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MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT

Elizabeth May

Green Saanich—Gulf Islands 251 statements translated

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May presses the government to keep its climate commitments and its promises to Indigenous peoples, pushing to shut down open net-pen salmon farms by 2029 and to amend the online harms bill so directors of social media companies face jail time for failing to protect children. She often wanders into asides mid-argument, musing, “For any insomniacs watching CPAC,” before returning to the point.Written by AI from their statements. Updated .

Average grade
A–
85 / 100 over 198 statements
Signal 78 / 100
Relevance 82 / 100
Respect 100 / 100
Clarity 97 / 100
Loses points more than most for A remark off to the side of the point.2.1 times as often as most members.What the tags mean ×2.1 Thanks and tributes.1.6 times as often as most members.What the tags mean ×1.6 A story that illustrates instead of making a point.1.6 times as often as most members.What the tags mean ×1.6 Loses points less than most for A promise with no date, no measure and no one responsible.Less often than most members.What the tags mean Averaged over the 198 of 251 statements graded so far.

Statements 251

Government Orders ·

Government Business No. 12—Proceedings on Bill C-30

“I will vote against this motion to speed up the budget bill. The government is cutting off debate and rushing the bill through, just like the Conservatives used to do. It also packed too many different things into one bill, including bad rules that weaken pesticide controls. We should sit longer into the summer to properly debate this law instead of rushing it.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is often that I find myself here wondering if this place has turned into something not quite like a sports arena, in the style of the Trump White House, with its caged sport for the celebration of 250 years of independence, which is a topic that is not necessarily connected to this at all, but, for sporting spectacles, this place sometimes resembles nothing more than target practice for teams that live in glass houses. It is difficult to watch. I know that I must have a glass house somewhere, but with the Green Party never having been in power, we have less of a record to attack. I do vividly recall when the Harper administration started using, as a matter of course, very long omnibus budget bills, which the Liberals of the day decried as burying too much in one bill, not properly reflecting or advancing the initial version of the budget and being done routinely. We then had, of course, the Harper administration bringing in repetitive motions for time allocation. I remember the first time I had started noticing that it had become quite routine. I went back, looked it up and found out that, over a period of 40 years, which is not that far back in our history, it had happened about 10 times. I started adding them up and keeping track, and it became hundreds of times. Of course, when in opposition, the Liberals pledged that they would never bring in omnibus budget bills containing many different measures in one piece of legislation and that they certainly would not use time allocation to shorten the time we have available to do those things. Again, both of the large parties live in, I must say, very large and well-equipped glass homes, but they are still throwing rocks at the same glass houses in which they live. They have both moved to omnibus budget bills once in power. The Liberals have done it, first under former prime minister Trudeau and now under the current Prime Minister. They also have continued to use time allocation. My own plea comes from my own little perch on parliamentary procedure. I know that it is against the rules of this place to have a member stand to deliver a written speech. If we followed that rule, I believe House leaders would be able to come to an agreement more quickly about how many speakers it would take to get a bill through the House. Listening to debate on the motion so far, I am reminded that, as the parliamentary secretary says to us all, we have to use time allocation or we cannot get this passed. To which I say, again, this is a glass house. It is like a child who has killed both of their parents pleading for mercy because they are an orphan. Why are we under time pressure? It is because the government of the day decided that we could shorten the amount of time we are sitting in June. Let us eliminate two days and create more pressure, meaning that it has to be passed now. Why is there no discussion about sitting longer? Why is there no discussion about what happened between when Bill C‑30 was first tabled on April 29 and when we next got back to it? After three hours of debate, the government moved time allocation on Bill C‑30. It is not a massive omnibus budget bill, but it is omnibus enough that I certainly had no indication that I was going to come across division 8, which has the most regressive pieces of the deregulation of pesticide legislation that I have seen. Believe it or not, as I know I look like a mere slip of a girl, someone who has just barely left law school, I have been working on pesticide issues for 51 years. This is the worst piece of deregulation I have ever seen, and it is inside an omnibus budget bill. I would be happy to support many of the provisions in the spring economic statement. There are some I would not. That is the nature