Scott Anderson
Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, British Columbia · Conservative · Canada
“Madam Speaker, this is one of the deepest debates in Canadian politics, between the rights and freedoms of citizens on one hand and the powers of government on the other hand. I wonder if my colleague could speculate on why the Liberals want to shut down debate like this, so pre-emptively.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the poison pill. First of all, mandatory sentences, obviously, as my other colleague pointed out much earlier, do in fact stop crime because it is very hard to commit a crime when in jail.”
“Mr. Speaker, I was trying to think of great artists in history, such Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Cicero and Plato. Some of them had private benefactors, but none of them, to my knowledge, had government support behind them. I cannot think of any artist that had government support— Some hon members: Oh, oh! Scott Anderson: Mr.”
“Mr. Speaker, with regard to the sovereign wealth fund, I recently asked my colleague the same question. The other day, my neighbour showed me his bank account, and it was enormous. I thought, “This is a secret”, so I maxed out my credit cards and put the money in my savings account.”
“Mr. Speaker, with regard to Norway's sovereign wealth fund, I decided to do the same thing as the Prime Minister , because he is a wise person. I decided that what I would do is take the bulk of the money out of my credit card, put it in my savings account and call it “Scott's retirement fund”.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has put a new face on what happened. In fact, the government has been trolling our benches, and some did slither over. The House is not reflective of Canadians' wishes. About 93% of the vote goes to the party now, by custom, and about 7% goes to the individual. By law, yes, we are elected as individuals.”
The complete record
Every one of 165 lines we hold for Scott Anderson, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 4.
“Madam Speaker, this is one of the deepest debates in Canadian politics, between the rights and freedoms of citizens on one hand and the powers of government on the other hand. I wonder if my colleague could speculate on why the Liberals want to shut down debate like this, so pre-emptively.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague spoke about the poison pill. First of all, mandatory sentences, obviously, as my other colleague pointed out much earlier, do in fact stop crime because it is very hard to commit a crime when in jail. As far as the poison pill goes, when I raised my kids and told them to clean their rooms, I did not say at the end of it, “Unless you don't feel like it.” This, I believe, is what is happening with this bill: If we do not feel like it, we do not have to obey the law. I would like my colleague to expand on that, if she would.”
“Mr. Speaker, I was trying to think of great artists in history, such Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Cicero and Plato. Some of them had private benefactors, but none of them, to my knowledge, had government support behind them. I cannot think of any artist that had government support— Some hon members: Oh, oh! Scott Anderson: Mr. Speaker, on the other hand, I cannot think of any artist who did have government support and who is great. I cannot think of a great Soviet artist. I wonder if my colleague could tell us this: Is it because the Liberals hate Canadian culture?”
“Mr. Speaker, with regard to the sovereign wealth fund, I recently asked my colleague the same question. The other day, my neighbour showed me his bank account, and it was enormous. I thought, “This is a secret”, so I maxed out my credit cards and put the money in my savings account. For some reason, when I went to my accountant, he said I will never retire. I am wondering if the member can explain to me the difference between my neighbour's bank account, in which he saved money over time, and my savings account that I just put money into. Can you explain the difference between those two?”
“Mr. Speaker, with regard to Norway's sovereign wealth fund, I decided to do the same thing as the Prime Minister , because he is a wise person. I decided that what I would do is take the bulk of the money out of my credit card, put it in my savings account and call it “Scott's retirement fund”. Then I went to my accountant, who said that I would never retire. I was wondering if the member could explain to me why that is.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member opposite has put a new face on what happened. In fact, the government has been trolling our benches, and some did slither over. The House is not reflective of Canadians' wishes. About 93% of the vote goes to the party now, by custom, and about 7% goes to the individual. By law, yes, we are elected as individuals. The Liberal Party's explanation is that it is “a big tent”, but I would say it is more like a circus tent. I wonder if the member agrees with the views of his party's newest acquisition on vaccines and the convoy.”
“Mr. Speaker, parliamentary democracy is a loose framework and is only as good as the actors in it. If the actors use good ethics, then it works well. For example, when 93% of the electorate votes for the party customarily rather than for the candidate and when a floor crossing happens in a case like that, we can see intent of parliamentary democracy. I wonder if my colleague could expand on whether she considers the long ballot to be similarly detrimental to democracy.”
