Andrew Lawton · TranslatePolitics.ca

Government Orders

Business of Supply

2026-05-28

“I want Canadians to pay less tax. The Online Streaming Act could make it harder for Quebec culture to reach other countries. I stand behind Canadian creators.”

“You made the CRTC do this. You passed the Online Streaming Act. You appointed the CRTC. You should repeal your bill. Your actions upset the U.S.”

“I'm against the Liberal government's tax on streaming services like Netflix. The Liberals warned us about this. Now they're doing it. It's going to make everything more expensive for Canadians. The government shouldn't get to decide what Canadians can watch.”

Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, it is a great privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, especially because we have seen the benefits of film production in Canada in our part of the country. It is great that we have Canadian productions. It is great that we have American productions that choose to set up shop in Canada. The one thing that I think is often missing in this conversation is that the Liberal government has never met a tax it does not like. When it tries to control Canadians and their viewing preferences and listening preferences, the only one who wins is government, not industry, not film production and not the people who work in television and media in this country. The Liberal-appointed CRTC has come out with a declaration that to enforce the Liberal legislation that the Conservatives warned about vociferously, Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, it will triple the amount of money the streaming services that Canadians enjoy, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV, will have to spend to 15%, up from 5%, as the levy they will have to pay to fund Liberal government-approved productions and Liberal-approved content. This is so important because when Bill C-11 first came through the House, Conservatives warned that it was not actually going to be about Canadian storytelling; it was going to be about the government picking and choosing winners, picking and choosing which types of stories get to be told, which ones get the support of government, who gets supplemented and supported and who gets suppressed. One of the biggest powers of Bill C-11 that we warned about was, basically, the requirement that streaming sites, including, for example, YouTube, would have to manipulate their algorithms so that they are serving up content that the Liberal government wants Canadians to see. While the Liberals say they are not manipulating algorithms, we know that the consequences of what they are forcing streaming platforms to do necessitate that. We have already heard, quite recently, from streamers who have noticed changes. Content they used to produce and generate that would do very well all of a sudden is not. Podcaster Jasmin Laine, among others, has pointed to this. We have heard from officials that there are still very many conversations going on, and the Liberal government tries to play coy on these things. Even now, we have heard from one Liberal member of Parliament that this is all the CRTC's actions at arm's length and not something the Liberal government is controlling, ignoring the fact that the Liberal government has the power under the Broadcasting Act to step in and stop this streaming tax immediately. It has the power to do this. This is a consequence of the government's own legislation. What is this going to mean? It is easy to get up and say that, in theory, we can put this levy in place and triple it from 5% to 15% and all these big American streaming platforms are going to have to pay it. That is the type of rhetoric we hear from people who do not understand how business works. They do not understand how markets work. To be fair, I have seen the budgets the Liberals put forward. I know they do not understand how business works. This money will not be absorbed by the Netflixes and the Amazons. It will be passed along to consumers. All of a sudden, the amount of money people have to pay to Netflix to watch some shows they like will go up. The amount of money we have to pay to subscribe to these platforms will go up. This tripling of the tax will be passed on to consumers, who, because of everything the Liberal government has done to the country, deserve the chance to kick back and watch something for fun. They deserve the chance to watch some television shows and some movies. However, when the Liberal government is saying that we need to penalize companies that are offering a service to Canadians that Canadians pay for, and that the money will go toward content the Liberal government approves of, Canadians know this will result in more government control or in companies pulling out of the Canadian market altogether. Members should remember that Bill C-11 did not come in isolation. It came alongside the Online News Act, which similarly tried to extort companies for being utilized by Canadian companies. In that case, it was journalism and news outlets. What did Meta do in response to this? It said, “Why are we going to be penalized because newspapers want to share their content on our platform?” Meta pulled news out of the Canadian market. To this day, Canadians cannot share a news article about Liberal corruption, among other things, or any news article on Facebook or Instagram. It is very conceivable that streaming companies could take similar retaliatory action if the Liberal government makes it so that their business model is no longer viable. This is not about the American companies. This is not about streaming services. What this is actually about is Canadians' ability to access content they want and shows they want. One of the great things about streaming services is that they bring together content from around the world. We often think about the need to safeguard this term we hear, “cultural sovereignty”, but in actuality, Canada, as we often hear from the Liberal government, is a very diverse country. Streaming services allow Canadians of all backgrounds to watch shows in different languages and from different countries. In fact, my favourite show of all time was not an American production imposed on me but a Spanish show that I learned about through a streaming service. I cannot understand it in the original Spanish; perhaps I will get to that at another point. I hate the idea that the only content we would get is Canadian productions when we should be able to have access to everything. We can imagine if other countries imposed the same sort of cultural protectionism that the Liberals are trying to do. Then Canadian content could not be exported. People in other countries would not get to benefit from some of the great cultural exports of Canada, shows like Being Erica and Schitt's Creek, or speeches from the member for Winnipeg North, and all of these Canadian cultural exports that people from around the world may wish to tune in to. Not all Canadian content is good content, as the latter example shows, but we do not want the Liberal government to be the determining force in what types of content Canadians can see, and we do not want Canadian enterprise to suffer. Again, the idea that the Liberals are presenting is that if we triple this levy, companies are just going to pay it, and it is going to go into creating jobs and opportunities in Canada. However, we know that is not what happens, and the Online News Act is, I think, a very good cautionary tale. I would note that the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture has not really staked out a position on this. He said he will “carefully assess its impacts.” Now, that, I believe, translates from Liberal to “We do not know what we are doing, but we will carefully assess its impacts.” He says he wants Canadians “to see themselves reflected on [the] screen”. We do, but we also want Canadians to be able to afford to watch the content they want to watch and to afford things that have already gone up in price. It is more expensive to buy groceries now. It is more expensive to pay rent, to buy a house, to pay the gas bill and to fill up the gas tank. These are measures that, in a lot of ways, are within the Liberal government's control. Why is the Liberal government insisting on making everything more unaffordable? In fact, there has already been some recognition from the Liberals of the effect that streaming services have on Canadian budgets. We may remember the former finance minister whose brilliant idea for how Canadians could cope with inflation was to cancel Disney+. Well, more Canadians will have to follow that advice because these services are going up in price because of something the Liberal government could rectify very easily. We have an opposition motion that calls on the Liberals to reject this streaming tax increase, to use their authority, which rests in the Broadcasting Act, to cancel this streaming tax once and for all. I remember when Stephen Harper warned about the Netflix tax over a decade ago. The Liberals mercilessly mocked. They said, “No one is going to tax streaming services,” and here they are, not just taxing them but increasing the tax on these streaming services. We will not protect anything in Canada if we take away more affordability from Canadians and take away choice, which needs to be front and centre in how Canadians choose to engage in whatever cultural product it is: a show, a movie, a song or anything else.