of an omnibus bill. There are many things affecting many different bills, done all in one vote and all in one go. This time it is with the added factor that we do not have a lot of time. Who controls the timing? The government controls the timing. Who controls what bills come forward for debate, for Government Orders, for orders of the day? The government side does that. My hon. friends on the finance committee, I must say, performed the most extraordinary filibuster I have ever seen, in terms of creativity. I sat through all of it because I kept hoping against hope that we would maybe get to clause-by-clause and that my amendments could be discussed and debated. However, again, the pattern of the House of Commons since forever has been that the parties in opposition will use whatever tools they have at their disposal. It was decades ago that the Conservatives left the bells ringing for days. It takes a while, but the government regroups and finds a new way to get around that particular effort to put a spanner in the works. This is not uncommon, but what is uncommon is the use of programming motions, and I say this to my hon. colleagues on the Liberal benches. The first extremely offensive programming motion, in my experience as a member of Parliament since 2011, was what happened in June last year with the programming motion on Bill C-5, which saw us take the most extraordinary seizure of power and expansion to the power of the executive cabinet in a bill, Bill C-5, which included provisions I never thought I would see in Canada, and say that, if in passing this law we break other laws we have already passed, that is okay. This is based on a historical and never-used-in-Canada archival bit of trivia. It was Henry VIII who came up with that. If in passing this law, we break other laws we have passed before, that is okay. This extraordinary abuse of power was in Bill C-5, building Canada strong and reducing interprovincial trade barriers in part 1, which went through this place. I will never forget it because I still feel like I was caught under a bulldozer going right over me. It was Monday, June 16, when the programming motion took effect, and second reading took place with limited debate to pass it to committee. By the way, on the Monday, June 16, we did not even have a committee in place yet to deal with the bill. On Tuesday, June 17 at 3:30 p.m., the committee was put in place, one committee for all these provisions. Then the committee could start hearing witnesses in the afternoon. By Wednesday at noon, all amendments were due and so on until we got through report stage and third reading, both on Friday, June 20. Then we were adjourned for the summer, and we were told it was a monstrous hurry that we have a Major Projects Office. It was very important to able to see projects come through this process, which is why we could not, as I pleaded at the time, stay longer through the summer, discuss this bill, debate this bill, to see whether this extreme sweeping accumulation of powers by the executive was in any way justified. They said we were in a hurry, except it has been a whole year now, and the bill has not been used once to name a project through Bill C-5. Again, here we are on Motion No. 12 on Bill C-30. I am thankful for the way the unanimous consent motion was structured. I will have a chance to speak at third reading on Bill C-30 on the specifics of the part I most decry. I still hope against hope that the finance committee tomorrow will see fit to accept the amendments I have put forward and deemed to be moved. I have been, as I said, patiently waiting while admiring the artistry of the Conservative filibuster. I must say I have had more fun watching paint dry. It is always more interesting. On the other hand, it was artful. Although I do not agree with why the Conservatives were filibustering, I do sometimes, as a person who is observing glass houses more than living in them, enjoy the karma of the whole thing. I will vote against Motion No. 12 because it is offensive to democracy to have programming motions that say we must move fast, that we must not debate, that we must not consider. I find over and over again that there has been nothing like the current government for moving fast, and there has been nothing like the current government for treating Parliament with a kind of casual contempt. As a Canadian and someone who deeply believes in Westminster parliamentary democracy, I personally find it offensive. I may be the only one, but I think Canadians want to see this place respected and want to know that every bill has been properly studied. For one, I would be prepared to say that if properly studying bills means we cut into the summer and we are in Ottawa longer to do it, that is the right thing to do.

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“The member said we had plenty of time to debate this bill. But after it was introduced, we only debated it for three hours over a whole month before the government cut debate short. Does the member remember what happened during that month?”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Saskatoon West made the point that there was ample time. I just went back to double-check. First reading on Bill C‑30 was on April 29, and then time allocation, after three hours of debate, was moved a whole month later, basically, on May 25. Does the member recall, because I am trying to recall, what happened with Bill C‑30 between first reading and when the government decided to bring in time allocation?

