operate with other parties, as this member has said they should. His own colleagues refused every amendment and filibustered an entire day to prevent even the first amendment from coming to a vote. They tried to get each amendment struck. The Speaker wisely ruled that the amendments that did pass were in order.”
“Madam Speaker, the employment rate and the unemployment rate can be measured separately. They are not the same thing. It has been remarked upon that Canada has the worst employment rate in more than 25 years. I wonder if the member could comment on the employment rate.”
“Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of the government, Liberal elites and insiders have never had it so good, but the Prime Minister told young Canadians that they are the ones who need to sacrifice. While young Canadians have given up on home ownership, the Auditor General reports that the CRA allowed a telephone system contract to go from $50 million to nearly $200 million while it still does not answer the phone. Will the government deliver an affordable budget that reins in sweetheart deals for insiders, yes or no?”
“Mr. Speaker, over the years, I have become quite used to this. This is typical and happens over and over again. The Liberal government fails to pass laws. The Liberals table laws, fail to move them, delay and dither, waste time, prorogue in this case, and then blame the opposition that they cannot get their agenda through the House.”
“Mr. Speaker, I hope the member is not implying that having an ethical government is not in the interests of the Liberal Party. I think that is what I just heard him say, that by having this debate about the Conflict of Interest Act, we are acting only in the interests of the Conservative Party. I would hope that all parties want a regime where the appearance of conflict of interest does not happen. The member said there are many opportunities for these kinds of debates, and he is right. Today is that opportunity. If the Liberals wanted to get Bill C-3 passed more quickly, they should have managed their calendar better in both this Parliament and the last Parliament.”
“We are going to have an ethics concurrence report debate and have this important amendment so the ethics committee can call the witnesses that Canadians need to hear from at that parliamentary committee.”
“The member for Winnipeg North , in his comments to the previous speaker, talked about all the other business that could be conducted today, and he accused the opposition of a filibuster. His own party was filibustering Bill C-4 at committee last week. As for the bill that we would have been debating, the Liberals had the entire last Parliament to pass it. They failed to manage their legislative calendar then, so I think one could hardly say that it was a burning priority of the government. We have to at some point debate some of the committee motions. It is important that each member be given the opportunity to weigh in on this with their vote. Yes, today is the day.”
“One of them is called Sagen, and guess who owns and controls Sagen? It is none other than Brookfield. We saw this happen, and we saw a share price bump immediately after the announcement with Sagen. Canadians are left to wonder. What are the disclosures? What are the relationships? Was the Prime Minister a part of the decision? Would he have had to recuse if he had actually been listed as the prime minister's adviser rather than as the Liberal leader's adviser? This is not to say that the Prime Minister has acted in his own interest at the expense of the country's interest. The point is the appearance. Canadians want to know and to ensure that the appearance of a conflict does not exist. This is very important to Canadians.”
“The legal hair they were trying to split was that, at the time, the now Prime Minister , as the then adviser, would have been required to comply with the Conflict of Interest Act if he were an adviser to the prime minister. If he were adviser to the leader of the Liberal Party, the Liberals would avoid this disclosure. This goes back many months, before the Prime Minister became a leadership candidate, but it is material to the debate because one of the things that happened early on, when the Prime Minister had the advisory role, was that the Liberals made a government decision to increase the mortgage insurance ceiling limit on insured mortgages. This created a business opportunity of course for mortgage insurers. One is a Crown corporation, and there are two private ones.”
“There has been a lot of talk about how he delayed disclosing his financial interests until absolutely required under the act, having already become Prime Minister. It actually goes back quite a bit further than even before he became the leader of the Liberal Party. He was named economic adviser to the leader of the Liberal Party; the Liberals did not say “to the prime minister”. A few people noticed right away. They wondered why the Liberals were trying to split hairs between “the prime minister” and “the leader of the Liberal Party”, who were, of course, the same person. Justin Trudeau was the leader of the Liberal Party, and he was the prime minister.”
