Arnold Viersen
Peace River—Westlock, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, one of those really great laws is Bill S-211 , which requires companies selling or distributing goods in Canada to produce an annual report. The Liberals, contrary to the law, revised their directive and exempted a bunch of their corporate buddies from having to file the report. Now the U.S.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned executive bonuses, and I just want to point out that the company also gave some great bonuses to its executives, while it has built zero kilometres of rail line. I just thought I would put that on the record as well. I want to ask my hon.”
“Mr. Speaker, $200 million is what we are talking about with this launch pad. In my riding, a sawmill was recently shut down, with 190 jobs lost. That $200 million would have gone a long way there. The member for Taiaiako'n—Parkdale—High Park and I were debating this earlier, and he talked about how we needed a Canadian Cape Canaveral.”
“Mr. Speaker, I assure members that I only have one petition to present today. I rise to present a petition on behalf of Canadians who are concerned about human rights protections in India.”
“The petitioners are asking that the government ensure that any and all trade deals with India are premised on mandatory human rights provisions, that extremists are sanctioned and that the government promote a respectful human rights dialogue between Canada and India.”
“Since then, only minor tweaks have been made to that. Because of that, there are a host of companies that work hard on creating a product that is well serviced and lasts a long time. It does not ever really end up in the landfill, because they just keep rebuilding it and keep working it over.”
The complete record
Every one of 305 lines we hold for Arnold Viersen, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 7.
“Madam Speaker, would my hon. colleague not recognize that his rhetoric in the last speech is maybe a little antiquated, as the world is moving away from the concerns around climate change and is more concerned about human poverty and human suffering? Even Bill Gates has moved away from this. I am just wondering if he recognizes that.”
“When we go forward to the next bill that we deal with, I am going to see if it is a defence of the system or a defence of the interests of the citizen that we are debating here today. I think we are debating the defence of the system.”
“When the system is under threat, suddenly the Liberals spring into action and say to not use the notwithstanding clause, to arrest that protester or to go after an organized group of folks. When the interests of the system are being threatened, suddenly there is action taking place, but when a private individual citizen's stuff goes missing, then the system seems unable to find the stolen stuff, to bring the perpetrator to justice, to go after a trespasser, or any of these kinds of things. The system seems quite lethargic, but when it comes to the interest of defending the system, suddenly the system seems to be able to spring into action. I thought that was a profound insight.”
“They knew that the public would never stand for the striking down of that mandatory minimum sentence given the heinous crimes of these individuals, so they came up with another hypothetical situation, and that is not appropriate. That is beyond the scope of our entire system. A constituent came by the other day, and he pointed out to me an interesting thing. I think I will leave it here today. He said that it feels to him like the system no longer defends the interests of the citizen. He said that when his stuff goes missing, there is a half-hearted attempt to find it and charge somebody, but on the flip side, the system is very keen to defend itself and to defend the interests of the system. We see this over and over again.”
“The Constitution would never have become the Constitution had the notwithstanding clause been put into it. (1825) The other thing is that the court can get it wrong sometimes, and that this place gets to then be the arbiter of whether the court got it wrong. That is why the notwithstanding clause exists, and particularly in this case, I think the court got it wrong in terms of whether mandatory minimums for heinous crimes, such as they are, should stand. They got it wrong in the fact that they used a hypothetical situation to strike down the mandatory minimum sentence. If they were prepared to strike down the mandatory minimum sentence, they should have done it on the merits of the case that was before them and on the merits of the individuals who were standing there before them to be tried. However, they did not do that.”
“The courts are making a political decision by saying that they do not like mandatory minimum sentences, after mandatory minimum sentences have been duly debated and passed in this place. It should not be the judges' opinions on these things that matter. That goes to the hypothetical situation that it struck down. We could have gotten around this mandatory minimum sentence challenge had the government just invoked the notwithstanding clause. The Liberals say that is an undermining of the Constitution. They say that all the time, that using the notwithstanding clause undermines the Constitution. The reality is that the notwithstanding clause is in the Constitution. It is the Constitution. There is no undermining of the Constitution by using the notwithstanding clause.”