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Adjournment Proceedings

2026-05-25

“The space mission doesn't matter. I think you didn't answer my real question. I'm talking about the price of gas and food. The government needs to spend less of your money. I want fuel to cost less. I want Canadians to keep their jobs.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, when the Artemis mission was on the far side of the moon, it was still closer to answering the question than the parliamentary secretary just was. I spoke about very real concerns, such as the price of fuel and groceries, and I mentioned a number of ways the Liberal government is not being respectful of taxpayer money. Instead, she came in here with a canned four-minute statement on just one of the many line items I mentioned, showing that the Liberals are not even prepared to rise in the House to defend their reckless spending. A general contractor in my riding is saying that, without relief on the price of fuel, he will find himself forced to lay off employees. A man in Central Elgin, a struggling parent, says he is putting groceries on his credit card because that is the only way to pay for them. Another one says she has to move because she cannot afford the cost of living in a place that she always thought would be affordable. Why are the Liberals ignoring these Canadians?

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“I'm here to ask why the government won't cut all federal fuel taxes this year to help Canadians afford life. It's not enough to cut a third of the taxes for a third of the year like they've suggested. Their claim that any tax cut has to come at the expense of services is a red herring. The Liberals could fund a significant tax reduction without affecting services at all by cutting wasteful spending. I mentioned several examples of that. Why won't they look inside themselves and find ways to save taxpayers' money?”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. Oftentimes, people who watch question period with the Liberal government in power will remark that there is a reason it is not called answer period. We often cannot get, in a 35-second sound bite, much substance from the Liberals, which is why I am glad to have the opportunity to take another crack at a very important question today. Those watching who are not familiar with what we call “late shows” in this chamber will remark that there are very few people in the House. There are no journalists present. There is no one in the gallery. There is just me and the parliamentary secretary and a couple of other keen stragglers here. I am hoping we can have a discussion rooted in the substance of the matter, which is that Canadians cannot afford life right now. Canadians cannot afford groceries. Canadians cannot afford the price of fuel. The question I initially asked in question period was about when the Liberals will commit to truly providing relief, not for Liberal insiders, not for consultants, not for bankers and bondholders, but for ordinary Canadians. Canadians cannot afford the price of gas right now, which is especially germane in rural ridings like my own where driving is not, in fact, a choice. It is a necessity to go to school, to work, to medical appointments. We put forward a very clear-cut plan, which was to get the Liberals to cut all federal taxes on fuel for the entirety of the year, as a starting point. Instead, the Liberals responded by saying they would cut a third of the taxes for a third of the year. Something is better than nothing, but not that much. When we talked about this in recent weeks, some Liberals asked, “Well, where are you going to get the money for that from?” The Liberals will often say that any tax cut has to come at the expense of services, but that is a red herring that is rooted in a fundamental misrepresentation of what the Liberals have prioritized spending on. I would like to mention a couple of those things here. The Liberals are committing $90 billion to an Alto rail project that Canadians do not want and that will not benefit people in the majority of the country, certainly not people in southwestern Ontario. They are spending $742 billion on a firearms confiscation scheme that law enforcement has said will not improve public safety. Federal bureaucracy spending is expected to reach $66 billion this year. It has grown in the last year, outpacing inflation and outpacing the rise in the population of this country. Debt interest is $58.7 billion. That is money paying the interest payments on the federal credit card. Then we found out, of course, that the Liberals are spending $200 million on a launch pad. That is what they call it, but it is actually a gravel pit in Nova Scotia. It is on provincial government land, yet they are paying this to insider-connected companies as part of this ambitious Liberal space strategy that Canadians cannot afford in the way they are presenting it. They are spending $13 billion for Build Canada Homes, a housing bureaucracy with no track record of actually building homes, along with $20 billion on external consultants. All of this could go away and fund a fuel tax reduction for Canadians and a significant other suite of relief measures without affecting services at all. My question is, why are the Liberals not doing this? Why are they not looking inside themselves, as the Prime Minister has said to some people in the past, and finding ways to save money, which is not theirs but the taxpayers'?

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Government Orders

Spring Economic Update 2026 Implementation Act

2026-05-25

“I'm just here to interrupt with a technical problem. Nothing to see here.”

“The government spends too much. They treat taxpayers like a piggy bank. High debt means we can't afford services.”

STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

CBC/Radio-Canada

2026-05-25

“I'm upset that the government funds the CBC. The CBC made a show that criticizes my preferred historical figures. The show tried to trick people I like. I want the government to stop funding the CBC.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, the only thing worse than seeing left-wing activists in the media denigrate this country and its heroes is knowing that we Canadians had to foot the bill for it. The Liberals have heaped $1.5 billion on the CBC, and what is the CBC doing with this money? It is producing a show that lies, deceives and entraps Canadians who dare to disagree with the Liberals and dare to stand up for Sir John A. Macdonald and his legacy. Also, we have learned that this show, called Northland Tales, more like northland fails, entrapped brave men and women who have served this country in the RCMP, luring them into a CBC studio to berate and shame them for their service to this country. The CBC has said it is pausing the production, but that is not enough. When is the Liberal government going to turn off this tap on this unpatriotic, garbage propaganda?

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Statements by Members

Harvest Hands

2026-05-07

“I want people to spend more money on my preferred program!”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, food affordability remains a serious challenge for families in my community and across the country. Today, I want to recognize some of the unsung heroes who are meeting that challenge head-on. Founded just six years ago by Jim and Jacintha Collins, Harvest Hands in St. Thomas has rescued more than 45 million dollars' worth of surplus food, nearly $20 million last year alone. What started in a small church space is now a major distribution centre with a fleet of trucks and nearly 300 volunteers. Harvest Hands rescues unsold and surplus food from farms and producers and then sorts and ships it out to more than 380 partner organizations, including food banks and shelters. To quote Harvest Hands, “We are the trucks, the warehouse, the volunteers, the cold storage, the sorting tables, and the systems that move food at scale. Organizations serve the people. We serve the organizations.” Harvest Hands is tackling food insecurity with compassion, dedication and action. I thank the Collins family and every volunteer for making this possible.

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Oral Questions

Aerospace Industry

2026-05-06

“I want to call out the Liberals for dismissing our Conservative proposal to cut fuel taxes. The government shouldn't be spending millions on questionable projects like a space launch pad while Canadians struggle. It's just driving up the debt. The Liberals should help everyone, not just their friends.”

Oral Questions

Health

2026-05-06

“The government spends too much, especially on Liberal friends. The Prime Minister should spend less. PrescribeIT is a waste.”

Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-30

“That guy won't answer the question. The budget has the same old excuses. The government keeps borrowing and spending. Taxes and prices are up. Why should taxpayers pay for the government spending more than it has?”

“Everything the Liberals do is expensive for Canadians. I think Canadians would be better off if the government spent a lot less.”

