Garnett Genuis · TranslatePolitics.ca

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

2026-05-25

“I want to cheer for our party's parental leave plan. Our proposal is popular and flexible. It lets parents make their own choices. It's good for families and good for the economy. Petitioners want the government to use our plan. I look forward to the government's response.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure for me to be able to present a petition in support of the parental leave reforms announced by the Conservative Party. These are very popular reforms with petitioners and others. People want to see more flexible parental leave that allows people to make their own choices when it comes to integrating their work with time spent with family and children. Petitioners draw the attention of the House to the fact that Canada's existing parental leave system is far too rigid. It should support families, instead of forcing them into rigid choices that do not reflect the realities of modern parenting. Petitioners want to see more flexibility to allow a balance between work, caregiving and skills development during the early years of a child's life. The current parental leave system, outside of Quebec, does not generally allow parents to pause and later resume parental leave, even where a temporary return to work would better suit the needs of the family and the employer. Petitioners also point out that parents should be able to pursue education or skills training while on parental leave without loss of benefits, and that parents who provide occasional paid caregiving services to other families while caring for their own children should not face benefit clawbacks that discourage flexible work and the expansion of child care options. Petitioners call on the Government of Canada to implement the Conservative proposals for a better parental leave system, to establish more flexible parental leave policies, allowing parental leave benefits to be paused and resumed within the existing maximum parental leave time frame of 18 months by mutual agreement between employer and employee, to ensure that parents can pursue education or skills training while on parental leave without losing access to benefits and to create a caregiving exception to EI parental leave benefit clawbacks so that parents may provide limited paid caregiving without penalty. These changes are good for families, and they are good for the economy. They reflect the reality of the modern workforce, allowing people to continue to grow and develop their skills while being plugged into work at the same time as taking more time to be present and engaged with the lives of their children. I commend that petition to the consideration of the House, and I certainly look forward to hearing what the government has to say in response to it.

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Oral Questions

Employment

2026-05-08

“Liberals are not delivering. Conservatives have better ideas. The economy is losing jobs in construction and trades. The government should do something different to help trades workers find jobs.”

“I want the Prime Minister to act now because job losses are very high right now. The Prime Minister must do what we say to fix this problem.”

Adjournment Proceedings

2026-05-07

“You're just talking a lot without giving a real answer. Youth unemployment keeps getting worse. Your training changes didn't help. In fact, you made it harder for some students to get grants. Stop ignoring our ideas that might actually help. Why not let students in vocational schools get grants too?”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, that was not really an answer to what I asked. Here are the facts. We have a metastasizing youth unemployment crisis in this country. There are various factors and many factors of government policy that are contributing to it. We have put forward constructive solutions in the area of supporting families that I talked about today, reforming parental leave, and also in the area of addressing youth unemployment. We have been very constructive and clear with the government. The Liberals say they are willing to listen, but they do not really listen or respond to these constructive proposals we put forward. The member spoke about changes that the government has made in training. Here is what the government did in the last budget. It rendered ineligible vocational institutions to receive student grants. If someone studies at a university, they can get a student grant, but if they study at a vocational institution, preparing them for a specific vocational career where there are shortages, the government has cut that out. What we suggest is that the government not discriminate against students at vocational institutions. Would the Liberals at least listen to that constructive idea?

