Blaine Calkins

“The Prime Minister is hiding how much debt he is creating by splitting the budget and pushing debt onto Crown corporations. The Liberals are also sharing the budget on a Thursday afternoon before a break week to hide bad news. If the government's finances are so good, they would not act like this.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is not bad enough that the new Prime Minister has split the budget between operating and capital and is distributing the debt that he is creating among those. He is also passing debt on through Crown corporations. To hide all of that, as my colleague brought up, the Liberals are introducing the budget on a Thursday afternoon before a break week. If things are as great as the Liberal government decries that they actually are, why are the Liberals behaving this way?”

In response to a question from Mario Beaulieu

“Alberta creates wealth that helps other provinces, like Quebec. Building big projects brings prosperity, which helps us afford better healthcare, schools, and environmental protections. We cannot scare away investment by locking up land and water in protected zones.”

“Mr. Speaker, I hope I understood the gist of the question from my colleague from Quebec. He should have thanked me, as an MP from Alberta, for all the money that has been transferred that is helping his community and his province. Albertans understand that we can do projects that create wealth and prosperity for Canadians. We are not an unsophisticated society. When we have wealth and prosperity, we can have better environmental outcomes, we can have better health outcomes and we can have better educational outcomes. However, we cannot have a situation where we pretend we are going to build things and tie up the rest of the country and our water areas under protected zones that limit and scare away investment.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The government's environmental plans lock land away instead of managing it wisely. Because of these rules, we could not build fire breaks in Jasper National Park, and homes burned down. The government is to blame for that.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is a big difference between conservation and preservation. If we look at the definitions of what the 30 by 30 agenda and the 50 by 50 agenda are trying to achieve, we see that it is preservation status. That is a national park level of status. It basically eliminates virtually all forms of use except for maybe visiting and taking pictures. If we were able to do the things on the preserved lands and waters that are coming through the legislative steps and the agenda the government currently has, we would have been able to build fire breaks in Jasper National Park to protect that community. Instead, the preservationist philosophy, which the member is masquerading as conservation, required that the Liberals let it sit, go through the natural process and let those houses burn. That is on him.”

