Garnett Genuis
Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“It is getting increasingly harder for young people to find their first job, and for young families to afford their first home and be able to afford to take those critical steps forward in life.”
“I look forward to talking to people and listening to them over the summer. I would encourage colleagues from all parts of the country to also listen to, respect and try to understand the concerns Albertans have.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his kind words. Indeed, I would welcome him, and all members of this House from all parties, to come to Alberta this summer. Let me know. I would be happy to host. Members could spend some time talking to people in our province to understand some of their concerns.”
“This plan includes vital reforms to parental leave to make it easier for parents who are trying to start a family, maintain a connection to work and earn an income at the same time.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to extend my best wishes for the summer to all colleagues from all sides. We have fought hard for our constituents, for our convictions and to advance the common good of this country.”
“We have always sought to be productive and constructive by putting forward these good ideas and asking the government to adopt them. Therefore, as we face these ongoing challenges, an affordability crisis and a youth unemployment crisis, will the government take a serious look at what we have put forward, including the Conservative youth…”
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“While there has been ongoing work to secure Lebanon from the influence of this terrorist organization, I feel that, notwithstanding some of the change in circumstances, it is still important to table that petition.”
“The second petition is in support of the people of Lebanon. Petitioners note that the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that started on October 8, 2023, has had terrible consequences for the Lebanese people. They further note that Hezbollah is a terrorist Iranian regime proxy that acts to serve the regime's ideology against the interests of the people of Lebanon. The people of Lebanon want a complete end to colonial oppression by the Iranian regime. Petitioners, therefore, call on the government to seek the complete disarmament of Hezbollah, the end of Iranian aid to Hezbollah and the restoration of Lebanon's sovereignty with all of its territories governed by an elected sovereign Lebanese government. I do note that significant progress has been made toward this end since the collection of signatures for this petition.”
“Petitioners note that religious charities in Canada provide vital services for society, including food banks, care for seniors, newcomer support, youth programs and mental health outreach, all of which is rooted in their faith tradition, and that singling out or excluding faith charities from the charitable sector based on religious belief undermines the diversity and pluralism foundational to Canadian society. Petitioners ask the government to reject these recommendations and refrain from including them in the next federal budget, which we will see eventually, I suppose, and to affirm the charitable status of faith-based organizations whose work flows from sincerely held beliefs and whose contributions serve the common good in Canada.”
“Recommendation 430 of that same report, endorsed by the Liberal-dominated committee, calls for the removal of “advancement of religion” as a charitable tax purpose. That would effectively strip charitable status from all houses of worship, regardless of religion. Petitioners further note that stripping charitable status from these organizations would result in a revocation tax, which would force them to hand over all of their property. That is an extremely draconian proposal from the Liberal-dominated finance committee.”
“Mr. Speaker, I delayed standing up because I know other members have petitions as well, and I have more than one to table today. First of all, I would like to begin by tabling another petition similar to that tabled by colleagues in response to this very concerning recommendation from the Liberal-dominated finance committee in the previous Parliament. Notwithstanding his protestations, the member for Winnipeg North can observe in this report, as petitioners say, recommendations 429 and 430. Recommendation 429 proposes applying a political values test to charitable status determination and revoking the charitable status of organizations that take a position on abortion that is different from that taken by the government.”
“Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, it is important for you to rule on the rules, because the member opposite suggested that somehow debating this bill is preventing the Liberals from bringing in a budget. Would you, Mr. Speaker, be able to clarify that the amount of time we spend debating this bill has absolutely nothing to do with the timeline available to the government, and, in fact, they could have brought—”
“Liberal policies got us here. Liberal policies continue to block economic development. Liberal policies wrecked our immigration system. Liberal policies have created a cost of living crisis. They should stop dithering and start working. Many Canadians are struggling. Many are asking their employers for additional hours and many are working two and three jobs just to get by, and this is putting further pressure on the labour market. The jobs crisis is biting more and more Canadians. Parliament is back. Let us finally get back to work. Let us have this vitally important emergency debate. Let us confront this generational challenge so that our young people can work again.”
“We have been trying to get the government to take this crisis seriously. Before the summer began, we proposed a summer study on youth unemployment at the human resources committee; Liberals blocked that study. When the July numbers came out, we again sought emergency hearings, but the Liberals refused to bring the committee back to work. This summer, even while Liberals refused this work, I and other Conservative members criss-crossed the country to meet with young people, employers and Canadians of all backgrounds to gather feedback on the jobs crisis. The Liberals spent two and a half more months sitting on their hands. Now Parliament is back, and the delays must end. Our youth cannot wait anymore. I have talked to young people who have put in over a thousand applications—that is over a thousand applications—and are still looking.”
