Elizabeth May

“I support this bill, but I dislike that debate is being cut short. I wanted the bill to protect seniors from being controlled and abused by people close to them. I want the justice minister to introduce a new bill that stops this kind of elder abuse.”

“Madam Speaker, the hon. Minister of Justice will know that I have never seen a debate closure motion that I liked. I think time allocation is overused. I support Bill C‑16, although I regret that my amendments to extend coercive control to protect seniors from elder abuse were not accepted in this round. Perhaps I can use this opportunity to ask him, since the bill now contains a periodic review, if the justice department would not see fit to bring in a bill against elder abuse, specifically dealing with the coercive control of seniors by those who are close to them or make the pretense of being close to them.”

“I want the government to condemn the United States and Israel for attacking Iran. Those attacks broke international law. Canada must always stand up for international law, even when our allies break it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am rising at the hour of adjournment, or as we colloquially call it around here, the late show, to pursue a question I asked the Prime Minister but to which the response came from the hon. Minister of Foreign Affairs. The question I asked was on March 9 and was in relation to the events of February 28, when, illegally, the government of Israel and the government of the United States authorized attacks, strikes, on Iran. In my question to the hon. minister, I quoted our former minister of foreign affairs, the Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, who actually wrote to the Toronto Star to say, “Canada once rejected America’s aggressive, unlawful foreign policy. Today [the Prime Minister] embraced it.” He went on to say, again quoting Lloyd Axworthy, “Under the [United Nations] Charter, cross-border uses of force are prohibited except in two narrow cases”. He then pointed out that Operation Epic Fury, as the White House called it, applies to neither. I wanted to ask the Prime Minister at the time whether he would belatedly condemn what the U.S. and Israel did in attacking Iran. The response from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, just to summarize, was that while we support Iran’s never obtaining nuclear weapons, this support is not a blank cheque. Canada reaffirms that international law binds all parties. The U.S. and Israel must respect the rules of international engagement. In other words, this stopped and fell short of a condemnation of our allies’ ignoring international law. That is in fact what we did. The condemnation should have been from Canada’s government immediately. I want to include in my brief remarks tonight while pursuing this question something that I rarely do. I would like to thank a member of the opposition benches, a newly elected member of Parliament from the riding that abuts mine, shall we say, my neighbour, the hon. Liberal member for Victoria, who was, prior to entering politics, associate professor of international law at the University of Victoria. He was unequivocal in issuing a written statement that Canada’s response fell short. I will quote the hon. member for Victoria as he was quoted in the Times Colonist: “Canada cannot endorse the unilateral and illegal acts of military force”. He went on to call for “a consistent Canadian standard, one that applies the laws of war and the principle of protecting civilians, whether the actors are allies or adversaries.” The difficulty we have is that Canada should have been quick to condemn in the first Trump administration. I think we actually did that when the Trump administration tore up the agreement that had been reached with Iran, which was working. Of course the goal is to make sure Iran never has nuclear weapons. The Government of Iran is ruthless, ignores human rights, is abusive and also exports terrorism. Nobody questions that, but ignoring international law is a grave error. In the case of the original U.S.-Iran deal, it was working. It was “Trust but verify”. The international atomic energy experts were getting access to all the research facilities. As the time passes, I wonder what the government is saying about the United Nations charter and international law. Is it only when it is convenient?”

In response to a question from Mario Beaulieu

“I agree with my colleague. The government's current policies mean Canada will not meet its climate goals. This will hurt our economy and our security, here and around the world.”

“Mr. Speaker, I completely agree with my Bloc Québécois colleague. It is clear that this is, unfortunately, a real tragedy. I am very disappointed. It is now clear that, with the current policies, the Government of Canada can no longer meet the Paris Agreement targets. That will have a huge impact on Canada’s security and the economy, as well as worldwide. We have a great challenge ahead of us and the Government of Canada and the Prime Minister have decided that they are not interested in the future. I do not understand how it is possible for someone who understands the crisis to make these decisions.”

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  This statement targeted a person rather than their actions or views: “the Government of Canada and the Prime Minister have decided that they are not interested in the future”.

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In response to a question from Andrew Lawton

“I voted for the budget because the Liberals promised not to give tax credits for oil recovery. They broke that promise within ten days. If I had known they would do that, I would have voted against the budget.”