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“I oppose the parts of this bill that create habitat credits. The government wants to use these credits to lock up land and water so people cannot fish, hunt, or build energy projects like pipelines. Big global investors will profit while local landowners and conservation groups are pushed aside.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand in this place for the first time in the fall session of Parliament to speak to a piece of the government’s legislation, Bill C-39, the building Canada strong act. I spoke to Bill C-5 a year ago, which was the Building Canada Act. I am probably going to speak 12 months from now to the building Canada very strong act, and then 12 months after that, it will be the building Canada very, very strong act, but we will see how this goes. It has taken a year and a half, but we are finally here. We have finally made it to the Prime Minister’s legislative calling card, where he finally plans to deliver on a promise he made a year and a half ago to build Canada strong. Many of my colleagues have now spoken to the bill, pointing out faults and shortcomings, of which there are many. However, over these next 10 minutes, I would like to focus on a very tiny part of the bill that I do not think has gotten a lot of attention. It has big implications on conservation in Canada, primarily through changes made to the Fisheries Act. As the bill reads, division 7 of part 1 would amend the Fisheries Act to do the following: (a) modify the fish habitat bank regime to allow for the use of habitat credits by third parties; Have we ever heard of habitat credits? Have the folks watching at home heard of carbon credits? Have we heard of biodiversity credits? This is what I am going to talk about. The bill continues: (b) authorize the making of regulations respecting the circumstances in which a person who is authorized to carry on a work, undertaking or activity may pay a fee to offset adverse effects on fish and fish habitat and provide for these fees to be credited to the Environmental Damages Fund; and (c) transfer certain regulation-making powers from the Governor in Council to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. I want to be clear that as Conservatives, we totally believe in conservation. We totally believe in protecting our biodiversity. We agree wholeheartedly with these notions and premises of clean air, clean land and clean water for current generations and generations to come, but I want to talk a bit about the new way that I think things will be going in the environmental world. I am going to talk about biodiversity credits, or habitat credits, which is what the government calls them in the legislation. Division 7 would allow the use of habitat credits by third parties. Let us dive into that. Habitat credits, or biodiversity credits, are a market-based approach to conservation. If a landowner or an organization restores, creates, enhances or protects a habitat area, they have effectively created a habitat bank. Under division 7, this would allow the owner to earn credits for the ecological value that the bank creates. These credits could then be sold to others, who must compensate for any number of unrelated environmental impacts elsewhere in Canada. This sounds good. If a bit of activity over here wrecks something, a bit of habitat banking over there would offset it. It sounds good, but the devil is in the details. The idea for this model is that it would allow conservation to be funded up front and would ensure that habitat is protected before impacts occur. I do not disagree with the idea of biodiversity credits as a method of conservation, but given the Prime Minister’s affinity for global asset management groups, I am concerned about who really benefits from these credits. In fact, I do not even know who is going to own some of these credits. Is it the government? It is, after all, the body that appears to provide the credit to the landowner in the first place. Is it the landowners? Are they the owners of the land in which the habitat bank has been licensed and organized? What if a landowner sells that credit? Do the credits transfer from the seller to the buyer? Are there any oversight bodies? Who defines the value of a habitat credit? It is easy to measure a tonne of CO2. How do we measure a credit on biodiversity, and who gets to make that decision? Would it be, perhaps, an asset manager running a global company out of, say, New York City? What happens when the asset manager wants to increase the value of their assets? Does the asset manager have to advocate for zero fishing to make the value of these fish habitat banks worth more? This is happening now. If members do not believe me, they can look it up. In August, the government launched its new expert task force on natural capital accounting and nature financing, which seeks to impact climate regulation and biodiversity conservation. Is this yet another carbon credit system? After all, the last one, with the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, worked out so well, did it not? This task force is made up entirely of big NGOs, corporations and academics. There is no one from Nature Canada, Ducks Unlimited or any type of local conservation group. There are just bureaucrats in Toronto and Ottawa boardrooms dictating how farmers, ranchers and acreage owners need to operate on their own private land. The government is making these decisions, but landowners, frankly, I do not think know much about it at all. Why are government bureaucrats running this agenda while local conservationists, guides and outfitters, salmon enhancement organizations, and conservation authorities are seemingly sidelined and marginalized when it comes to defining how these credits are actually applied? Are the Liberals contracting this work out to the Prime Minister’s global asset management friends at BlackRock and Brookfield, headquartered out of Donald Trump’s New York City? It looks that way. I am not opposed to conservation. I am actually the shadow minister for conservation, but conservation is done best by local groups on the ground that understand the practicality of the environment in which everything lives, not unelected international bureaucrats who are lining their pockets. Conservation needs to be done practically, not ideologically. Ideological decisions bring around the concept of preservation, which is sometimes masked and sold as conservation. Preservation brings sterilization. It is conservation that actually works. It is conservation that we as Conservatives support. There are so many questions introduced in the bill, yet there are few, if any, answers at all, so let us try to find answers on our own. On the 30 by 30 and 50 by 50 agendas and the land sterilization, my suspicion is that the proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act play into the Liberals’ plans. As many members know, in 2022, the Liberals signed Canada onto the 30 by 30 and 50 by 50 initiative at COP15 in Montreal, which seeks to preserve up to half of Canada’s terrestrial and marine environments by 2050. By the way, half of Canada’s land mass is bigger than 187 of the 196 countries in the world. The rationale is to ensure habitat protection to maintain biological diversity. That sounds good. I think everybody wants biodiversity and habitat protection. It is not just a random percentage of Canada. This also applies to each ecological zone. This means mountain areas, Canadian Shield, prairie grasslands where all the farms and ranches are, parkland forest, Arctic tundra and so on. In much of these areas, significant portions of the land are privately owned or privately held property, which is where biodiversity credits in Bill C-39 would come into play. The government needs a mechanism to turn this privately owned land into recognizable conservation land. By the way, 89% of Canada is Crown land. Of the other 11%, 7% is agricultural land and the other 4% is what the rest of us live on. The government needs a mechanism to turn this privately owned land, which is the vast minority of the land in Canada, into recognizable conservation land with rules and all kinds of regulations on it. Amending the Fisheries Act to include biodiversity credits is the mechanism for how they would get that kind of control. It remains a stumbling point because the Liberals just signed Canada onto 30 by 30 and 50 by 50, and the House has never actually voted to approve the agenda that Canada signed onto at COP15. We have not even had the debate in the House of Commons. In the previous Parliament, the minister of environment, who has since resigned due to the MOU signed between Canada and Alberta, tried to table a bill to give the government a mechanism to implement this preservationist agenda, but that bill never passed, and there was no vote. The government simply signed on and has begun implementation without consulting Canadians. Now it would be implementing a biodiversity credit mechanism without consulting landowners. The Liberals would be doing so through the Fisheries Act powers, national park creation and agreements with first nations called indigenous protected and conserved areas. The whole point of this particular speech is this: What would they be doing with the Fisheries Act? The Fisheries Act is one of the most powerful pieces of legislation we have in Canada, the same Fisheries Act that would be amended by this very bill, Bill C-39, to offer biodiversity credit for fish habitat. This would suggest to me that my assertion at the beginning of the speech is correct: The Liberals would use these habitat and biodiversity credits as they relate to fish banking as a way of expediting their global 30 by 30 and 50 by 50 agenda. How would these habitat banks fall into part of the government’s conservation plan? We know that its $3.8 billion nature announcement in March is what it says it is going to take, or require, to get to the 30% preservation target. Are these proposed amendments to the Fisheries Act intended to bring Canada closer to its 50% goal? Why are the Liberals so hell-bent on preserving Canada as a national park? This is not conservation. It is preservation: preservation from hunting, fishing, angling, trapping, guiding, outfitting, recreational sports, hiking, energy development and resource development. Is sterilizing half of Canada’s land and water really considered building Canada strong? I do not think so. These policies would lock up land and water, and throw away the key. It is all about actual control, central control for a central banker, for a government that the Toronto Star has now indicated is all centralized in the Prime Minister’s Office. Last week, the Prime Minister made the west coast pipeline, now Pacific link, a project of national importance. I strongly echo the thoughts and concerns of my leader, who told the National Post last week, “Wake me up when there’s a steel pipe going in the dirt.” Why are Conservatives doubtful? It is because of preservation policies such as this. How can the Liberals build a pipeline when they have sterilized so much of our Crown land and are now offering incentives to sterilize even more of that land and the water? How can we build Canada strong if 50% of Canada’s land and water is cordoned off under conservation easements or a protected status? If we cannot access the land and cannot access the water, then we sure cannot build energy infrastructure on the land or sail ships through the water. The world needs Canadian energy and natural resources. Sterilizing Canada and turning it into a park would mean that these resources would stay in the ground. The Prime Minister said something last week at the Pacific link announcement: “The Canadian taxpayer is going to make a lot of money off this pipeline.” Well, that is good. I want that. Conservatives want that. However, we cannot build a pipeline or a shipping lane, much less a profitable one, if we cordon off our land and water. It is completely unrealistic and irresponsible to say that we can. Are we building Canada, or are we sectioning off? We cannot do both.”