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“I asked about youth unemployment. The government's initiatives aren't working. Conservatives have a plan to address youth jobs, housing affordability, and challenges facing young families. The government should adopt our plan.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, tonight I am following up on a question that I asked about the crisis in youth unemployment. Life is very challenging right now in this country, especially for youth and for young families. People who are struggling to get their start in life struggle to access employment. They struggle with housing affordability. This makes it difficult and leads to delays in family formation. We know, statistically, that if we ask women how many children they want to have and compare that to our current fertility rate, there is a gap of almost one child per woman. Many Canadian families are not having as many children as they would like to have. I think that has a lot to do with challenges in employment and challenges in housing affordability, these basic challenges in getting started in life here in Canada because of how difficult those start-up costs are. The youth unemployment crisis is a big part of it. It is very clear that what the government is doing or says it is doing in this regard is just not working. Listening to question period today, I heard that the government wants to celebrate, allegedly, this initiative or that initiative, but the overall numbers paint a clear picture, which is a metastasizing, unprecedented youth unemployment crisis that is connected to and contributes to challenges that families are facing as well. Conservatives have taken a very constructive approach to the employment file. We have developed and offered the government concrete solutions to these problems. Obviously, the government is the government. It has the power to implement these things and we do not, but we have put constructive solutions on the table and asked the government to implement all or part of what we put forward. This fall, we put forward the Conservative youth jobs plan, a clear plan addressing the youth unemployment crisis, with proposals to unleash the economy, fix immigration, fix training and build homes where the jobs are. Just today, we announced another suite of policy initiatives, this time targeting the challenges that young families are facing. We are proposing substantial parental leave reform that would make life easier for those who are trying to start a family. These policy proposals involve flexible parental leave, allowing a person on parental leave to pause and resume that leave. We proposed learning on leave, allowing anyone to take courses of study while they are on parental leave so that they can upgrade their skills and strengthen their ability to meet the labour market again once their leave is over. We also proposed a caregiving exception to EI parental leave benefit clawbacks. This would allow somebody who is caring for their own children to also do paid caregiving work on the side. Perhaps while they are watching their own child, their neighbour pays them to watch their child as well. Removing the clawbacks associated with earning in this situation would increase the availability of child care, which, in many cases, notwithstanding the exaggerated promises of the government, simply is not available to many parents. We are working hard to propose constructive solutions to the very real and practical challenges facing youth and young families today. I would like to know why the government has not taken the opportunity to embrace these solutions. I think it would be a political win for them and it would be a win for youth and families. Will the government take on these good ideas that we have proposed?

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Oral Questions

Youth

2026-05-07

“The government has a lot of debt. Things are not fine. We have proposals to help young people and families. We have a youth jobs plan. We want to change parental leave rules to help people have kids and make families bigger. The government should support our proposals.”

“The Liberal plan is bad. It doesn't work. Everything costs too much. The government spends too much money and borrows too much. That hurts businesses and jobs. Especially for young people. The government takes too much money from people and businesses. And they do immigration wrong too. It all makes everything cost more. But the Prime Minister keeps doing the same thing. And it all costs too much. And it doesn't help young people. The Liberals should stop doing things that don't work.”

Government Orders

Report Stage

2026-05-04

“Canadians voted for a minority government on purpose. Now the Liberals are being too partisan and ignoring victims while we try to cooperate.”

“I agree with my Bloc colleague. The Liberals say they want to co-operate, but then they change the bill without us. That's hypocritical. I want to criticize the government for not working with us.”

“I want to protect victims of sexual violence. I want the government to listen to experts and pass the bill the way my committee wrote it. I don't like how the Liberals are controlling the process.”