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Government Orders ·

Government Orders

“The finance committee got stuck because the government hid unrelated rules about pesticides inside this huge budget bill. That is why we oppose cutting off debate on it.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my friend, the member for Mirabel, for pointing out in his speech that I was also present at the Standing Committee on Finance during the 30 hours when the committee was effectively deadlocked. It is not the fault of the committee members. Does my colleague agree that the root of the problem is that we are seized with an omnibus budget bill containing a hidden clause that applies to an entirely separate matter, namely pesticides? That is why we are angry now about the idea of another closure.

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Government Orders ·

Government Business No. 12—Proceedings on Bill C-30

“I want the government to slow down and stop rushing this budget bill through. It hides big changes, like letting dangerous pesticides be used for economic reasons, that have barely been studied or debated.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, over the course of this debate, I have heard a number of things said that need to be referenced. As my hon. friend from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake pointed out, we have actually had one hour, or maybe a bit more by now, for the programming motion we are debating right now, and now we have closure on that programming motion, which is all about speeding things up. The hon. member says that the government was elected and “we were elected”. I remember the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie pointing out that climate change was mentioned 28 times in what the government was elected to do. Pipelines were not mentioned once. I will remind the hon. member that, in the spring economic statement, there is no reference at all to deciding that, if a pesticide is considered too dangerous for use, that decision can be overturned for economic reasons. That is now buried in an omnibus budget bill that only got studied at the finance committee and, even there, very briefly. That is not due to the Conservative filibuster, but to the priority of the whole committee in what witnesses got called. Therefore, I beg of the government to not push this through without taking the time necessary, to not push through those buried bits in the omnibus budget bill without any real discussion or debate.

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“The government is cutting short debate far too often. This budget bill includes surprise rules, like deregulating dangerous pesticides, that were not in the economic plan. I want the member to explain why we are not given enough time to study these bills.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I suppose I will echo the comments of my friend from the Conservative benches, the member for Edmonton West, a moment ago. The programming motions, the time allocations, are becoming routine. They used to be rare exceptions. I am honoured to have been serving here for the last 15 years, so saying something as simple as “I have never seen anything like it” might mean something. The spring economic statement did not, in any way, foretell what would be in Bill C-30. A budget implementation bill is supposed to be about implementing what one reads in the economic statement. This one did not make anything of it. There is one line where we were going to include that regulatory agencies get to consider food security and food prices. It did not say that we plan to deregulate pesticides so that we can use them when they are too dangerous. I am wondering if the hon. member would explain why it is that we do not have adequate time to study bills in this place under the new administration.

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Government Orders ·

Bail and Sentencing Reform Act

“The government is rushing this bill through because it chose to end our work two days early. We should stay longer this summer to properly debate bills. I did not agree to pass this bill, and small parties did not get a fair chance to say no.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, when the hon. Minister of Justice says we have a very small window to push through legislation, that is entirely due to the government’s decision to adjourn two days early. I wish the government had come to me and asked how I would feel about staying later this summer to properly study bills and not push through the destruction of pesticide regulations in an omnibus budget bill. I know it is not the minister’s problem, but we are being pushed to the last minute and told we could not debate something as important as the Senate amendments to Bill C‑14. I opposed Bill C‑14. It was never passed unanimously, contrary to what the Liberal deputy House leader said. It was on division because members like me, who are not in a recognized party, cannot even stand up and scream “no” when they decide to vote on division.