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“A blockade in northern Manitoba is stopping licensed hunters from using a public road to reach public land. The hunters are following the law, and the blockade is not. I want the minister to tell the RCMP to clear the blockade.”

“Mr. Speaker, yesterday, there were headlines in all major newspapers across Manitoba. For the second time in a year, there is a blockade on a public road that prevents licensed, regulated hunters from accessing public Crown land. There are no provincial closures on this road or on the land. The province has done the science and set the quotas. Hunters have the legal authority to hunt during hunting season. The only people acting out of order here are those imposing the blockade. Imagine the standard that is being set. Why will the minister not instruct the RCMP to maintain law and order in northern Manitoba?”

In response to a question from Marie-Hélène Gaudreau

“I mostly support this election bill, but I am disappointed the government rejected our changes. We wanted better security at ballot boxes and fewer loopholes for outside advertising. We will keep pushing the government to make our election laws stronger so Canadians can trust our votes.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague is not on the procedure and House affairs committee anymore, but we spent years there, particularly in the previous Parliament when foreign interference was front and centre and prevalent not only at the committee but also in the national spotlight, and I want to thank her for her work there. The Bloc Québécois has some issues with the bill. The Conservatives have some issues. Some of those are the same, some of those are different, but we broadly support the measures contained in the bill. We are disappointed that the government voted down certain important amendments that we put forward, like mandating better security at ballot boxes and closing third party advertising loopholes, for example. We are going to continue to call on the government to strengthen the Canada Elections Act to make sure that we can have confidence and trust in the institutions of the Government of Canada, particularly in the institution that is responsible for delivering elections, which are the foundation of our democracy.”

In response to a question from Arielle Kayabaga

“This election bill does not go far enough. We need stricter rules on outside groups spending money in elections. The election commissioner also has too much power to give out fines without a judge checking the decision. We also need to set up the foreign influence registry.”

“Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of issues that are certainly a bit problematic. I laid that out in my speech. I trust that my colleague, who sits on the committee, was also there when we were asking specific questions about just how third party funding is still allowed to happen in the general elections of Canada. Our position as Conservatives is that we should be clamping down on that even more. Is it being clamped down on a bit more than it was before? Yes, it is. Has it gone far enough? No, it has not. Are there still issues with the commissioner of elections potentially having a bit too much power and authority now, without having a second set of eyes like a judge or somebody? The amount of administrative penalty that can be levied right now is certainly a bit problematic. Obviously, we are happy with what has happened with the longest ballot committee, but we think more could have been done there as well, and it would be nice if we could finally get that foreign interference registry stood up.”