“Mr. Speaker, I did vote for it, and I stand here as the only member of the opposition who voted for the Liberal budget, because not only was I given oral promises, but the commitment against putting forward investment tax credits for enhanced oil recovery was also in black and white and printed in the budget. That was reversed within 10 days of that vote, so yes, I would have voted against the budget had I known the Liberals did not intend to keep words that were printed in the budget. That is quite something. It is a new record. Some governments forget what they said they were going to put in a budget, and two or three years later they have not done it, but I have never seen a promise in a budget reversed. Neither had the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, which is why he is going to be leaving this place.”

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In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The Conservatives have already helped the government pass many bills. The Liberals do not need to rush this debate. Pushing bills through without enough study will hurt the government later.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will not concede it because it is not true. The reality is that the Conservatives have been more than obliging in helping the government pass lots of legislation, including Bill C-5, and including things I found astonishing. The reality is that now, with the new Liberal majority, we are seeing time allocation when it is not needed and pushing things through before they are properly studied. In the end, and I offer this from my heart as a warning to the majority Liberals, this will come back to bite them.”

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“The government is rushing this budget bill through without giving us enough time to debate it. I oppose this bill because it weakens safety rules for pesticides. It removes regular safety reviews for toxic chemicals, which puts our health and environment at risk.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets for sharing her time with me. Unfortunately, I disagree with her last comment that we have time to debate the bill now. Given the gag order, enough time to debate the bill is exactly what we do not have. I want to speak to what is happening here. I am going to throw in Bill C-30, because I was not allowed to speak to it. We rushed through it so fast that I did not get a speech at second reading. For Bill C-30 and Bill C-31, back-to-back omnibus budget bills, both had a reduction of debate. Due to the newly minted majority Liberal government, we were not given the normal amount of time to have debate before moving to the vote at second reading. I am sure the Speaker recognizes how often I have raised this concern in the House. It has accelerated. It is becoming de rigueur. It is almost with every single bill that we are told we have had enough time to talk about it and we move on. There are many things that one would focus on with respect to two omnibus bills. What I want to focus on in the time I have is with respect to the one we are debating today, Bill C-31, which is 331 pages long. I lugged it around with me all weekend. There is only one part of it that I want to raise now, but there would be more. When we get to committee perhaps I will get an opportunity to say a word or two. These are budget implementation acts. Bill C-30 has now passed second reading and Bill C-31 is what we are debating now. One would think there would be a very strong connection to the budget. That is what the point is; these are implementation of the budget. In Bill C-30 and Bill C-31, I want to talk about the significant changes to the Pest Control Products Act. We remember that the 2025 budget was all about build Canada strong. There is one line about the Pest Control Products Act, which is now the subject of changes in Bill C-30 and Bill C-31. Here is one line from budget 2025, which states, “the government proposes to amend legislation to remove cyclical pesticide re-evaluations to enable modern, risk-based oversight.” According to Prevent Cancer Now and Ecojustice, one of the country’s leading environmental law groups, this is not about modern risk-based oversight, but about reducing the regulation of pesticides, reducing environment and health and safety controls that can actually affect human health, as well as the environment, in ways that I found completely shocking. Because the debate on Bill C-30 was shut down after three hours, there was not time for every member or even every party to make a speech. I did manage to ask the parliamentary secretary for finance when it was first tabled how it was that there were these provisions to so weaken pesticide oversight and pesticide reviews. I asked if it would be possible to have a section of the bill, division 8, go to a committee on health or the environment to be studied. The hon. parliamentary secretary said he would look into it, but I have heard nothing further and, as far as we know, this is going to the finance committee, not a health and safety committee. I have not had an opportunity to speak to this in the House, and it does relate to Bill C-31, because it is more of the same. Bill C-30 says, which is astonishing, that if a minister decides that a pest control product is so dangerous it cannot be used, that usually is the end of the matter. This refers to a pesticide, and this covers herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides and all manner of products that are intended to kill living things, insecticides and herbicides being the most common. However, now, because of Bill C-30, which as I said was pushed through second reading after three hours of debate, the cabinet can override the Minister of Health or the Minister of Environment if they consider it “necessary to do so to protect national economic security, regional economic security, or national food security.” Going back to the original budget, we see that they have thrown in this justification here and there. Sometimes, it is referenced as having to make these measures because they want to move to, as I mentioned before, modern oversight. In other places, it is referenced as though we can bring down the cost of groceries if we use more pesticides. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Having worked on pesticides in this country as an environmental lawyer, and before that as an activist, I have worked on pesticide issues in this country since 1975. In any case, no government has ever attempted something as reckless as what Bill C-30 would do in saying that the decision of the minister responsible, when a substance is too dangerous to be used, could be overturned by cabinet, at cabinet’s discretion, if it seems that it affects, astonishingly, “national economic security, regional economic security or national food security”. These are the kinds of cuts to regulations that Margaret Thatcher engaged in that led to mad cow disease. We do not cut corners on health and safety. We do not cut corners on pesticide regulation for national economic concerns, overriding a minister of environment or a minister of health. It is quite surprising. I was unable to speak to Bill C-30 at second reading debate, and now we have come to Bill C-31. I have to say I was astonished, in reading the 331 pages of Bill C-31, to find that it too takes aim at the Pest Control Products Act. This time it is found in division 13 in changes to the Pest Control Products Act to reduce the mandatory review every 15 years to look at a substance and, if the situation has changed, to have an evaluation. They are routine, but the bill we have before us today would change the review, and this gets murky. As someone who practised law, I know that one of the things we hate to see in new legislation is a change to the definitions because, by the time most legislation has gone around for a couple of years, and this legislation has been around for decades, the meaning of the words is clear, so there is not a lot of room for uncertainty and not knowing what we are dealing with. In this legislation, we suddenly have the discretionary initiating of an assessment and then, if the minister is convinced that, on the basis of the assessment, the health and safety and the environmental risks of a registered pest control product have increased significantly, then the minister may have a re-evaluation, but the minister may also decide at any time to stop the re-evaluation. Therefore, there would be no certainty and, certainly from a public health point of view and from an environmental point of view, this would fundamentally weaken the regime within which we use chemicals and products that are, by definition, intended to be toxic. They are intended to kill things. It is not an accident. That is their purpose. Therefore, the notion that we would no longer have cyclical re-evaluations undermines science. That is the bottom line. Ecojustice, one of Canada’s pre-eminent environmental law groups, finds that this must be amended, that we must maintain cyclical re-evaluations and uphold science-based decision-making. Earlier today, one of the members here presented a really important petition, and I am wondering if these things are not connected. Is there a pro-pesticide bias emerging from the current government that connects with cuts at the Swift Current agriculture research station in Swift Current, Saskatchewan? It was the country’s pre-eminent research hub for many years in organic agriculture. Does the current government dislike the idea of organic agriculture? Does it want to promote pesticide-based agriculture? Again, here we are. This bill has had, as far as I can count, about one and a half days of debate. In its first day of debate, most of the debate time was taken up by the farewell speech of the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie. The time is up, but we have to let Canadians know that this is unacceptable.”