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Adjournment Proceedings ·

Adjournment Proceedings

“The committee that protects endangered wildlife does not have enough money to do its work. Because of budget cuts, it had to cut its required meetings from two a year down to one. It cannot keep up with helping animals that need protection, like the southern resident killer whales.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. friend, and he is a friend, the parliamentary secretary. Let me give him an example right now that is not hypothetical. None of the wonderful press releases he has mentioned has done a single thing to allow the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada to have a budget sufficient enough to hold the meetings it is required to hold by law. It is supposed to assess and monitor species at risk along a continuum from threatened to critically endangered, but these top-notch scientists have to meet to do that. The committee did not have a budget to meet, so it has gone from two meetings required a year down to one, and it is not going to have enough time to plow through the backlog of species that need attention, need recovery plans and need habitat attention. At the same time that the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada cannot meet, we see a discussion paper that says maybe it is okay to lose the southern resident killer whales. It is not acceptable.

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“The government is cutting science jobs and ignoring scientific advice. The Prime Minister does not even meet with his chief science adviser. I want the government to stop these cuts and listen to scientists before making decisions that harm nature and human health.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am pursuing a question I first asked on April 14. I have been concerned for some time that the new Liberal government has less respect for science than previous governments had. We recently mourned the death of our colleague Dr. Kirsty Duncan. In all the eulogies, people remembered her as the first minister of science in Canada. We may note, and I hate to say this, that she will be the last minister of science in Canada, because there is not one now. The gravitas, the importance, of scientific briefings and scientific advice from core government departments that are science-based is sorely lacking. This is reflected in the cuts to Environment and Climate Change and to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, to basic scientific research. Whole branches of science are being shut down in this country. A scientific expert, an anthropologist and taxonomist, contacted me because the whole national collection of insects in the Diptera order has been shut down. There are no scientists to pick up this work. They have all been laid off. An international petition was launched; 495 scientists from 47 different countries are raising the alarm about Canada’s dropping the ball. It may seem to people that it is obscure to keep track of what species of insect we have in our collection, but it can cause enormous economic damage when we lose the brainpower to know which insect is which. If it is an exotic species that does not belong in a particular forest, we need to know about it soon, and we need to take action. There are cuts across the board. An open letter was sent just today to the Prime Minister’s office, from 425 scientists from many jurisdictions, including internationally, concerned that the cuts to the ocean protection plan mean that we simply will not be able to understand and protect our marine environment. These are serious matters, and I asked the Prime Minister, in April, if he had ever consulted his chief science adviser about these cuts. The hon. parliamentary secretary made a good go of it, saying that, in general, people appreciated the advice of Dr. Mona Nemer, the Prime Minister’s chief science adviser. However, since I asked the question, I have had it verified that the Prime Minister has not once sat down to meet with his chief science adviser. This is deeply worrying. Changes are being proposed, such as in the massive discussion documents issued May 8, that would have profound impacts, endangering endangered species. Also, we are losing the precautionary principle. If we look, buried in the omnibus budget bill, Bill C-30, we find the single biggest assault on bringing evidence and science to bear on the dangers of pesticides to human health and the environment. However, buried in an omnibus bill, it will be studied only by the finance committee, which had no time to hear from witnesses really concerned about this issue. With that, I ask the government again, will it please rethink, stop and be concerned? The precautionary principle has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada as fundamental to our legal jurisprudence. In this country, we do not want to find ourselves once again with decision-based evidence-making. We need to look at the science and do our research first, before we decide we have to build whatever fast and not be concerned with what the scientists are warning us will occur if we fail to think first, plan well and then build.

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Government Orders ·

Government Business No. 11—Proceedings on Bill C-26

“I want the housing minister to explain why the government is turning the housing agency into a new corporation. Work is already under way, and the new bill does not add anything new or clearly state which minister is in charge.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am struggling with Bill C-20. I voted against it last evening. I am looking at Bill C-26. I am hoping the hon. Minister of Housing can explain to me why the good work done since September by Build Canada Homes, as a special operating agency, seems disconnected from the new Crown corporation. For Bill C-20, we do not even know who the responsible minister would be, because that hat could change based on what cabinet decides at any given time. Can the hon. minister explain to me why we have put so much effort into transferring a special operating agency into a Crown corporation, with nothing new in Bill C-20 and work already under way?