Government Orders

Government Business No. 9—Changes to the Standing Orders

2026-04-27

“The government wants to avoid accountability. Liberals are filibustering the finance minister to protect him from testifying about his conflicts of interest. Committees should have the power to hold ministers accountable, not just in short question period slots. Ministers need real scrutiny.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is not just about amendments, as the member indicates; it is also about the agendas for committees. There are a number of committees that engage in studies that want to invite ministers to appear. As we have seen in the case of the ethics committee, the Liberals have staged a massive filibuster to block the finance minister from having to testify about his clear conflicts of interest on the $90‑billion Alto boondoggle. It is not just about amendments; it is about avoiding ministerial accountability at the committee level, where members get the chance, not just in a 35‑second question period slot but in a real substantive way, to question ministers who right now desperately need the accountability and scrutiny.

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“My friend is right. The Bloc asked good questions about the Liberals' formula. But let's talk about how the Liberals got their majority. The Liberals use defections to get complete control in committee. Canadians don't want the Liberals to control everything.”

“Liberals didn't help that MP's riding until she joined their party. Liberals only care about other Liberals.”

“I respect parliament. I'm sad the Prime Minister does not. He changes rules to increase his power. He thinks the will of Canadians is beneath him. Opposition is not obstruction. The government must collaborate with other parties. Today's motion will give the government a blank cheque. I oppose this motion.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Grande Prairie. I said in my maiden speech, when I got to this august chamber, that this seat does not belong to me. Indeed, it belongs to the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. I am a mere custodian of it. I say that to make the point that Parliament itself, this House of Commons, these institutions, are bigger than any of us as individuals. They are bigger than all of us even as a collective. These institutions matter more. This place matters more than the political ambitions, motivations and decisions of the people who get to come here every election. I have always venerated this institution. Indeed, I have always been fascinated by it. Even going back to when I was a university student involved in politics, I loved partaking in model parliament. I loved taking the opportunity to learn more. Perhaps it is why I have never been reprimanded for not addressing my comments through the chair or not doing some of those other conventions: I have been a student of parliamentary history. It was an honour the first day I walked into this chamber, and it remains the honour of a lifetime to be here. It has been saddening in that same vein to see how, for the Liberal government and specifically the Prime Minister, Parliament is a mere annoyance. We have seen the ignorance in this place: the fact that the Prime Minister has a question period attendance rating that is a fraction of that of his predecessors; the fact that he loves “showboating”, to use a word he is fond of, with fake executive orders that have no legal standing in our country; and the fact that he has been doing everything but governing in this place, governing in this chamber. To govern in this chamber is to be held accountable to Parliament as the collective body representing the will of the Canadian people. Parliament is a body comprising fellow custodians of this chamber, who are sent here with very similar mandates from each of their respective constituencies and constituents. However, we see in the motion before us today that the government does not believe it can win the game, so to speak, so it is changing the rules. It is changing the rules to suit its political ambitions, irrespective of the will of the Canadian people and irrespective of the norms, conventions and traditions of this place. It should be known to everyone here that Canadians do not, in fact, elect a government; they elect a Parliament. Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary since Canadians elected me, alongside all of my colleagues from all parties. Canadians elected a minority Parliament. The message Canadians sent in doing that was that they were prepared to give the Liberals a fourth term. I question why they would do that. However, while they were prepared to give the Liberals a fourth term, Canadians wanted their power to be checked by a strong, robust opposition. Now, my Conservative colleagues and I have held up our end of the bargain as His Majesty's loyal opposition. We supported and improved legislation such as Bill C-5, Bill C-14 and Bill C-16, which is before the justice committee right now. We opposed dangerous bills, such as Bill C-2 and Bill C-9, which the Liberals wanted to wave through without scrutiny and