“(1735) That takes us to the current Prime Minister , who has, as has been pointed out by other members today, the potential of carried interest, bonuses and perhaps options. There is the prospect of the Prime Minister's financial interest's being tied up in companies that he knows or can presume are in his blind trust because they are not liquid. It is not a matter of selling everything and having a manager manage funds that one would have no idea of in terms of what is there. That is not the case presently with the Prime Minister, or certainly does not appear to be the case, and that is why there is the need for the study and to hear from specific witnesses at the ethics committee. We did not really get off to a good start with the Prime Minister .”
“It is against this backdrop that we have today's motion, which I hope that parliamentarians of all political stripes will support, both the concurrence motion for the report delivered by the ethics committee chair and the amendment moved today. We have to evolve and make sure that our laws evolve to meet the challenges of the present and the future as best we can. We have had a lot of talk about the Prime Minister 's blind trust. I remember a former prime minister and opposition leader Joe Clark, who, under the prime ministership of Paul Martin, called it “a Venetian blind trust” because the concern was that someone could see through and know what assets are there. A blind trust does not work as a protection against conflicts of interest if the subject knows what is in the trust.”
“The penchant of the Liberal government for trying to get around or ignoring the rules is troubling. We had Bill Morneau and the episode of his forgotten villa in France. The ethics commissioner of the day remarked on loopholes that needed to be repaired in the act, and the government failed to bring forward changes to the law then. That was some time ago. It was 2017, I think. Later, in the 43rd Parliament, we again saw Bill Morneau in a conflict of interest scandal. He would have it now that he left as finance minister because he could not stand the fiscal imprudence he was being forced to undertake on behalf of the former prime minister, forgetting that he actually resigned in disgrace over his role in the WE Charity scandal.”
“There is nothing inconsistent about Conservatives wanting to review a law that is up for review and bring the lens of current problems that have been identified throughout the years to its study. I support the motion and the work the committee is undertaking now. As my friend from Calgary Heritage talked about in his speech, there were many cases of the Conflict of Interest Act being breeched by the Liberal government in the 42nd Parliament and the 43rd Parliament. All the way through, it breeched the act. We had the former Prime Minister's acceptance of a vacation, which has been spoken of, and SNC-Lavalin. That episode is a particularly troubling one in that we had interference in the prosecution of a corrupt business being influenced by the former prime minister and the then clerk of the privy council. It was shameful.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate this motion. I will say from the outset that I support the motion and the amendment. I have some history with these matters: I chaired the ethics committee and spent time off and on that committee over the last three Parliaments. It is a core function of committee to review legislation. Earlier in debate, the member for Winnipeg North made a weird comment suggesting that there is a matter of hypocrisy with Conservatives who supported the Federal Accountability Act in the 41st Parliament who are now concerned about its shortcomings. It is a core function of Parliament and of committees to review laws. This law was up for review, no matter what the circumstances, so I am going to point that out from the outset.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member spoke about the Liberal Party's track record. He did not have enough time to list all of the transgressions of our ethics laws that took place in the last Parliament. It goes even deeper because the Federal Accountability Act of the previous Conservative government was brought in to deal with the corruption of the government before that. Would the member comment on the extent to which the Liberal Party, through a succession of prime ministers, has shown itself as an institution to be ethically compromised?”
“The government has chased half a trillion investment dollars out of Canada and has taken Canada to the bottom of the G7 and the OECD in per capita growth. That is why Conservatives demand that the budget contain a complete reversal of the lost Liberal decade and puts Canadians first.”
“Mr. Speaker, after 10 years of the Liberal government, Canada has gone from having the world's most prosperous middle class to a country of empty bank accounts, empty refrigerators and unaffordable homes. That is why Conservatives demand an affordable budget, one that cuts the hidden taxes on food, like the industrial carbon tax, the plastics ban and the fuel regulations; one that cuts taxes on work, housing construction, investment and energy, like income taxes and the capital gains tax; and one that stops the inflation tax, the cruellest tax of all, by keeping the deficit under Justin Trudeau's staggering $42.7 billion and by reining in out-of-control spending on bureaucracy, outside consultants, false asylum claimants and especially corporate welfare.”