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Oral Questions ·

Health

“This bill rolls back health and environmental protections on pesticides more than ever before. Not even the industry asked for this. I want the Prime Minister to explain why the government is doing it.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, division 8 of Bill C-30, with only three hours of debate in this place before time allocation, represents the single largest rollback of health and environmental protection in the regulation of pesticides in the history of this country. I ask the government, I ask the Prime Minister, where did the pressure come from for this rollback? I am reliably informed that even industry did not ask for it. Why is the government doing this to our environment and our health?

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Government Orders ·

Build Canada Homes Act

In response to a question from Tamara Kronis

“I do not blame the minister for this problem. I blame the government.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I would say to my hon. colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith that I cannot speculate. I have known this minister a long time, so forgive me for trespassing into my personal history. I am terribly fond of him. I do not think it is the minister. I think it is the government.

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In response to a question from Jenny Kwan

“Creating another government agency seems to be just an excuse to make more announcements.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, without intending to sound snarky or partisan, I guess the point of establishing yet another Crown corporation is to have an excuse for another set of press releases.

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In response to a question from Ziad Aboultaif

“This bill is pointless and will not actually do anything. Moving this work from a government agency to a Crown corporation barely adds any transparency. The government needs to take real action on the housing crisis by building both market and non-market homes.”

  • Reply to a debate question

    Relevance 100 of 100

    Of this reply, 100% addressed the question or point raised.

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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, for my friend from Edmonton Manning, I want to be clear. The act would not do anything. I am not saying the government will not do anything. The act is kind of pointless, because the Liberals created a special operating agency. I would agree that there is a titch more transparency when we shift from an agency operating under the Treasury Board to a Crown corporation, but not much. I would demand that the government act and respond to the housing crisis with non-market housing and market housing. The bill does not do it by itself. It does not do anything.

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“I want the member to show me where this housing bill mentions working together with others. It is a short bill, and those things are not in it.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I know I cannot ask the member a question in response, but if he could show me the sections of the bill that talk about partnership, collaboration, working together and the things he just posed to me in the question, I would be fascinated to know where they are, because it is not that long a bill and they are not in here.