“We will support this bill to improve our election laws, but it does not go far enough. It still leaves a big loophole that lets outside groups take foreign money between elections and use it to influence Canadian politics.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to speak to this government legislation again, Bill C-25, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act. I am a member of the procedure and House affairs committee and have scrutinized this proposed legislation in my capacity there. I also spoke about this bill a couple of months ago, in mid-April. In that speech, I highlighted that this is a much-needed piece of legislation, one that Conservatives have been calling for since before the 2019 election. There are some good things in the bill, some much-needed tools to help handle foreign interference in our elections. However, as I noted not even two months ago, it does not go far enough, especially with how it pertains to third party fundraising and foreign contributions. As we heard clearly from expert witnesses at the procedure and House affairs committee, Bill C-25 would improve the protection that Canadians have with respect to the electoral process, including from dangers posed by hostile foreign actors. However, it would leave some major holes, primarily regarding foreign contributions outside the election period. How do we know this? We know because we as Conservatives are the ones who have been advocating for changes to the Canada Elections Act to deal with this very issue for quite some time now. I will take some of the folks in this room way back with me to May 8, 2019. That is the day that my private member’s bill, Bill C-406, was voted down at second reading in this very chamber. The goal of the bill, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act with respect to foreign contributions, was to deal with exactly this problem then, the same problem we are talking about now, seven years ago and three elections before the one that we just had. The bill I proposed, Bill C-406, was a bill that would have amended the Elections Act to prohibit foreign contributions to third parties for election advertising purposes. This is very important to me, because third party funding certainly comes in the form of advocacy and is used by third parties in campaigns to campaign against what I would consider to be the financial interests of the people I represent and of my home province, Alberta. I also understood at that time that, just out of a matter of principle, Canadians and Canadians alone should be the ones funding, debating and voting in a Canadian general election. It does make sense. Foreign entities and countries outside our borders likely should not be able to fundraise or spend money for political purposes here in Canada. That in itself is a breach of public trust and is, I think, by very definition of course, a semblance of foreign interference, whether it is happening covertly or not. If we do not know about it, it is a problem. My private member’s bill would have stopped that foreign fundraising that influences our elections here in Canada. It would have addressed the very issues that Bill C-25 claims to address. Here we are, nearly a decade later. Members will never guess what happened. The Liberals voted against the bill, including the Liberal MP for Scarborough—Guildwood—Rouge Park, who is now the public safety minister, the same one who is now overseeing a new foreign agent registry that was recently introduced by the Liberals, despite his having been rabidly opposed to such a registry when it was the Conservatives, my former colleague Kenny Chiu, who proposed it. This is one of those that make a person go, “hmm”. It is almost as if the Liberals will support a good policy only once they have been dragged through the wringer to actually see that it is a good idea. I do not know why that is, but they just genetically oppose every idea we pose to them until their ideas start to miserably fail and afflict Canadians some four to eight years later. Then, all of a sudden, they see the light and do the things we have been telling them they should have been doing all along. It does not exactly breathe confidence into the issue of dealing with foreign interference, does it? We know that this is a theme. The Liberals often chastise Conservatives for big, sweeping policy ideas, but give it half a decade, and once the chickens come home to roost on the cabal of bad ideas across the way, they will eventually adopt Conservative ideas, rebrand them and package them as their own. The Prime Minister did it at Oxford with his thesis and is doing it here as well in the House of Commons. I only wish the Liberals had long ago adopted my idea of banning foreign nationals and entities from donating to and supporting third parties for election advertising purposes. It seems like common sense to me, but that might not be such a common thing across the aisle. We studied the issue at length at committee, where we heard from several witnesses, including, most recently, Gerald Chipeur, that the bill does not go far enough and would need to crack down even harder on foreign monetary contributions. In other words, there would still be a gaping hole that would allow foreign entities to send money to third parties, which could end up influencing, affecting or being spent in our general elections. The bill would crack down, but it would not prohibit. It would not go far enough. There would still be wide open loopholes for foreign funding to pour into Canadian elections. Foreign contributions for political purposes would still be allowed in Canada; Bill C-25 would not change that. Lots of witnesses who came before the procedure and House affairs committee testified that, in their opinion, this is completely unacceptable. I think that most Canadians, if they knew money was coming in to third parties from outside Canada and being spent on elections advertising, would be quite concerned. What also came out of our foreign interference study at committee, perhaps most notably, was our former candidate Joe Tay’s testimony. Mr. Tay was our Conservative candidate of record in Don Valley North. Former Liberal MP Paul Chiang put a bounty on him during the 2025 election. Chiang encouraged folks to turn Mr. Tay in to the Chinese consulate in Toronto for a cash reward. There was already an arrest warrant for Mr. Tay, issued by the Communist regime in Beijing for making pro-democracy comments from here in Canada about what is going on in Hong Kong and China. This was a Liberal MP at the time basically encouraging the kidnapping of a political adversary. Goodness knows what would have happened if Mr. Chiang had actually gotten his way. We also know, based on testimonies at the committee from volunteers on Mr. Tay’s campaign, that they were stalked, followed, intimidated and harassed by individuals. These were campaign volunteers, for crying out loud. It is hard enough to find people to come out to participate in our elections. The last thing we need is foreign entities and foreign funds coming in to discourage, intimidate and harass campaign volunteers, regardless of the political party they are helping. This is just wrong across the board. It is wrong not just when it happens to Conservatives; it is wrong when it happens to Liberal, NDP or Bloc members, or to anybody. Since these incidents, the Prime Minister has praised Paul Chiang as a person of integrity, and he has also strengthened Canada’s ties with the People’s Republic of China through trade and security partnerships. Just over a year ago, on the debate stage during the 2025 election, the Prime Minister admitted that the biggest threat to Canada’s security was the Communist regime in China. I am not sure, but I would like to know where that Prime Minister went. Across the aisle, the Liberals expect us to believe that they are serious about halting foreign interference. They will have to give me a bit of a break, because I am not buying what they are selling. I try to make it make sense, but it just does not. We are talking about the individuals who are interfering in our elections and meddling in our campaigns. They are targeting our people, and they are spending money on propaganda campaigns that endanger Canadians, especially those in specific diaspora communities. The bill would do nothing to solve these problems. Sure, the bill would crack down on foreign spending during the writ period, but it would leave a massive hole for foreign entities to pour money into political advertising outside the writ period. For folks that are watching at home and wondering what the writ period is, I will explain. There is a writ period, and when we have a fixed election, there is a pre-writ period, and then there are the three years in between. During those three years, third parties will not be required to separate the molecules, per se, so any money that comes in to those third parties from foreign entities during that time frame will not be scrutinized by Elections Canada. They can just bankroll all these things in the pre-writ period and then spend as much as they want during the writ period during a fixed election. Do not take my word for it; this comes directly from constitutional legal experts who gave their testimony at a committee and said that they agreed with the exact interpretation we had when we read the bill. It would still leave that gaping hole. Conservatives have been talking about foreign interference for nearly a decade. After 2021, our leader at the time brought up the issue of foreign interference in our elections. He was supported by our former colleague, Kenny Chiu from Steveston—Richmond East, who warned for years about foreign interference before being a victim of it himself. These are the issues we have had. We have had a public inquiry into foreign interference. The government dragged its feet on that and finally succumbed to the mountains of pressure that were put on it at the time. It seemed to be reluctant the whole time. It is almost as if the foreign interference regime that had been orchestrated in the last couple of elections had a blind eye turned to it, because it obviously benefited somebody in the chamber. I am glad to see that it looks like the government is trying to change its ways and is presenting this bill. Conservatives still have massive concerns with it, but we will be supporting the bill and would make sure the Canada Elections Act is, if not perfect, at least better than it is today.”