“I want the government to listen to the committee's work and protect victims of sexual violence. The government should not undo the collaborative efforts made in a minority parliament.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin my speech today by sharing with members that before coming to the House a few minutes ago, I was at a screening on the Hill of the documentary film Traces, which is about the issue of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine. It is a great honour to have with us, on the Hill, the director of that film, who shared directly with us about her own experience of being a victim of conflict-related sexual violence and the work she has done on this film. It is important for the House to know and to reflect on the fact that, as part of the ongoing illegal, genocidal invasion of Ukraine, we are seeing the systematic use of sexual violence as a tool by the invaders for terror. It should underline our knowledge of the horrific nature of this invasion and the need for ongoing Canadian support for the Ukrainian people. We have before us today Bill C-11, which would make changes to the military justice system in this country. Fundamentally, what we are seeing in debate at this stage of the bill is the tragic implications of the Liberals seizing an undemocratic majority, and what they are doing with that majority to undermine the important collaborative cross-party work that was done on legislation in this chamber prior to the seizure of that undemocratic majority. This is a bill about a sombre, serious subject: protecting victims, or trying to protect victims, of sexual violence. It is an issue on which parties should be able to work together. From what I understand, and I am not a member of that committee, work happened at committee on the bill, bringing together people from different party backgrounds to try to incorporate all the feedback that was received from survivors to make this legislation effective. It is not, and should not be, a partisan issue, which is why Conservatives, New Democrats and members of the Bloc listened to the testimony, came together and put forward amendments to the bill that reflected that testimony, strengthened that framework and established, through those amendments, a framework that would have really worked and gone as far as possible to protect these victims and survivors. From what I understand, even government members on the committee supported some of those amendments that the opposition worked on together. At the time, the member for Nunavut was with the NDP caucus and was her party's defence critic, working with other parties on this legislation. That was the cross-party work that happened, and really that has to happen in a minority Parliament. In a minority Parliament, one party cannot dictate the outcome of legislation, which requires negotiation, listening to witnesses and listening to each other. In the context of a minority Parliament, this legislation was an example of that collaboration at its best, of members of Parliament rising to the occasion, working through the difficult issues, listening and coming to conclusions. However, what do we have now? The government has systematically, regardless of world view, lured and then neutered members of the opposition to join and give the Liberals a majority government, which Canadians did not vote for. Now, they are using that undemocratic majority to undo the work that was done at committee. They have moved motions in the House to undo the work that was done painstakingly at committee: listening to survivors, strengthening the legislation. That work has all been ignored and undone through a motion proposed by the government. The Liberals now believe that they can rely on all the members of their newly formed, undemocratic majority to undermine the collaborative work that was done on this issue at committee. Ryan Turnbull: Majority prevails. Garnett Genuis: Mr. Speaker, the member opposite from, I believe, Ajax is heckling me to say, “Majority prevails.” Ryan Turnbull: Whitby. Garnett Genuis: Whitby. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. I do want to make sure that he is held accountable for heckling during a speech about protecting victims of sexual violence. The member for Whitby says the majority rules. Well, this is a majority that Canadians did not vote for and that, in the first instance, the Liberals are using to undo collaborative committee work on protecting victims of sexual violence. They want a majority, they say, to move at speeds unseen in generations. They are moving at speeds unseen in generations to dismantle collaborative committee work to protect victims of sexual violence. At the first opportunity they have, that is what they are using their majority to do. I have to wonder what the member for Nunavut is thinking in all this. Individual members, whatever caucus they sit in, are still personally accountable before their voters, and before whatever other institutions they see themselves as accountable in front of, for the decisions they make in the House and the votes they cast here. When a member sits as part of the NDP and works collaboratively on amendments to strengthen legislation to protect victims of sexual violence, and then that member joins a caucus that is systematically undoing and ignoring the work that was done, it is hard for me to understand the dissonance. Whether a person just changes all of their opinions at once, or whether some members of the government intend on standing up against the efforts of the minister and the front bench to dismantle this legislation, at the end of the day, every member controls how they vote when the time comes. They will have a chance to vote specifically on the decisions of the minister and the government to undo the work that was done. This is the real, concrete outworking of the Liberals' seizure of an undemocratic majority. It now gives them, in practice, the ability to ignore what witnesses say, to ignore collaboration and to ignore the work that can be done across parties to analyze an issue from different angles and get to a result, and the Prime Minister can act as a kind of executive and direct all of the affairs that happen in this place. That is not how it should happen. That is not what Canadians voted for in the last election, but it seems that it is what they want, and their first test case for this is undermining protections for victims of sexual violence. It is shameful, what is happening. It is undemocratic and wrong, and it will have serious negative implications for survivors who are seeking justice in the future. I want to commend the members of the committee who worked hard on this. I want to commend our shadow minister for defence as well as members of other parties who worked collaboratively on this process but who, sadly, saw all of that work undone when the government decided to move these motions, rejecting these amendments. In this context, with this undemocratic majority, we will continue to use all of the tools we have to hold the government accountable and fight for what is right. Government members and ministers need to hear demands from their constituents that the government reverse course and stand with victims of sexual violence. I think the member for Nunavut needs to hear from her constituents on this, asking her to stand with the work that she previously did on committee. I think we need to see a response from the public that holds the government accountable for what it is doing, right away, with this undemocratic majority.