“Mr. Speaker, Winston Churchill famously remarked that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. The parliamentary system is not a perfect system. It is only as good as the actors in it. When 93% of the electorate votes for the party and not for the candidate, and only 7% vote for the candidate, that is a distortion of democracy in the way parliamentary democracy is set up. The member mentioned reinstating the $1,000, because the same problem applies to the people in the long ballot. They are doing this. I was wondering if the member could talk about the $1,000 reinstatement—”
“Mr. Speaker, this bill, in its original intent, and that is the reason the amendments were stripped off, is simply to help the government, because the government has to deal with these problems when they arise. If the Liberals get it off their plate and dump it into the municipal police force or into the civilian provincial courts, they will not have to deal with it anymore and it will now be somebody else's problem. I just do not see how the Liberals can keep a straight face and keep saying “Arbour” over and over again as if it means something. It does not. The victims want choice.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have put to us that we should remove choice because victims are going to be too traumatized after an assault to actually make a choice. This reminds me of the 19th-century idea that women became hysterical and really had to be directed and taught by men, because when they became hysterical, they were not capable of making good choices. I find that this is paternalistic and insulting to the women who are victims. Frankly, the Liberals are simply throwing out the Arbour report as if it concretizes their point, but it does not. It tends to push people toward the civilian system, but it does not make it mandatory.”
“Mr. Speaker, the member, a veteran himself, knows very well that, in the military, with a top-down chain of command, culture can change very fast, because it is an order-based society. The Arbour report is several years old, and the culture did not stop to wait for the Arbour report. Right away, the military started the culture change, and you know that very well. You know that if you go back—”
“I appeal to my fellow veterans and to the MPs on the other side of the aisle to listen carefully to what one of our own veterans had to say about this. The veteran said that this bill, if it were stripped of all the amendments that were asked for by victims, cannot claim to be putting people first and that the bill, without the amendments, is not about making life easier for uniformed members but about making life easier for politicians. That is a very different thing and it is, frankly, dishonourable.”
“Independent legal and victim supports exist. What evidence still shows that [the civilian system] remains the best way forward? So far so good, but late Friday afternoon, the Minister of National Defence tabled Bill C-11 at report stage. Instead of our amended bill, and in defiance of civilian lawyers, military lawyers, civilian police, military police and even the victims themselves, what came into the House had been stripped of all our amendments. Why? It is because the artificial Liberal majority can now just stiff our soldiers and download the problem onto lower levels of government. The Liberals are not doing it to help our soldiers. They are doing it to push the problem off the federal plate, and then they will just not have to worry about it anymore.”
“These are the very people I thought would have the strongest desire to stay out of the military system, but the vast majority insisted that they wanted a choice. For various reasons, they wanted a choice. After numerous victims spoke, it became obvious that the victims wanted choice, so we co-operated with the Bloc member on the committee to amend an outdated Liberal motion into one that every stakeholder, from victim to investigator, wanted. Our amendments gave the victims choice. Dr. Karen Breeck, a former medical officer in the CAF and a victim of sexual assault, put it to us succinctly: First, the military of 2025 [has changed]. Today the chain of command has extensive awareness and training. The sexual misconduct support and resource centre is fully operational. Victims' rights legislation is in force.”
“Then we listened to the civilian police who told us that, although they had the capability, they no longer had the capacity to absorb yet more work, especially in locations with military bases close by. One such police chief told us that the witnesses might be scattered in redeployments to other jurisdictions in Canada or internationally. She said a case in those circumstances would be almost impossible for her department to investigate. Then we listened to the victims of sexual assault in the military. These brave soldiers rose above the crimes that were done to them and were brave enough to testify in front of the nation in hopes that what had happened to them would not happen to others. Their testimony shocked me.”
“Culture change is much faster in a top-down chain of command. When the organization is built around instant obedience, instant cultural change can happen very quickly when it comes from the top in a sincere effort. (1245) Next, we listened to the defence and prosecution teams from the military. They argued that the studies the bill was responding to were out of date or no longer applied to current military culture. They said that they had both the know-how and the professionalism to handle the job. In fact, they said they were surprised to learn that the Liberals intended to remove jurisdiction because the CAF had made sweeping changes and spent enormous effort reforming the system. They also said the culture of the CAF had changed. We have two bodies of experts who are saying that the culture has changed.”