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“I am struggling with how to vote on this bill because it does almost nothing to fix the housing crisis. It only creates a new Crown corporation. It sets no timelines, has no targets to build homes, and does not hold anyone accountable. We should fix the housing agency we already have and treat homelessness like the emergency it is.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I confess that I have been struggling as to whether I vote for or against the bill. Of course, building homes for Canadians is a great goal. I would vote for that. I kept trying to figure out why it is that I am having trouble figuring out whether I would vote for it or against it. I guess it is because, when I really study the bill and think it through, it does absolutely nothing, even if fully implemented. That is troubling. I am just going to get to the bare bones. To Canadians who may be watching, what does Bill C-20 do? It is called an act respecting the establishment of Build Canada Homes. That is a familiar-sounding announcement because it was made on September 14, 2025, when the government created Build Canada Homes as a special operating agency. That is something it has done a couple of times since the new government came in. Special operating agencies operate under the Treasury Board in an opaque environment where nothing is particularly visible or transparent or included in legislation. We already created Build Canada Homes on September 14 of last year. We are creating Build Canada Homes but not as a special operating agency. The bill deals with that. It would now be a Crown corporation. The bill would set up a Crown corporation. That is what it would do. It does not talk about the housing crisis. It does not give tools to address the housing crisis. It sets no targets. It has no timelines. It does not talk about the housing crisis. The purpose is: ...to promote, support and develop the supply of affordable housing in Canada and to promote innovative and efficient building techniques in the housing construction sector in Canada. The rest of the bill is devoted to how many people are on the board of directors, what it can borrow and what it can lend. My favourite part of the bill, which, again, is a bill about setting up a corporation, is that this new corporation, Build Canada Homes, can actually take money from the federal government and give it to the federal government. It is lacking, shall we say, in ambition. The bill misses the point. If it is going to take us through the process of passing legislation in this place, it ought to have accountability. As the member for Vancouver East just pointed out, there is no minister of housing named in the bill as responsible. The minister shall be appointed by someone in the Privy Council at any given time, who will say, of the people around the cabinet table, this week it will be Joe. That is the kind of accountability we have here. That worries me. We also have the fundamental reality that since the end of the Second World War, since 1945, we have had the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC. Was there something wrong with CMHC? It has been massively cut. It is not being scrapped. We will still have CMHC. The Minister of Housing is responsible for CMHC. That is an entity we understand. Are there endless delays? Are there things that should be done better at CMHC? Yes, but for a government that wants to, as we always hear from the Prime Minister, move fast, why not use, fit for purpose, the institution we have already? It has in it fewer people who know what they are doing, but it still has a goal and a principle and a practice that understands that housing is a human right. We have two kinds of housing crises in Canada right now. I want to make sure that this is explicit in the rest of my remarks. We have a crisis of affordability in market housing. People earning good incomes cannot afford a good home. A lot of that is due to industry speculation, things like real estate investment trusts, corporations owning housing and making money out of speculation. That hurts, and so does the supply of housing not being adequate to our population. The first housing crisis, I will underscore, is a market housing supply problem for affordable housing in rental and ownership. The second housing crisis we have is acute, cruel, grinding homelessness and it is on the rise. What do we do about that? I want to share an inspiring example. I was so honoured to tour a little place called 12 Neighbours outside Fredericton. It was a few years ago now. I met Marcel LeBrun of Fredericton, a young man. He would maybe not think he is so young now. He is a multi-millionaire because of his own entrepreneurial instincts and because he got involved in an Internet company he built up and then sold. At a sermon in a Baptist church one day, he was called upon to do more. He made a big donation to a local homelessness group. Then he thought that was not quite enough and the homelessness problem was growing in Fredericton. Long story short, this is what Marcel LeBrun decided to do. He realized that one of the critical obstacles for building affordable homes and social, non-market housing was the cost of land, so he bought a bunch of land. Then he said, “I’m going to build 99 tiny homes on this land, 240-square-foot homes. This will give a person dignity, a home of their own. They can lock the door. It will be their home.” He applied to CMHC for funding. He was prepared to pay one-third of the cost of this project out of his own pocket. He was putting $12 million of his own money into it. CMHC told him it would take about two weeks to process. He built 35 homes before he heard from CMHC that his project was approved, because it took CMHC about a year and a half. He got it done. Not only did he get it done, but then he saw that these problems were acute. We cannot take someone who has been homeless, living in a tent or in an encampment in the woods, put them in their own home, and magically everything is good for them, because they lack community and they lack social skills. They are still wondering how they are going to make a living. He created a whole network of social enterprise around the housing development he built himself, for the people in his community, things like a local restaurant that people could come to, where the people who lived in his tiny homes could learn how to work in that restaurant. There is a trade shop, so people can learn how to use a Skilsaw. What Marcel LeBrun has done goes on and on. With supports for mental health and addiction, he did not just build homes. He built a community with love, care and compassion. That can be done in every community if we mandate CMHC to see if it can follow the model of what Marcel LeBrun did on his own to create sustainable long-term housing with strong mental health supports and built-in dignity and community. That is what we should be building. This Build Canada Homes bill is not about building homes. I am not being mean about it. If colleagues read it, they will see that the Build Canada Homes act is about setting up a Crown corporation, full stop. Build Canada Homes, Bill C-20, is about replacing a special operating agency set up last year with a Crown corporation this year. There are no goals, no timelines, no accountability, no listening to the briefs that the government got from the Assembly of First Nations about engaging indigenous people and no listening to the brief that it got from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, where the rubber really hits the road at the municipal housing level. That is where people have to figure out what we are going to do. The government is not listening to the co-operatives in this country. The Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada gave a great brief to the committee that studied this bill. Since the bill does not include timelines or goals, I think that, if we were to actually put meaning into this bill, the clerk of the committee would have said it was outside the scope of the bill, because the scope of the bill is to set up a Crown corporation. After that, well, I wish the current Minister of Housing a great deal of luck. I hope he becomes the designated minister. Maybe he can make something out of this, but this does nothing more than set up a Crown corporation. We need to do so much more. There will be money thrown at this Crown corporation, for sure. There will be chief executive officers and board members and it will function as a Crown corporation, but will it do more than what Marcel LeBrun did for the people of Fredericton? The first social housing ever built in this country was in the early part of the 1900s, after the Halifax explosion, when that devastating collision in Halifax Harbour wiped out homes for thousands of people and the government had to build housing for people. The government did it, and did it fast. Nobody froze that winter. Everybody was gotten into housing fast. We need to act like this is an emergency, because it is an emergency. Women my age in my riding are living in their cars. This is driving me to distraction. Why can we not find the housing, build the housing? There are so many delays. They are unintentional in many cases, but they show a lack of political will, which has to come from the top down. Yes, there are multiple levels of government involved, but the federal government, in Build Canada Homes, should set the standard and set some goals.