“Mr. Speaker, that is a fantastic question. I do not know the answer to it. It is a great question that the government will have to answer when this bill gets to committee. I mentioned in my speech the reporting to the Minister of National Defence, but the member is correct that the bill does not specify that. That was my presumption. Who will be in charge of the Coast Guard when this is all done, if Bill C-12 passes unamended? It is not clear to me from what we can see so far. This will have to be studied at committee. The member's point is so important: Nothing has changed. The ships are not suddenly armed or equipped with surveillance technology and equipment. They are the same ships, unarmed, and are currently purposed for civilian use.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member raised a very important problem. Canada has a very serious problem with terrorist financing and money laundering, and the government needs to do something about it. Bill C-2 especially and Bill C-12 are very large bills. I did not get to that in my speech, but the Liberals made a mess of Bill C-2. Bill C-12 does not go all the way to fixing it and does not address the serious problem of terrorist financing and money laundering that my colleague mentioned.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is typical that the Liberals do not want to debate my speech. This is pretty rich coming from a government that had plenty of time to call the RCMP racist as an institution and is now switching from the debate at hand. I will take the next comment or question and leave it at that.”
“I am not even certain that I understand in what circumstance this would happen; perhaps it would be when going ashore, I guess, in the high Arctic. That would not make Canada safer. It would not meet our actual NATO duty to defend our territory or to be deployable and help other countries. In this omnibus bill, the Liberals have snuck in an accounting trick just to help government members pat themselves on the back for increasing defence spending, when they would be doing nothing of the sort. All they would be doing is moving a number from one column to another. The bill is a great example of the type of legislation we have become used to, where the government has a nice title and a nice announcement but no actual efficacy or improvement for national policy.”
“This change is an accounting trick the Liberals have done to try to fulfill the important obligation Canada has to NATO to increase its spending to at least the old agreed-to target and now to 5%. However, that would not change the capability of the Coast Guard; it would change reporting mechanisms and just move the budget from one column to another. Moving an expense budget from one column to another would not make Canada more safe and secure. The ships would continue to be unarmed. They would continue to not meet NATO's own definition of a defence force. The closest things to armaments on these ships are shotguns used to scare off polar bears in Arctic patrol conditions, like firing a banger that is designed to make noise to scare away a predator.”
“We called upon the government repeatedly to make exactly the point that is contained in the bill, to apply the safe third country agreement to the entire land border. It is very late coming to this. There is so much in the bill that it is hard to really do justice to any of it, but I want to spend most of the rest of my time on a very curious change that the bill would make. There would be an amendment to the Oceans Act that would place the Coast Guard under the ministry of defence, for budget purposes. It would still report, as an institution, to the Minister of Fisheries, the Minister of Transport and now also to the Minister of National Defence.”
“We got there from the tweet heard around the world, the #WelcomeToCanada tweet that explicitly encouraged economic migrants to cross into Canada in order to then apply for asylum. The conflation of economic migrants with migrants seeking asylum in Canada as refugees has been completely intermeshed under the government. It is just a disaster for everyone. It is not fair for all the people in the queue to have this queue. For the people in the queue, there is an industry now in which we have seen that human trafficking is a factor. People have made a business out of helping economic migrants, desperate people indeed, come to Canada from a safe third country, mostly the United States.”
“People who traffic in drugs are not getting the full weight of Canadian law as it is. We have a bail not jail regime that the government deliberately brought in as a consequence of its bills, Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 from former Parliaments, and that would not be fixed by the bill before us. (1250) With respect to changes that would be made to the Citizenship Act and to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, again, this is a problem long in the making. There are right now 290,000 asylum claims in the queue. By comparison, at the end of the years of the former Conservative government, there were about 10,000 claims. We have jumped from 10,000 people to 290,000 people in the queue for adjudication of asylum claims. It is no surprise how we got there.”