“Why is a minority government better for democracy than a majority government?”

“Mr. Speaker, I really enjoyed my colleague’s speech. My question is about the last part of his speech, when he talked about the difference between a minority and a majority Parliament, from a democracy standpoint. Some citizens, some Quebeckers, do believe that it is better if the government has a majority. Why is a minority government better for democracy?”

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“I am worried that Canada is not living up to its reputation for helping others. Does the minister agree that we need to do more, and is there a plan and a timeline to fix this?”

“Mr. Chair, as the minister hears from every corner of the House, there is deep concern that her department is not delivering for the safety and security of Canadians, but my concern is far more that we are not delivering on our own reputation for being compassionate and humanitarian people. Will the minister agree that much more needs to be done, and is there a timeline and a strategy to deliver on these concerns?”

“I want to know why immigration takes so long. Does the department need more money or more workers to process people?”

“Mr. Chair, does the minister believe there is a lack of financial resources to her department? Is it a lack of people power that makes this a grinding misery for so many people who either are here and wanting their permanent residency or are overseas and wanting to come here?”

“It should not be so hard for permanent residents to get visitor visas for their parents to visit their grandchildren. Why are these visas taking so long?”

“Mr. Chair, it should not be so difficult when people are living in Canada as permanent residents and want to bring their parents here on a TRV to visit their grandchildren. Why is that so bottlenecked?”