“Even if the prosecutor said that they probably did have a case, his supervisor would say that it was crazy. The hypothetical case the Supreme Court judged a mandatory minimum sentence to be too egregious for was not the case that was in front of the court. It was a totally made-up case. The individuals in that case do not even exist. Here we are, with the Supreme Court striking down the law based on a severely hypothetical case. It comes down to the fact that these courts do not like mandatory minimum sentences, and these are political decisions. Whether we like them or not is a political decision. The court wants to run around and say that it does not get involved in politics and that the government cannot interfere with the court's decisions.”
“I am pleased the Liberal government seems to have taken action on that, but that was only after Toronto and Montreal started to complain about it aggressively. Now, the other thing I wanted to talk about with this bill is how we got here. We got here after a decade of Liberals being soft on crime. We also got here because of a specific Supreme Court decision. My colleague from Langley Township—Fraser Heights touched on this just before I spoke, and this is the kind of thing that really galls me. The court did not deal with the case that was in front of them. It dealt with a hypothetical situation, and I highly doubt that particular hypothetical situation would ever make it to court. The police would never lay charges in that case. Even if the police did lay charges, the prosecutor would say there was not really a case.”
“We have seen legalized drugs across the country. We have seen exemptions to the Criminal Code in certain jurisdictions. Over the last decade, we have watched crime climb clear across the country. I remember when I came to Ottawa back in 2007. The people of Ottawa were very proud of how clean their city was. That is no longer the case. Crime and chaos have come to Ottawa. Drug use is a big problem, particularly in the downtown core. As well, murders are up 45% this year. This is right here in Ottawa, our capital city. That speaks to the challenges of our country. I will be sharing my time with the member for Niagara South , although I am certain that will be on another day. In my neck of the woods, auto theft has been a major challenge for a long time.”
“Mr. Speaker, I too join my voice to the debate around Bill C-16 . This bill comes in the wake of a decade of the Liberal soft-on-crime agenda. Now the Liberals seem to want to be the solution to the problems they have caused. Over the last decade, we have seen crime across the country. If violent crime in Canada were to be plotted on a graph, we would see that it was steadily going up until about 2010. Then it declined until about 2014, when it started to go up again. It is interesting to lay over that the elections and the election results of that time. That is entirely what this comes down to, which is the enforcement of the law and the general sentiment the Liberals project when it comes to law enforcement. A number of years back we heard of some tacit support from the Liberal Party for the movement to defund the police.”
“Mr. Speaker, something I have brought up over and over in this debate is around trend lines and crime in general. Over the last decade, we have watched mandatory minimum sentences be reduced by the Liberal government. We watched, under Bill C-5 , many crimes be hybridized so that human traffickers could just stay home under house arrest. More broadly, I think there is a sentiment that the Liberals are light on crime or not very tough on crime, and we have watched crime creep up over the time that the Liberals have been in power. I am just wondering if the member has a good reason for why, under the Liberals' tenure, the 10 years of Liberal rule, crime rates have increased pretty much in every measure.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for his great speech on the issue. Sometimes I feel like we do not see the forest for the trees. This particular bill does make some dramatic improvements, but what it fails to take into account is the last decade of Liberal failures on our public judiciary, but also public safety, and just the crime rates in general. Could my hon. colleague zoom out a little and talk more broadly about the state of affairs in Canada, in terms of crime and justice?”
“Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand today to present a petition signed by residents of Canada who are concerned about the Liberal-Bloc amendments to Bill C-9 that could be used to criminalize passages from the Bible, the Quran, the Torah and other sacred texts. The state has no place in deciding what religious texts are proper for each faith community. Freedom of expression and freedom of religion are fundamental rights that ought to be preserved. Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the Liberal government to protect religious freedom, uphold the right to read and share sacred texts, and prevent government overreach into matters of faith.”