accountability. We worked collaboratively across party lines. We represented the will of Canadians, who elected MPs to champion, for those of us on the Conservative side of the aisle, the values of liberty, personal responsibility and, yes, fiscal discipline. However, what we have seen over the last year is that when the Liberals do not get their way, they scream obstruction. Opposition is not obstruction. We have seen this in a minority Parliament. I recall when Stephen Harper and the Conservatives had one just a few years ago. A minority Parliament requires the government to find dance partners, so to speak, to find collaboration and earn collaboration from opposition parties. The idea of holding opposition parties hostage to support bad legislation, which is what the Liberal government has tried to do, is not what a minority Parliament is supposed to be. We have seen under this arrangement, specifically at committees, a situation in which the Bloc has held the balance of power. I have seen votes in which Bloc and Conservative support was enough to pass a motion against the will of the Liberals. I have seen Liberal and Bloc members pass motions against the will of Conservatives. On a rare occasion, I might have even seen Liberals and Conservatives vote together, with the Bloc being the odd party out. Even when we have lost a vote, frustrating as that may be, I can take comfort in the knowledge that the Liberals were forced to co-operate with someone. They had a check, however modest, on their power. Today, the Liberals would enshrine their desire for a legislative blank cheque, stacking parliamentary committees to reflect their morally illegitimate majority. I say illegitimate majority because it was crafted not by the democratic will of Canadians but by the Prime Minister sending out his cabinet ministers to peel away the unscrupulous and the shameless opposition MPs who hold the will of the Canadian people in as little esteem as the Liberals do. This morally illegitimate majority is the consequence of that which they now seek to ratify by stacking the deck on committees. Committees are not the property of the government. They are creatures of Parliament. In many ways, they are where the real work happens, where scrutiny can happen, where amendments can happen and where real vigorous debates on the merits or lack thereof of legislation happen. If the government can manufacture a majority at will, scrutiny is merely choreography. They are seeking to not have a check on their power and to not have scrutiny of their legislation but rather to have a rubber stamp on anything they want to do. I am reminded of a quote from John Diefenbaker. In April 1957, he was speaking at Massey Hall in Toronto, and he said, “The sovereignty of the people is delegated to Parliament, not to the Executive.” The Prime Minister could learn a great many things from John Diefenbaker. One of the lessons is that government is about accountability, not control. Another lesson is that parliamentary scrutiny should be welcomed and not scorned. As evidence that these Liberals are uninterested in accountability and collaboration, one need only look at how they rejected our modest amendment to the very motion we are debating today, which would have preserved the status quo on oversight committees such as ethics, government operations and estimates, among others, committees that are not responsible for reviewing legislation but are tasked with being a watchdog on the government. Why the Liberals do not want to cede control on a committee overseeing ethics, I think, is becoming more apparent by the day. That is precisely what we are looking at here: a government that does not wish to engage in Parliament, a Prime Minister who holds this institution in contempt and a government that does not want to engage in something so seemingly beneath it as seeking and preserving the will of the Canadian people to enact its legislative agenda. The motion that we have before us today, which I will be opposing, does not strengthen Parliament. It sidelines it. That is something that every member of the House should reject. I go back to the comment I made earlier about when the Liberals try to invoke obstruction as a narrative. We have given them much of what they asked for when they sought permission to do things that will build the country up. Bill C-5 is a great example of this. They said they wanted monumental, sweeping authority to approve major projects. We said we would love to see major projects. We gave them permission to do this and the framework to do it. No major projects have materialized. Here we are a year later: The Liberal government has promised much and has delivered little. The one mechanism that could be preserved to ensure that Parliament remains in keeping with what Canadians elected was a committee structure that would force members of Parliament and would force government members to do what the Liberals claim they have wanted this whole time, which is collaboration. No, they are laying their demands bare today with the motion. They do not want collaboration. They do not want co-operation. All they want is capitulation. We say no.