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Private Members' Business

Preventing Coercion of Persons Not Seeking Medical Assistance in Dying Act

2026-04-29

“I want this bill to pass. I want more done but I'll take something. People don't understand the problem so they should listen more!”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I want to be transparent with the member that a lot of the feedback I have received from Canadians living with disabilities and organizations that represent them is that they want us to go much further. They would rather the bill did not have the exemptions it does and would like it to go much further. I am very sympathetic to that. I would like it to go much further as well, but I think we hear from the questions that we are still at a level where people in this House are struggling to listen to those with disabilities and even understand and appreciate that this is a problem at all. Therefore, I would encourage members to open their ears, to talk to people with disabilities in their communities and to understand the problems they are facing in this regard.

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“The person you called for help shouldn't randomly bring up dying when you didn't ask about it. If other MPs don't agree with that, they can vote however they want. But I think most people would say it's just common sense.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I will explain again what the bill does. Those in positions of authority who are not doctors and nurses, that is, who are not supposed to be involved in the provision of MAID at all, are not to bring up MAID to a person who has not asked for information about it. If one is calling Veterans Affairs Canada, visiting their parole officer, consulting with a professor or meeting with a social worker and seeking help for unrelated services, and out of the blue that service provider tells that person that they should pursue MAID, this bill says that is inappropriate. If the members of the Bloc do not agree with it, they are welcome to vote however they like on this bill. However, I think most Canadians would say that it is common sense that if one calls Veterans Affairs Canada asking for help getting a stairlift, and the person on the other end of the line who is in a position of authority says they cannot get that stairlift for them, but asks if they have ever thought about dying instead, that is inappropriate. That should not be happening. The fact that it happens a lot means it should be stopped.

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“You should already know why we need this bill. Lots of veterans and people with disabilities say this is a problem. It shouldn't happen to anyone, not even once. So even if you think it's rare, you should still vote yes.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am very surprised to hear the parliamentary secretary for veterans affairs speak in this way given the preponderance of testimony we have heard on this subject. He should know that the veterans affairs committee has heard from many veterans who have raised this concern. They have highlighted friends of theirs who have had the same issues who are afraid to speak out, for understandable reasons. We have had many instances involving multiple different caseworkers in different provinces where these concerns have been brought forward. I mentioned testimony from Inclusion Canada that weekly hears complaints from people living with disabilities who bring these issues forward. I would say this as well to the parliamentary secretary. He is wrong, but let us suppose that he is right, let us say this happens very rarely, my bill says it should not happen at all. Therefore, even if he thinks this does not happen very often, then he should still support the bill, because it prevents this from happening in the cases where it does.

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“I want the government to stop pushing assisted suicide on people who don't want it. I've introduced a bill to make it a criminal offense for bureaucrats to suggest assisted suicide to people seeking unrelated services. The bill doesn't go as far as I'd like, but it's a start. I hope it passes.”