“There was a bromance with Obama, and then Mr. Biden came to visit us. They had opportunities to fix this problem. Why did they not fix this problem when they had—”
“Mr. Speaker, I would note that, right off the top, the member said that we are in a trade war with the United States. “I told them so” is not a great campaign promise, but the reality is that Stephen Harper told us that this was a great challenge and that we needed to move from being 100% or 90% reliant on the United States and get pipelines to tidewater. That is why he approved 14 LNG projects on the west coast. That is why he approved northern gateway, Trans Mountain and energy east. That is why we needed to do this. Now, the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party are saying, “Oh, we are in a trade war.” We warned the Liberals for a decade that this was a reality. Besides all that, given the trade war that we are in right now, the Liberals had opportunities, time after time. They were two presidents.”
“members for Calgary Confederation and Edmonton Centre will certainly have to explain to their constituents why they voted against Albertan jobs, the Alberta economy, Albertan growth and Albertan investment, and why they voted against Albertans. The point of this is certainty, because when pipelines are delayed or uncertain, investment goes elsewhere. We have seen this over and over again, such as with the Carmon Creek project, which was cancelled in northern Alberta. Weeks later, the same company, Shell, announced a project in Kazakhstan. We have seen this time and time again. We saw the northern gateway pipeline cancelled, and they went out and built a pipeline in the United States. Why does this government continually vote against Alberta?”
“If the government was serious about energy and pipelines, or at least about its own promises, one would think that it would have no problem voting for its own words right here in this place, but that is not what happened. Even members from Alberta who sit in the Liberal caucus were not able to vote for this. I do not know why, but the Prime Minister convinced his entire caucus and would not let even members from Alberta vote for a pipeline right here in Canada. When the government votes against its own energy agreement, it sends a clear message to Canadians that Canadian energy jobs are secondary to partisan considerations, and the Prime Minister cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim to support Alberta's economy and energy workers and at the same time block the infrastructure needed to make our economy thrive. The hon.”
“It is not at all about tankers travelling through the inside passage or travelling along the Canadian west coast. It is about preventing Canadian oil and gas from getting on a tanker. That is why we call it a shipping ban. We recently had a vote on this agreement. The Prime Minister cannot get his anti-energy, “keep it in the ground” caucus to agree to getting pipelines built, but Conservatives actually want to succeed. We want to give Canadian families and investors the chance to have certainty from our government, so just yesterday we put forward a motion calling on the government to vote on its plan and memorandum. We thought that this would be an effective way to make sure that the Prime Minister lived up to his words, so we used the text right out of this comprehensive plan and included amendments proposed by the government itself.”
“If the Prime Minister was serious about turning Canada into an energy superpower, as he said he would, we would have had shovels in the ground back in April. He had the ability back then, but even then he would not. This is because the government is not serious about Canadian oil and gas. Really, the Prime Minister does not actually need to do anything; he just needs to repeal Bill C-48 and Bill C-69 , and Canadians would build Canada. Pipelines would be built here in Canada. These are the “no more pipelines” bills. What is interesting is that Bill C-48 is a bill that is a shipping ban. It is not a tanker ban; it is a shipping ban. It is illegal to take oil off the shore of Canada and put it on a boat. That is what is illegal with Bill C-48.”
“Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago I asked the government, while it was waving around its MOU, whether it could actually offer Albertans a guarantee on a pipeline and when it would be built, not just another headline or announcement. I was told that this memorandum would set out a comprehensive economic path forward for Alberta. The only problem is that there is no guarantee with this plan. It is more of just a pinky promise. Anyone can make a plan to do anything. That is not the problem. The problem is following through on that plan. The Prime Minister has the ability to get several pipelines under way today. In fact, that was something that I was worried about after we passed Bill C-5 through this House. He has the ability to provide investors with certainty, so that communities and families can rely on the energy sector in northern Alberta.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have bad news. West Fraser has just announced that they will be shuttering its OSB plant in northern Alberta. This is a softwood lumber mill, so to speak, and this comes after the news of many other mills that have been shuttered or shut down over the last number of weeks. I know that the member is from British Columbia, where this has been hard-hitting as well. Today, the job numbers came out, and we heard about the fact that full-time work is being reduced while part-time work is coming up. I am wondering if the hon. member could talk about that.”
“The petitioners are calling on the Canadian government to ensure that any trade deals signed between Canada and India have, as an underlying basis, human rights provisions, and to ensure that our human rights dialogue continues between Canada and India.”