“I want to know why the government is rushing to debate this election bill instead of dealing with the economy and crime. The next election is years away, and this bill does not even fix political money rules between elections.”

“Mr. Speaker, let us expand on what the government House leader just said. Given the fact that the proposed changes in Bill C-25 would do nothing for the inter-writ period as far as election financing is concerned, and given that the government has complained so much about other pieces of legislation dealing with economic and crime issues, I find it kind of odd, since the ill-gotten majority the Liberals have means that the next election, in theory, is not going to be for another three years. Why would they use the extended hours at the end of the session to discuss an election bill, when it would not do anything in the inter-writ period?”

In response to a question from Warren Steinley

“The Liberals cause shortages, spend borrowed money to fix them, and enrich their friends. This heavy government spending does not work. It only increases the debt and makes problems like housing worse.”

“Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague knows the answer to this, but here is how the Liberals do it. They take whatever the global agenda happens to be. Financial markets and central bankers, like the current Prime Minister, create global scarcity for a certain product, drive up the demand for it by creating that scarcity and then come up with socialist-type deficit spending to solve the problem, which all of the insiders, their friends and their big corporate interests, then grift on. That is why we are in this mess. They can apply this to housing or any of the other aspect of our economy. Have members ever noticed that nothing ever gets done in this country unless the government spends a bunch of taxpayers’ dollars along with it? It does not seem to work, does it? All that happens is our deficit goes up and things get worse.”

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