“As a result, the government reacted and ordered high-level independent reviews of the military's handling of sexual assault in the military. The Deschamps report came out 11 years ago and the Fish and Arbour reports followed it. They all had ideas for change. The Arbour report had 48 recommendations, including steering victims toward the civilian justice system. The problems in the military had not just kicked off a few reports, like most government studies do. They also kicked off a significant institutional culture change within the military. The senior leaders in the CAF did not just treat the Arbour and Fish reports as annoyances that had to be suffered through; they treated them as a new mission. By late last year, the CAF had actioned all 48 of the Arbour report recommendations and were still actively engaged in culture change.”
“Another academic, former JAG officer Rory Fowler, responded that, if the object were a high rate of conviction, perhaps Canada should emulate the North Korean justice system. He said that, quite likely, the reason for a low rate of conviction was an excellent defence team available in the military and referenced a recent high-profile case in which a JAG lawyer, Major Francesca Ferguson, supplied quality defence for a private who was falsely accused, right up to the Supreme Court. Rory Fowler argued that the culture in the military has changed radically over the years. Back in the 1990s and earlier in this century, high-profile cases of sexual predation drew national attention to a real problem with sexual assault and the way it was handled in the military justice system.”
“When we first started this investigation, I had no reason to believe that the victims would want anything to do with the military system, so I let it go. I think there are all sorts of other problems with the bill that we could fix with other amendments, and I am sure my colleagues will address those, but I want to talk specifically about the importance of choice. Like I said, I had assumed that no one would object to moving the crime into the civilian system. I was shocked. I was surprised at the responses of the academics, the military and the civilian police, and I was truly shocked at the response of the victims. We talked to academics. One professor pointed out that the conviction rate for sexual offences was not very high in the military justice system.”
“I assumed the victims would believe they would get a better shake in an inherently less structured and more liberal civilian justice system. I thought the victims would associate the military with the crime and understandably believe that, if their case were to be tried in the military, somehow the chain of command could influence the outcome, even though it has nothing to do with actual chain of command. The Liberals told us that the victims of criminal sexual assault would be too traumatized to choose between a civilian investigation and a military investigation. It was best, according to the Liberals, if the state chose for them. This sounded a little bit like the old TV show Father Knows Best .”
“Those of us in the House who are fathers of daughters will understand all too well the deep rage that wells up at the mere thought of someone doing harm to our daughters. I want to assure the House that I take the bill very seriously indeed, and that I really mean what I am about to say. Those of us who have sons should be aware that, because of the higher number of men serving, 40% of sexual assault cases involve male victims. Like all of us, I had heard over the years horror stories involving sexual predation in the military, and I assumed, after having listened to the media, that this bill would be a sort of rubber stamp because everyone would want it. I assumed that victims of sexual predation in the military would want to stay far away from anybody in uniform.”
“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-11 , when it first came to the national defence committee, was meant to transfer sexual assault cases from the military to the civilian justice system. It was not supposed to be a controversial bill. It arose because of the need to address sexual assault in the military. All of us in the House have, I believe, deep down, the best interests of Canadians at heart. As a former officer, the bill matters to me. All of us in the room value the strength and dedication of our troops, but not one of us wants to see greater physical strength turned against our own. I have another personal reason for taking the bill seriously. I have a daughter who recently earned a university degree and a civilian pilot's license. She has recently applied to the Canadian Armed Forces to fly as a pilot in defence of our country.”
“Mr. Speaker, first, I would suggest that my colleagues not use “chain of command” until they understand what it means. People are removed from the chain of command today and put into the JAG system, or at least they were prior to this. I want to quote Dr. Karen Breeck, who is a former officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and is also a medical doctor. She testified that the military of 2025 has changed. She said: Today the chain of command has extensive awareness and training. The sexual misconduct support and resource centre is fully operational. Victims' rights legislation is in force. Independent legal and victim supports exist.... What evidence still shows that [the civilian system] remains the best way forward? I wonder if my colleague could comment on one of the victims who said much the same thing as—”
“Mr. Speaker, I see a great deal of potential in the bill. I have been talking to people overseas as well. There is absolutely no recourse in our laws, and I certainly think we need that, but we have to draw a balance between, on one hand, the anarchy of pure freedom, and on the other hand, really heavy-handed authoritarianism. I think the bill has the potential to hit the middle ground there, but it must go to committee and have all-party input. I hope that the Liberals abide by that, and I hope that they honour the process of Parliament.”