“Mr. Speaker, the final petition I am presenting today comes from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the state of religious freedom in India. Petitioners want to highlight the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which recognizes the state of India's religious freedom. They point out that Christians in India are being targeted and that their churches are being attacked, their church workers are being attacked and their congregants are being threatened. They also point out that the Dalit groups are being persecuted, particularly Dalit women and girls, who are being registered as being victims of crime in India. As well, they point out that Indian Muslims are at risk of genocide and are being persecuted.”
“Therefore the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to protect all Canadians whose death is not reasonably foreseeable, by prohibiting medical assistance in dying to people whose death is not foreseeable within the next six months.”
“Mr. Speaker, the next petition is from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about Canada's MAID regime. They say that choosing MAID in the absence of real services or treatment is not really a choice at all. They point out that a number of folks have been suggested MAID by government officials and that medical assistance in dying has been offered as a solution to folks with a chronic disability or chronic illness. This reduces incentives to improve treatment and care for people with these conditions. The petitioning Canadians do not want an ableist society or an ableist health care system. Many disability advocates have expressed their opposition to MAID for people with disabilities.”
“Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from Canadians from across the country. The folks who have signed this petition are concerned about the forced organ harvesting that is happening around the world. The petitioners note that the organ trade is a growing concern across the globe. They want Canada to ensure that the legislation in place in Canada is properly enforced and to maybe re-examine some of the practices that are happening both here and abroad, to ensure that Canadians are not participating in forced organ harvesting and that it is not happening around the world.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will present a number of petitions today. The first petition is from a number of Canadians from across the country who want to call the attention of the government to the persecution of Christians around the world. Christians are the most persecuted group in the world. The petitioners call on the Canadian government to prioritize the principles of universal human rights and religious freedoms in its foreign policy and right here at home.”
“While Brookfield's billions vanish into Bermuda bicycle shops, Algoma's families are left in the cold. Conservatives will never stop fighting for Canadians this Christmas.”
“Mr. Speaker, hard-working Canadians are struggling with the cost of living, but in Sault Ste. Marie, the Prime Minister handed 400 million taxpayer dollars to a company, knowing it was going to lay off 1,000 workers. The Prime Minister's response was “bah, humbug”. Although prime minister Scrooge talks about fairness and sacrifice, after his spending years at Brookfield helping it dodge paying taxes here in Canada, even Jacob Marley's ghost paid more taxes in Canada than Brookfield does. However, all that is part of the Prime Minister 's master plan to help his friends at Brookfield, like Denis Turcotte, the former CEO at Algoma Steel. Algoma is undergoing a multi-year transition to electricity, but do members know where that electricity is going to come from? It will come from Brookfield-owned hydro plants.”
“Madam Speaker, the second petition I have is from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the MAID regime here in Canada, or the government-assisted dying program. They are concerned that the lives of those who have a disability or chronic illness are not being valued, and they are concerned about the tacit endorsement of the notion that a life lived with a disability is optional or dispensable. They are calling on the Government of Canada to protect all Canadians whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable by prohibiting medical assistance in dying for those whose prognosis for natural death is more than six months.”
“The petitioners are asking the Government of Canada to ensure that any trade deal with India is premised on mandatory human rights provisions, that extremists are sanctioned and that the Government promote a respectful human rights dialogue between Canada and India.”
“Madam Speaker, I rise to present a petition on behalf of Canadians who are concerned about human rights protections in India. The petitioners are saying that, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, various actors are supporting and enforcing sectarian policies to establish India as a Hindu state. The petitioners are stating that Christians in India are being targeted by extremists, who are vandalizing their churches, attacking church workers, and threatening and humiliating their congregations. The petitioners are also stating that crimes against the Dalit group are on the rise. They note as well that Indian Muslims are at risk of genocide, assault and sexual violence.”