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“This bill does not name which minister is in charge. It lacks accountability.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Vancouver East anticipated my question, because I was just asking where the accountability measures are in the bill. I wonder if she has noticed, as I have, that the responsible minister is not actually listed. The bill just says they may be “designated by the Governor in Council”. Where is the accountability?

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“I want to make sure this bill actually gets homes built instead of just adding more government bureaucracy. I do not think the bill is a bad idea, but we need to deliver housing more efficiently.”

  • Question or comment in debate

    Signal 15 of 100

    Much of this statement went to praise, blame, greetings, routine procedure or general stories rather than reasons, requests or specific points.

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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I find it discouraging, as I am sure many members do, when the debates get overly partisan. I did not find the hon. member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge to be particularly partisan in his comments. Also, in a weird show of solidarity with a former member, I would like to point out that poor Bev Oda has been vilified for years for something that was not her fault. It is her fault that she is addicted to smoking, and her staff put her in a non-smoking hotel. She asked to be moved, and she never bothered to check that, where she was moving to, it was impossible to order breakfast without getting a $16 glass of orange juice. There are many things about which Bev Oda and I disagreed, but I served at the same time as her, and we did share a love of dogs, so I will just put that out there. My concern with this bill, and I will agree with my hon. friend from Pitt Meadows, is the proposed creation of new bureaucracies on bureaucracies. I will address this when I get a chance in my speech, but it does not mean that the Build Canada Homes idea is a bad idea. How do we get more efficient delivery, from a speech and money and a commitment to actually getting Canadians homes?

View on ourcommons.ca Grade D View analysis
“I agree that homes should be places to live, not investments. We need to build homes and communities that give people a good life, not just homes to sell for profit. I want to know what the member thinks a government corporation can do to make people's lives better.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, there was so much I agreed with in the speech the member gave. She referred to the fact that we should look at homes as homes and not as investments. If I am not quoting her accurately, I am sure she can correct me. The concept that Greens also bring to this is that we are building homes and communities. We are not just building homes for market purposes. We need to meet the needs of communities and help people actually have a life with dignity. I wonder if the member has any comments on the approach between a Crown corporation, bricks and mortar, and what we can do to make people’s lives better.

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“I do not oppose this bill, but it is only a first step. I worry that making this housing agency independent means the minister will not be held responsible for its work. Housing is too important for the minister to avoid accountability.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I have no objection to Bill C-16, but this is only the first step. Now there is a Crown corporation. A Crown corporation is better than having a special operating agency, which is where Build Canada Homes started out. However, I do have some concerns regarding the minister’s accountability and responsibility. The more independent the organization is, the less responsibility he bears. When it comes to the important issue of housing, accountability is crucial. The accountability question is the one that bothers me. We are seeing a lot of new Crown corporations created. Will the ministerial lines of accountability be as strong?

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Oral Questions ·

Points of Order

“I want to know when the government will protect children from artificial intelligence. Families in Tumbler Ridge are in court right now because their children were not protected.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, the first part of my question was this: I wonder how the slogan “artificial intelligence for all” lands in Tumbler Ridge, where seven families are now in court seeking redress for the loss of their children, who were not adequately protected. When will we see protection?

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