“Mr. Speaker, Canada faces a deepening youth unemployment crisis, and I am rising today to request that the House of Commons hold an emergency debate on this crisis. Parliament has not sat since June, and in that time we have had three new reports from Statistics Canada that underline the dire situation facing Canadian young people. The unemployment rate has gone to 7.1% overall. For youth, it has hit 14.5%. Clearly, youth unemployment is already at recession levels, and it continues to get even worse. Incredibly, about one in five returning students was unemployed this summer. In August alone, the drop in jobs, if we combine employed and self-employed, was 109,000. Effectively, that is 109,000 fewer jobs. This was in just one month. That is an emergency, and that emergency calls for an emergency debate.”
“If the parliamentary secretary does not want to do the job anymore, that is up to him, but we need to actually talk about major public issues facing the country. That is our job. It is the purpose of the people's House.”
“Madam Speaker, I wanted to comment on what the member for Winnipeg North said. I am looking at the clock, and it is one o'clock. Parliament has been sitting for two hours, and this is maybe the 20th or 21st day in 2025 that Parliament is sitting. We are trying to have a serious conversation about an important immigration issue, and the parliamentary secretary , who is the only Liberal to have spoken at all today as far as I have seen, says that two hours of debate is too much and that he has had enough. If he has had enough, maybe he can go do something else and let others participate in the conversation. In the meantime, I would say that this is literally our job: to discuss important issues before the House.”
“Madam Speaker, it is good to be back in this place after the summer break. Today, we are discussing immigration. However, the unemployment rate in this country is clearly a serious problem. The Conservatives say that the Liberal government's immigration policies and inefficiency are partly to blame for the unemployment rate. I am curious to know what the Bloc Québécois thinks about the connection between problems with the immigration system that were created by the Liberal government and the unemployment rate.”
“I think there are all sorts of attendant problems with that, and in opposing this bill, Conservatives are standing up for and defending the idea of a Canadian citizenship that is limited, that is based on clear rules and that is reflective of a connection to this place and an alignment with shared civic values.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member underlines an important point about this legislation, which is the unknown. There would be so many people potentially affected by this change, and the government, as we have seen from responses to my questions, appears to have no estimate of the number of people affected, the cost or the associated issues with having families where, generation after generation, people are not in this country. They are not connected to this country and they are not part of the shared experience of this country, yet they maintain the rights of citizenship.”
“Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear. Our caucus supports the version of the bill that was introduced by Senator Yonah Martin. It deals with measures to be taken in legitimate cases where citizenship should be restored. That said, Bill C‑3 goes further than what Canadians and the courts are calling for. I cannot support the measures in this bill that I spoke of earlier.”
“Mr. Speaker, respectfully, the member seems to have read a pre-prepared text that did not have much to do with the speech that I gave or the content that I talked about. I want to just say that I firmly reject the implication that freedom means having the most expansive possible citizenship rules. Freedom does not mean that we necessarily need to expand Canadian citizenship, as in this case, to families that have not lived in Canada for generations. I think a part of how we preserve, protect and strengthen freedom in this country is appreciating and affirming the value of Canadian citizenship and the connection to place that has to be associated with that citizenship.”
“Canadian citizenship is a great and valuable thing. It is something Canadians have regardless of where they came from or their family background. It entails rights and responsibilities and has to involve a connection and a commitment to this place we love.”
“The Liberals should be able to come before the House to say, “We are going to expand citizenship, and it is going to include a certain number of people and these are going to be the cost implications.” However, it is clear from the response I received to my previous question for a government member that there is no desire or attempt to provide that costing. We have a significant problem in this country with unemployment, pressure on our social services and demands on our country. We need to have a plan to address those demands. In the midst of all of these pressures, for the government to say that it is going to potentially dramatically increase the number of citizens but it does not know how many people that would affect and what the cost associated with that would be, is a major problem.”
“People whose families have been outside the country for generations assuming the rights of citizenship entails responsibilities for the country. It also entails potential costs for the country, including assistance in emergency situations and a provision of social services, if that person returns to the country. All of these are realities that have to be assumed by Canadian taxpayers. The government could make a case that it is legitimate and argue for it, but it should do so on the basis of clear numbers.”