“Mr. Speaker, I outright reject the premise. Nonetheless, I would point out that I think the dollar value when Mr. Harper was in power hit $1.13 American. This increased our buying power. It was a great time to live in Canada because we could afford to live.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am 100% hearing the same thing in northern Alberta. Life is getting unaffordable under the Liberals. It is baffling to me that even after the Liberals cut the carbon tax, which was totally inflation-inducing, they brought in a massive deficit that is also going to continue to increase inflation, all the while driving our dollar value down, which also causes inflation. Most of our food comes from around the world. We need to ensure that the trucks that bring it in are not subject to extra tax. We need to make sure our dollar is strong enough that we can afford things. The bananas we buy do not come from Canada; they come from somewhere else, and our dollar is buying them.”
“Mr. Speaker, I am sure the government is wasting some money; there is no doubt about that. The Liberals' measure of success is how much money they spend. Whenever they have a solution, it is always just this: “Here is how much money we have spent.” I pointed out in my speech that $1.5 billion is going to the Canada Lands Company, a corporation that is dedicated to selling off federal assets. I do not understand why a company that is dedicated to selling off assets needs to have a cash infusion of $1.5 billion.”
“Mr. Speaker, the reality is that in the past the school food programs existed to fill an anomaly, a gap. They were not relied upon by the Canadian population in order to feed our children. Canadians had good-paying jobs in resource extraction industries that made the economy of this country function. After a decade of the Liberals' being in power, programs are now coming forward as a solution to the problems they have made.”
“It has taken us a decade to plummet from number five to number 27 in standard of living. That is an indictment of the Liberals. The Liberals will say over and over again that it has never been better, but even their own policies talk about how this is happening. The very fact that they are touting their school food program is an indictment of them, because Canadians are relying on food banks more than ever in order to feed themselves. This means our standard of living has gone down significantly.”
“All these things take focus and require the government to ask how it can support the industry, particularly because this is a trade irritant with the United States. We should be working to make sure companies can remain profitable around the tariffs and to get a deal. The Prime Minister said that he would get a deal by July 21. If he did not think he could do that, he should not have made that promise. He should not have made that promise, but he did make it during the election. I want to finish off my comments by talking about the standard of living in Canada. A decade ago, Canada was number five in the rankings for standard of living in the world. It was one of the happiest places in the world to live. Today we are 27th in the rankings of standard of living in the world.”
“Marie a number of years ago. Sault Ste. Marie is incredibly proud of its industry. I do not know if members know this, but some of the steel made in Sault Ste. Marie goes to the tube plant to make oil field production pipe, and 95% of it is shipped to Grande Prairie, Alberta, so the connections between Sault Ste. Marie and northern Alberta are very tight. This brings me to the other topic of softwood lumber. Softwood lumber is another one of the issues where the fact that the Liberals just keep stumbling along and failing to come to an agreement is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the problems facing our industries. Access to fibre is a major concern. Access to the ability to transport product on the railway is another major problem.”
“It feels as if each of the ministries is just off doing its own thing and in many cases is uncontrolled by its own minister. We probably see this no more alive than in the Algoma Steel situation or the softwood lumber situation. Both of these situations have been around for a very long time. The production of steel has happened for a very long time in Canada, yet there has been the layering on of regulations and challenges to our trade agreements around the world. Whether it is putting in new environmental standards, putting a carbon tax on our industries while all our competitor countries do not have a carbon tax, or taking them off coal when all the other countries we compete with use coal to produce steel, all these things cause death by a thousand cuts to these industries. I had the privilege of touring the tube plant in Sault Ste.”
“The government said that, on the one hand, it is going to be selling off lands and buildings in order to increase housing and that, on the other hand, it is going to be funding the corporation $1.5 billion. I do not understand why that is the case, and there is no explanation in the bill as to why we need to allocate this much money. It just says that the government is going to allocate it in order to build more homes in this country. It is counterintuitive, and I do not understand. Hopefully the government can explain it to me later, in questions and comments. That piece of the bill seems very odd. More broadly, and this is not specifically addressing Bill C-15 but more the budget in general, I mentioned earlier that the Liberals seem to just stumble from one crisis to another. There does not seem to be a clear direction.”