“Mr. Speaker, I do not think we should trust the Liberals at all. We just heard that over 10 years, crime has galloped ahead, and it is being blamed on technology creep. Crime has galloped. Technology has moved. The reason for that is fairly obvious: The Liberals are now playing catch-up to a decade of ignoring crime and hoping that it would go away. Now they are dealing with the actuality. They are scrambling to do it and somehow yelling and screaming that they need to do it quickly.”
“Mr. Speaker, there was not a question there. There was a statement, so I am going to make a statement. Potentialities are not the same thing as actualities. We have MOUs worth whatever amount of money. What we actually have is very little. I could talk about the great mineral exploration we are going to be doing on Saturn, but that does not mean we are going to have it today, tomorrow or ever. I am just talking about it. That is my statement.”
“This is obstruction, to be sure, but not by Conservatives. Conservatives are doing what we are supposed to be doing for the benefit of Canadians. The Prime Minister and the Liberal Party, on the other hand, are acting on behalf of the Liberal Party. They are attempting to fabricate another election that no one wants by trying to make it look like it is not their fault. This is not order and good government, but devious arrogance by the Liberals. Canadians had better brace themselves.”
“He has called this a big tent, but it has become more like a circus tent, so he needs an election. However, the Prime Minister does not want to be blamed for calling an election, so the Liberals are banging on about obstruction to make it look like the normal processes of Parliament are somehow wrong. If he employs tactics like this now that he has a majority government, he knows it is to create the kinds of division within Parliament that he can point to and claim are obstruction. Bill C-22 may have the potential to be a good bill, if it makes it past second reading and goes to committee. My fear is that it will meet the fate of Bill C-11 , be subjected to the scrutiny of experts, be modified into a much clearer, better bill, and then have all the positive changes stripped out once it hits report stage.”
“Why would the Liberals defy both the military and civilian justice systems and the victims? There is a reason. The Prime Minister has not, will not and cannot fulfill his campaign promises. The cracks in our economy have become chasms, and he needs an election before Canadians feel the full brunt of his purposeful inaction. He knows Canadians are going to start to notice the growing divide between these grandiose announcements and the cold, grey reality of their pocketbooks, so he needs a majority government, and fast. He trolled the opposition benches and, yes, sure enough, an artificial majority did manage to slither across the aisle, but the Prime Minister is afraid that his majority will unravel, since he now has both far right and far left members in his caucus.”
“After numerous victims spoke, it became obvious that the bill needed to be modified, so, with the support of the Bloc member on the committee, we co-operated to amend an outdated Liberal motion into one that every stakeholder, from victim to investigator, wanted. We gave the victims a choice. So far, so good. We took a bill that was okay and made it into a good bill. Late this Friday afternoon, the Minister of National Defence , in defiance of civilian and military lawyers, civilian and military police, and even the victims themselves, came into the House and tabled Bill C-11 at report stage. He is trying to strip our amendments from the bill. Why are the Liberals doing this? We had a decent bill that we turned into a much better bill. There seems to be no explanation for it at all.”
“We listened to the civilian police, who told us that, although they had the capability, they no longer had the capacity to absorb yet more work, especially in locations with military bases close by. Then we listened to victim after victim of sexual assault in the military. It was really the victims who surprised me and I think most of us at committee, the people I thought would have the strongest desire to move out of the military justice system. I thought perhaps one or two might say they would like to have a choice, but it turned out that just about every single witness we talked to wanted a choice between the military justice system and the civilian system.”
“I am a member of the national defence committee. We recently studied Bill C-11 , a bill whose central purpose is to transfer sexual assault cases from the military to the civilian justice system. I assumed, probably like most of us here, that after listening to the horror stories in the media, this would be a rubber stamp, and we would simply transfer the authority to the civilian system. However, all of us at committee were surprised. We listened to the defence and the prosecution teams from the military argue that the studies the bill was responding to were a decade old and no longer applied to the current military culture. They argued that they had both the capability and the capacity to address the cases, and that the culture within the CAF had radically changed in those 10 years.”