“We think it weakens Canadian citizenship and the recognition that Canada is an idea, a people and a place. We recognize that there has to be some constraints on citizenship to ensure a continuing connection with this place and an assumption of the rights and responsibilities associated with the common good of Canada. The rules as they presently exist are not arbitrary. They are clear, fair and they affirm an understanding of citizenship that includes rights and responsibilities. Moreover, I think it is incredibly irresponsible that the government is putting forward legislation to expand and weaken Canadian citizenship without any sense of the potential cost implications. Canadian citizens have certain rights.”
“However, a family that lives abroad generation after generation is not paying taxes to Canada or able to be actively involved in Canadian civic life in the way that a person naturally is if they are here in Canada, yet they continue to have the rights of citizenship. Under this new proposed citizenship law, we could have someone who has never been a resident of Canada, and their parents or grandparents had not been residents of Canada, yet they could come back to Canada for certain vital public services, which are rights that have become, at the point from which their family has not been in Canada, disconnected from the responsibilities that are also supposed to be associated with citizenship. It is on that basis that Conservatives oppose this bill.”
“(1540) I am so grateful to live in a country where our citizenship is defined by shared civic values and a recognition of rights and responsibilities, not by some ethnocultural tie. My ancestors come from various places. Both of my wife's parents were born in Pakistan. I have heritage from all over the world in my family, as I think members all over the House do. We are a great nation because we are defined by shared civic values. We are defined as one political nation, as one of our founders put it. The significance of that is that it involves rights and responsibilities. A person who is living abroad continues to enjoy all the rights of citizenship, likely desires well for Canada and thinks about ways they can contribute to Canada in the context of their situation.”
“It is a clear rule that is designed to limit Canadian citizenship to those who have ongoing clear connections to Canada. The new bill would allow Canadian citizenship to be infinitely passed on through a family that, generation after generation, does not live in Canada. It requires, effectively, visits to Canada in order to be able to pass on that citizenship, but it does not require, at any point in that infinite generational passing on of citizenship, for that family to be residents in this country. The obvious problem with that is that citizenship is a compact between a nation of people and an individual. If one is a citizen, one assumes certain rights and responsibilities. I think we need to recognize and affirm the value of citizenship, including both its rights and responsibilities.”
“Right now, if a Canadian citizen has a child while abroad, that child is a Canadian citizen as well, but if that child born abroad has a child abroad there is a generation cut-off. Those are the present rules, that one cannot infinitely pass on Canadian citizenship through a family that is living outside of Canada. I listened to the previous Liberal speaker describe this as arbitrary, that people are being arbitrarily excluded from Canadian citizenship. Actually, this is the opposite of arbitrary. Arbitrary would be if somebody was deciding whether or not they like us or whether or not a person would get citizenship based on the discretion of some bureaucrat or some indeterminate process. This is the opposite of arbitrary.”
“Sadly, the HUMA committee will not be able to get to work this summer on the vital issue of student unemployment because Liberals care more about having the summer they want than giving students the summer they need finding summer jobs in order to get back to work. I hope the students who are struggling with unemployment will hold their Liberal MPs accountable for their decision to vote against a summer study on student unemployment, a study I think we desperately need when one in five returning students are out of work. We are debating today Bill C-3 . This is a bill that makes various changes to the citizenship rules in this country. I will go through the mechanics of it for those who are just joining the debate or those watching at home.”
“At the HUMA committee, because we are facing a student unemployment crisis with more than one in five returning students unemployed this summer, Conservatives put forward a motion to have a summer study of student unemployment. We think parliamentarians should be prepared to get to work at committee so that students can get to work. I proposed five committee meetings, which is not a lot of work. It is 10 hours of hearings that could take place over the course of the summer. Liberals said initially they were interested in this. They put forward an amendment to change timelines. Then they voted against the study, killing it.”
“It is elbows up, elbows back down, elbows up, elbows back down, without a lot of consistency in its defence of Canada or in really anything else, but we are going to continue to prosecute the case against the government for the failures it has been responsible for over the last 10 years, and the continuing challenges this country faces as a result of its policies. By the way, I will be splitting my time with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles . I want to wish members well as they prepare for the summer. I have discovered, in the last 24 hours, just how seriously Liberal members take their desire for a summer vacation. Parliament did not sit at all this year until May 26. It is going on recess again at the end of this week.”
“Mr. Speaker, as this is almost certainly my last time speaking in the House before the summer recess, I want to join others in thanking the many hard-working staff around this place, including security, pages, table staff, local officers, committee clerks, etc. I thank them for facilitating the operations of Parliament. This has been, I think, a short, but significant session. We are starting to get a sense of the character of the government and that it is a kind of chicken dance government.”