“We would sell off the headquarters and put housing in there. I did not know this, but apparently, we have an entire company, the Canada Lands Company, dedicated to selling off federal lands and managing some federal assets across the country. The company manages the Montréal Science Centre, the CN Tower and two other properties. It funds those operations by selling off other public lands the government wants to dispose off. This was a program that we proposed in our platform. We were going to sell public lands and buildings. The Liberals have taken that idea. (1225) What is very odd is that, I would suspect, selling lands and buildings would mean a net positive revenue for the government, yet the government is allocating $1.5 billion to this corporation.”
“Like many of the other things the government talks about, it is more than likely that it will do some of the harsh things it did in the past, such as with the Mirabel airport or Rouge Park, when it expropriated the land and ran over people's civil liberties, and, in the end, did not fulfill the project as was promised to Canadians. That is probably a very good analogy for many of the things the Liberal government has done. It generally talks a good game and it steals Conservative ideas, yet when it comes to implementation, it is scattershot and unfocused, and it basically stumbles from one crisis to another. The other piece I want to talk about is another good Conservative idea. We had the idea to sell off public buildings and build housing, starting with the CBC headquarters. That would be after we shut it down.”
“We can imagine that folks would be concerned about how that is going to work. The bill lays out a bunch of the changes that would be made in order for the government to expropriate this land. We do not have to look too far into the past to know about when the Liberals expropriated land for other vanity projects in the country. There was the Mirabel airport, for example. There is what is known today as the Rouge Park. These places were expropriated for grand visions the Liberal Party had, and neither has really come to fruition. We wonder in this case as well, while the government is taking on, perhaps, extraordinary powers in order to do these things, if we will ever see this project come to fruition.”
“I am sure we will hear from the Liberals about how we voted against that. I just want to point out to everybody who is watching this back home that, indeed, that part is in the bill, but it is in division 44 of part 5 of this particular bill. In division 1 of part 5 are the changes to the expropriation law. Members might be wondering why we have to change the laws around expropriation in this country. I do not know if people remember, but in the dying days of the Trudeau government, one of his last kicks at the can, so to speak, was an announcement of a high-speed rail line from Quebec City to Toronto. It is interesting to note that the majority of Canadians live in that corridor and that there is not a lot of public land in that corridor. Folks along that way would have their land expropriated in order to build this train line.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise again in the House of Commons to represent the people of Peace River—Westlock. I thank them for putting me here again. Today, we are debating the budget implementation act, Bill C-15 . It is a monster of a bill. It has five major parts. Part 5 has 45 divisions. It is broad-ranging. It deals with removing the GST, getting rid of the carbon tax and getting rid of changes to housing infrastructure. It also has the piece I want to talk about first, which is big changes to the expropriation laws here in Canada. This is one of the things the Liberals tucked into the bill. At the very end of the bill, there is something that the Liberals accuse us all the time of voting against, which is the school food program. That is the very last thing. The school food program is in division 44 of part 5.”
“Madam Speaker, there is finally something that I and the Bloc member agree on: this ridiculous idea of pumping air into the ground, or the $16-billion landfill, as I call it. I am wondering if the hon. member understands that there is probably a Brookfield connection to this pipeline.”
“Madam Speaker, I think my hon. colleague mentioned this in her speech, and I am wondering if she can clarify it a little more: Part 5, division 3 of this bill talks about $1.5 billion for the Canada Lands Company. I thought this was a company that was supposed to sell off federal assets. Why are we giving it money to do that?”
“Madam Speaker, my colleague gave a great speech on this topic. Every time I listen to him, I feel like I am listening to a podcast. He has very smooth delivery. I want to ask about Bill C-15 and the fact that it has 45 different sections. If we were to read out all of the titles of the sections within the bill, we would be here for 10 minutes. We have time for a 10-minute speech. Does my colleague have any comments about all of the things in the bill?”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition to the House that firearms owners from across Canada have brought forward. They are concerned about past legislation and new orders in council that target law-abiding firearms owners. The petitioners say that Bill C-21 does nothing to tackle firearms violence, but rather adds red tape to law-abiding Canadians. They also describe how the bill does little to tackle the true source of violence, which is gangs and organized crime. The petitioners are calling on the government to repeal Bill C-21 and devote greater resources to policing so that they can combat the sources of violence.”