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“I want to criticize the Liberals for limiting debate. I want to repeat that voters don't like them and think they're self-interested. I want my colleague to agree with me that voters are upset the Liberals won't work with other parties.”

Oral Questions

Pharmacare

2026-04-23

“I want you to delete that photo because it's against the rules.”

Statements by Members

St. Thomas and District Chamber of Commerce Impact Awards

2026-04-23

“I'm filling time with kind words about small businesses. They won some local chamber of commerce awards. Everyone makes the economy good. Thank you to the winners and the chamber of commerce.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, small businesses are the backbone of the Canadian economy, and that is truer than ever in St. Thomas, Elgin and London. Our small business owners are an incredible testament to the resilience, grit and innovativeness of our community. Some of our amazing entrepreneurs and professionals were recognized Friday at the St. Thomas and District Chamber of Commerce Impact Awards. I hope this House will join me in congratulating this year's Impact Award winners: real estate agent Ainslee Tracey; the delicious Taco House Co.; Dr. Joseph Mai of Central Community Health Centre; Our Place Respite; Element5; Yarmouth Group; and the Business of the Year Award winner, Evelyn's Sausage Kitchen. They and all the nominees represent the best of our community. They create jobs, opportunity and vitality for St. Thomas and Elgin. However, entrepreneurs back home do not walk alone. My office is a proud member of the St. Thomas and District Chamber of Commerce. In Ottawa today from the chamber are Maria Fiallos, Paul Jenkins and Christy Hunking. They are here representing our community. They are making sure small businesses can succeed, and I thank them for their efforts.

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