“Mr. Speaker, I believe this is a new member, so I welcome her to this place and thank her for her commitment to being a part of this important process. This is a government bill that would allow many more people to become citizens of Canada. I assume that, in putting the bill forward, the government knows how many people it would affect and has an estimate of what additional costs it would impose on social services based on the right that these new citizens would have to access those services. I wonder if the member could simply share with the House how many people this would affect and what the government's cost estimate for these new measures is.”
“Mr. Speaker, I do want to be generous today and offer the housing minister one more opportunity to respond. The issue here is that the minister, who is supposed to be solving the Liberal housing crisis, actually has a personal financial interest in seeing that crisis continue. I think to most Canadians, that would seem to be a little bit of a problem. How can we expect the penthouse minister to actually solve the Liberal housing crisis while the same housing crisis continues to make him even richer?”
“Mr. Speaker, I would encourage the minister to come down from his penthouse and answer the question himself, rather than relying on the House leader. He has a $10-million real estate portfolio that includes multiple properties and a beautiful Vancouver penthouse. I am sure it is very nice. It is no wonder, then, that his first act as housing minister was to announce that he does not want housing prices to go down. Why is the minister putting his personal portfolio ahead of his cabinet portfolio and abandoning young people who are stuck without jobs and are still living with their parents?”
“Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague back to this place. There are many things I could focus on from her remarks, but I think it is worth drilling down on one piece of clear misinformation. She made the comment that Stephen Harper got nothing built, which is outrageous and verifiably false. Many pipelines were built under Stephen Harper. The northern gateway pipeline to tidewater was approved, and significant progress was being made on the east-west pipeline. The Liberals passed legislation designed to kill those projects, which were already approved or in the process of being planned. Will the member maybe seek to clarify her false claim that nothing was built under Stephen Harper and identify the projects that were built under Stephen Harper?”
“Since we have a problem with major projects not being able to proceed, we are going to pass a bill that will, in a limited and temporary way, allow some abridgement of that process for chosen projects.” Would it not be better to simply undo the mess Justin Trudeau created rather than abridging that process through this bill?”
“Mr. Speaker, we are at an interesting moment in Canadian politics, I think, because the Liberal government is trying to run against many things that were core to Justin Trudeau's governing agenda with the Liberal Party over the last 10 years. Part of the governing agenda under Prime Minister Trudeau was to set up an impossibly complex web of regulations and processes that made it very difficult for economic activity to proceed. In particular, it made it very difficult for major projects to move forward. Now we have the same people coming in and saying, “Oh my goodness.”
“Mr. Chair, very respectfully to the President of the Treasury Board, there is nothing virtuous or public service-minded about ignoring serious questions from members of the opposition and repeating lines that have absolutely nothing to do with those questions. This is not a “gotcha”; this is a basic question of government policy. Is—”
“Mr. Chair, with all due respect to the minister, this is embarrassing. I would be embarrassed. I am almost embarrassed for him. Is the government planning a major overhaul of the indigenous procurement program?”
“Mr. Chair, the minister did not listen to the question I asked. He repeated his non-answer from the previous question. I invite him to come up with a new non-answer to the new question. The new question was this: Does the minister think that companies that do work for hostile foreign regimes should be able to simultaneously do work for the Government of Canada?”
“Mr. Chair, I think it is pretty clear from that answer that the minister thinks there are some cases where it is acceptable to double-dip as a government employee and a contractor. If he does not think that, he can say so, but I think that is pretty troubling. I have another question: Does the minister think that companies that do work for hostile foreign regimes should also be able to simultaneously do work for the Government of Canada?”
“Mr. Chair, it is just a really simple question about the minister's philosophy in terms of how he thinks things should work. Does the minister think a person who is employed by the public service should be able to simultaneously work as an external contractor? It is the third time I have asked the question. Could the minister answer it? Does he think that is appropriate, yes or no?”
“Mr. Speaker, this question underlines the problem with the Liberals in regard to whose side they are really on. We can compare the way they treat elite insiders who have abused the rules and taken money from taxpayers versus what would happen to everyday Canadians who might have a dispute with CRA, for example, about what is owed. The gentleness with which the government approaches elite insider contractors, even those who have flagrantly broken the rules, versus how ordinary Canadians are treated, shows that, in fact, the Liberals are persistently on the side of their elite insider friends.”
“Mr. Speaker, I can say that we did a lot of work with whistle-blowers on this file. I am sorry that I do not remember the individual that the member mentioned, but I can say that we worked really hard with the other opposition parties. We worked really hard to try to force the government to answer these questions. It was clear that the government was going to take its time answering them, but the opposition parties had to take action to bring about change.”