“If we send Bill C-22 to committee by voting for the legislation, how can we be confident the Liberals will respect the committee process and not try to do an end run around Canadians? Can we be sure that our efforts in committee will be respected by the Liberals? What is supposed to happen is all-party input, all-party witnesses, all-party debate and amendments put forward and voted on, and ultimately the result is a bill modified by the people of Canada through the process of representative democracy. That is what is supposed to happen. It is not what is actually happening, and I want to talk for a minute about what is happening. (1725) I want to talk about a troubling tactic the Liberals are using to subvert that process. I am fearful that what happened to Bill C-11 is going to happen to Bill C-22 .”
“Instead of a continental railway from coast to coast, we have a $90-billion boondoggle between two eastern cities that will likely never get built, and even that is mired in scandal and controversy before the land snatch even begins. Unfortunately, our Prime Minister is usually absent from Ottawa, flitting about the world here and there in no particular direction, at enormous taxpayer expense and with a catering budget that would make Emperor Nero blush, all apparently to avoid hard questions in question period, since nothing much has been produced except an undergrad international relations term paper at Davos. The reason I bring this up is that there is a problem, and I am troubled by it.”
“He can even watch it in real time as it is built from the comfort of his airplane seat. He could have a pipeline built in two years if he wanted to, yet a year after Bill C-5 , he does not even have a pipeline started. He does not have a plan to build one. He does not have a route, not even a gleam in a surveyor's eye. What would a rational person think about this? The Prime Minister promised grand projects of great national importance. He promised a deal with the Americans by this time last year. He promised to move at speeds not seen in generations to unleash our Canadian economy. However, he has not landed in Canada long enough to move anything. Instead of an energy corridor, we have silence. Instead of housing, we have an enormously expensive bureaucracy and empty props that are taken down as soon as the photo op is over.”
“We hoped he would move quickly and decisively to get our clean Canadian energy to an energy-starved world. That is why we Conservatives voted for Bill C-5 early in the Prime Minister's tenure, and with it gave him more power than any previous prime minister has ever had to achieve those goals. The Prime Minister has more jurisdictional power than Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had when he built thousands of miles of continental railway through some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable. The Prime Minister has technologies that would leave Macdonald in shock. We can do in a day what it took a year to do in Macdonald's day. The Prime Minister can look down in real time from 100 kilometres above and see right into the earth with lidar. He can view the route. He can model a pipeline.”
“We conduct witness interviews, and we incorporate the concerns of everyone until we have a bill that works for all parties, and by extension, for all Canadians. Unfortunately, this is what the Liberals have recently taken to calling obstruction, but it is not. This is how our Canadian parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. I want to address this manufactured Liberal claim of obstruction, because with the compliant media out there, if I do not tell Canadians in the House, they are not going to find out. Contrary to the narrative of obstruction the Liberals are trying to create, we Conservatives truly did hope that the Prime Minister would steal another of our platform promises and build the so-called energy corridor he promised. We believed him when he said he would make Canada an energy superpower.”
“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22 is like so many other bills that show good promise and strong potential to be shaped into good policy in committee. It is right here in second reading that the problems with Bill C-22 are initially identified, and that is what my colleagues on this side of the chamber have been doing: probing, asking questions and identifying weak spots that could be eliminated or good points that could be strengthened. If after this debate the House agrees, Bill C-22 would go to committee stage where it would be debate and have amendments introduced, and then the amendments would be voted on. Committees are an exceptional tool in which all parties can take a mediocre bill and shape it into good policy, or they can take a good bill and make it even better.”
“Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said, quite rightly, that 15 years ago we did not have this problem, and that is absolutely true. Technology has advanced since then. He also said that his new government is laser-focused on crime. I would like to point out that the government is not a new government. It is 11 years old. While technology has advanced, criminality has galloped forward. I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary would like to explain why, in 11 years, when technology has advanced at a certain pace, crime has galloped ahead at a much faster pace.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Riding Mountain. I originally hail from Manitoba as well. One thing I can say about it is it is cold and flat and has many mosquitoes. I love it too. We live in a technological society that is so advanced most of us here do not understand some of the capabilities that are out there, and I do not pretend to know what technologies are employed by criminals around here. On the one hand, we have pure anarchy when we address governance and on the other, we have severe authoritarianism. As my colleague mentioned, there have been several bills and several attempts to do this. I wonder if he thinks this bill comes closest to striking a proper balance between severe authoritarianism on the one hand and pure anarchy on the other.”
“Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Davenport mentioned that this is a better bill than before. In fact, this is the third attempt the Liberals have made to introduce a bill that is similar to this, each one a little less intrusive than the last one. My concern, if we let the bill go to committee, is around whether the Liberals would actually respect the amendments we make in it, because I have just come out of a committee with Bill C-11 where we had made some very important amendments to the bill, and on Friday the Liberal Minister of National Defence simply attempted to strip all the amendments away. I wonder if the Liberals intend to actually respect the amendments we make in committee.”
“Mr. Speaker, I notice the Liberals are tending to characterize this as obstructionism. We are here in Parliament to do a job, and that job is to question the other side and improve any bill that comes through committee. I wonder if my hon. colleague could speak to whether he thinks Conservatives are obstructing or improving this bill.”
“Mr. Speaker, we have heard much from the Liberals about how we are obstructing their bills and whatnot, even though they are filibustering their own bills in committee. Usually that means that they are trying to create a narrative that we are obstructing. Do you feel that we are obstructing or debating this bill?”
“Mr. Speaker, Liberal catch-and-release policies have actually caused this crime. Before Trudeau came along 10 years ago, we did not have a crime wave; now we do. We also did not have Bill C-22 . The difference here is actually the catch-and-release problems, the catch-and-release policies we are suffering under. Would it not make more sense to stop shooting down Conservative bills, anti-crime bills, and leave the privacy of Canadians alone?”
“Mr. Speaker, the minister is telling us half the story about the pay raises. What he is forgetting is that overseas, reductions of over $1,500 a month are being taken back from living allowances. These are real families putting their lives on the line abroad who were given just six days' notice and are now scrambling to adjust. The Liberal government increases pay only to claw it back. The headlines all scream about increased military pay, but why are so many frontline soldiers deployed overseas actually being forced to take a pay cut?”
“Thanks to leaders like Henry Ly and programs like Father's Knowledge Circle, dads have a place to turn and a community that says to them that they are not alone.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Henry Ly for his leadership in the Father's Knowledge Circle, a weekly meeting run by the North Okanagan Friendship Center Society in Vernon, British Columbia. The circle creates a respectful, supportive space for fathers to come together and share knowledge and stories. Speaking at the knowledge circle took me back 20 years, to the day I suddenly found myself a single father with my three young kids, living in a motel room. Things worked out for me, but for far too many men the extra stress can be deadly. Single fatherhood is a growing demographic in our society, and the challenges and lack of support can be overwhelming. Nearly a million Canadian men suffer from major depression annually, and 75% of all suicides in Canada are men. Volunteer support programs like this save lives.”
“Mr. Speaker, I have been called a religious maniac and all the usual terms that come from across the floor many times, despite the fact that I think I have gone to church three or four times in the last 10 years and always on Christmas eve. I am not a religious maniac. I am very concerned about the curbs on free speech that the bill contains. It is crucial to democracy that we hear all opinions. We cannot form opinions without hearing all of those opinions. Sometimes they are controversial. Sometimes they are not controversial. Personally, I am against all forms of censorship, because I feel that society itself polices this very well. I find free speech to be an absolutely crucial element to democracy. We cannot have democracy unless we have a reasonable amount of free speech.”
“Mr. Speaker, when somebody uses religion as a pretext to commit a crime, they go to jail. They would go to jail now, before the bill is passed. We do not need the bill to make them go to jail. There is no precedent for doing this at all. I reject the question.”
“I think the Conservatives have been very clear about this. We are opposed to the removal of the religious exemption, which was never a campaign promise made by the Liberals at any point. At no point in the campaign were we told they were going to remove religious exemptions from Canadians. The laws already exist. I cannot think of an offence that this particular bill covers that is not already covered in the Criminal Code.”