“Mr. Speaker, I was surprised to hear such a sharp question from my colleague, because I thought I was very generous in my speech in giving the government this opportunity to vote in favour of our motion. This opposition motion is a gift to the government. We are inviting them to come along with us and vote in favour of getting this money back from GC Strategies. I think this is the kind of offer of collaboration that people are looking for. I would challenge the government; it is supposed to be new. Here is the point: I suspect the Liberals will vote against this motion in the end, but I would challenge them to do the right thing. The member wants to know how we can work together. Vote in favour of this motion. That is how we can work together. That is what we need.”
“I welcome the member for Winnipeg North and am looking forward to receiving that gust of fog. My question for them is, will they support our motion to pay the money back? If they are the new Liberal Party, then I think they would vote for this motion to order the money back. If they are voting against this motion, then it will demonstrate, of course, that they are the same old Liberals, unchanged as they have always been.”
“We have put forward a motion that says GC Strategies should be banned from ever getting government contracts and they should pay the money back. It is not that difficult; if companies abuse contracting rules, falsify resumés and do not actually do the work, then they should pay back the money they took from taxpayers. If our friends across the way have truly changed, they should vote for this motion. It would be a great demonstration, not just if they vote for it, but if they actually follow through on it. We have had instances where they vote for motions and then do not follow through on them. This is their opportunity to vote for a motion and then act on it. We have been asking them today, are they prepared to vote in favour of this motion? The Liberals are trying to fill this debate with a great fog of nonsense and distraction.”
“Again, if this was a pitch for a Yes Minister episode, it would be rejected for being unrealistic. However, this is par for the course in the broken procurement system of the Liberals. To cover for this, the Liberals cycle through different procurement ministers. The same people are cycled around. “Oh, it is a new minister. It is a new minister.” Almost every six months on procurement, it has been a new minister who is not responsible for anything that was previously done. Meanwhile, the previous minister goes on to remain in some influential role in the government. It is a farce and a tragedy, and Canadian taxpayers are getting abused as a result of it. The Liberals profess to be a new government; they have changed. As I said, today is their opportunity.”
“Let us say the contract required that a person had five years' experience at something, but the person they were proposing to do the work actually only had five months' experience. They would change the months to years to make it compliant and then go back to the original resource, the person who would do the work, and say, “Is this okay with you? We changed the numbers here.” In one case, they forgot to consult the resource before they changed those numbers, and that is where they got caught out, because the resource called them out for it. (1250) Before the committee, Kristian Firth admitted that it was a standard part of their process to adjust people's resumés to make them line up with the expectations of a contract and then check in to see if it was okay.”
“This week, the Auditor General came out with a report, having looked in detail into what happened with this one particularly notorious company, GC Strategies, and found there was massive abuse. One highlight from the committee exchanges we had with the owners of GC Strategies is that they admitted to presenting fraudulent resumés to the Government of Canada in order to get work. It is the old resumé padding that we all tell our children not to do; this is how GC Strategies was getting contracts. They explained what their normal process was. They would get a resumé that may not be compliant with the requirements of the bid, and then they adjusted the resumé to make it compliant.”
“However, I think very soon Canadians will discover that the Liberals are actually not nothing like themselves, that they are actually more like themselves than they pretended to be, and that we will see the continuation of these same absurdist procurement policies, things that if presented as the possible script for a television show would be rejected for being unrealistic. We have people getting hired to hire other people, with a procurement system that is so broken and so complicated that only well-connected insider brokers can understand it. Those well-connected insider brokers receive the contracts, hire the people and collect a massive premium for doing so.”
“We won an election after all.” Nobody is disputing the results of the election, but I do think it is notable that in order to win the last election, the Liberals had to pretend to be something very different from what they had been for the last 10 years. Their only argument in the election was to say, “Well, Canadians want change, and we've changed too. We'll be nothing like ourselves.” They promised to be nothing like themselves, and that turned out to be a reasonably successful political strategy.”
“Once they get the government contracts, they go on LinkedIn and find the people who actually know how to do this work, and then they hire them. Mr. Speaker, it is like something out of Yes Minister , but it would be rejected by that show for being too unrealistic. This is what actually happens and has happened for the last 10 years under the Liberal government. However, now the government has changed and will never do it again. The Liberals have a new government, with the same people who have nonetheless seen the errors of their ways. When all else fails in this debate, members across the way say, “Well, yeah, but didn't we win an election?”