Official Hansard

moved that Bill C-260, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (medical assistance in dying—protection against coercion), be read the second time and referred to a committee. He said: Mr. Speaker, we are familiar with the problem of people facing stereotypes based on immutable characteristics like race and gender, people being told that they are better suited to a particular kind of career path or that they are not fit to pursue certain subjects simply because of their personal characteristics. Here in Canada, governments undertake to push back against this kind of stereotyping and to give life to the reality that people should not be pushed into presupposed categories. We pursue together an ideal of a Canada free from discrimination, of a truly just society. However, while this discourse and recognition is well developed across many dimensions of potential discrimination, we repeatedly fall short when it comes to recognizing and affirming the dignity, uniqueness, value and capacity of people living with disabilities and the elderly. For too many people living with disabilities or aging, their experience is one not merely of being pushed into narrow boxes or categories but of something much worse. I ask colleagues here to imagine something. Imagine living a life in which interactions with people in positions of authority and other prominent social institutions often carry the explicit or implicit message that one is an object instead of a subject. All people think of themselves as, and indeed are, the protagonist of their own great story. Persons are not merely the potential recipients of someone else's support. Every person has a potentially heroic story arc of their own, a story arc that involves successes and setbacks and that brings triumphs and contributions that are consequential for the lives of others and for the communities in which they live. Persons with disabilities are persons in this profound sense, yet many forms of discourse, rarely directly but often subtly, deny the agency, power and full humanness of those with disabilities. This is evident in the fact that those with disabilities are the only community wherein facilitated dying is offered to those who are not dying. The implication of this often unsolicited offer of death is not merely that they are better suited to a certain kind of vocation or career path but that these changes in capacity mean their life is no longer worth living, that they are useless and good for nothing. Members may be able to imagine regularly experiencing this kind of discourse directed toward them, the kind of extreme stereotyping and presumption that the famous playwright George Bernard Shaw defended in 1931. In his defence of eugenics, Shaw said, “I don't want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people whom I want to kill, not in any unkind or personal spirit, but it must be evident to all of you, you all must know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth.” There is a direct line between arguments about eugenics and uselessness presented by people like Shaw and the gas chambers, to which many with disabilities and others deemed “more trouble than they are worth” were ultimately consigned. The implication of some utilitarians is that people and things are to be valued based on their usefulness rather than on their inherent qualities. This way of thinking is wrong and dangerous, because it degrades people to something less than the bearers of inherent rights and instead regards them as mere tools for some other purpose. As a friend once told me, “My greatest suffering doesn't come from my disability. It comes from trying to live up to the ideal of independence. It has taken time to realize that I am valuable for who I am and not just what I can do.” Moreover, it is always incorrect to think of any person as useless. Every person bears the capacity to shape the world through their love and connection with others. The process of losing some capacities and developing others can be a difficult and painful transition, but it remains true that all human beings have the power and the capacity to shape the world around them in meaningful ways at all stages of life and at all levels of ability. Many of us will experience this transition. The community of those with disabilities is one that many of us will join later in life. It is very likely that I will one day be living with disabilities, as will many of those currently able-bodied who are listening. I ask members of the House to reflect on what it would be like to be treated as if their life was without value or meaning. They likely would know, at least initially, that this was not true. They would know that they have meaning and power and significance and the will and ability to be part of a community in which they both give and receive love and care. However, the constant, contrary implication, especially from those in power who are supposed to be helping, would be wearing and painful. At some point, because of the social context in which all choices are made, someone might start to believe and accept these lies and contemplate things that they would never have contemplated before. I know that there are some people who deny that this sort of dehumanization happens at all. They are like the people who suppose that racism must not exist because they have never experienced it. If someone is not part of a victim community in question, chances are that they have less familiarity with the phenomenon, but people who doubt these realities need only to open up and listen. Listen first to Miriam Lancaster, a woman from Vancouver in her eighties. Last year around this time, she woke up with severe back pain and was taken to hospital. Miriam was immediately offered MAID. Before any tests, diagnosis or discussion of symptoms, someone took one look at her and asked if she had thought about dying. Miriam made a full recovery. Six weeks later, she was walking her daughter down the aisle. I understand that her daughter joins us on the Hill today. Miriam just celebrated another birthday. In the intervening time, she has travelled the world and even climbed a volcano on horseback. There are many more of these stories. Meet David Baltzer, a Canadian hero from St. Catharines who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan. While struggling with a post-traumatic stress injury, he called Veterans Affairs Canada for help. Instead of receiving the help he was seeking, he received the unprompted suggestion of facilitated death. Consider the story of Heather Hancock, a successful author living with cerebral palsy who had every desire to keep living. She was told by a nurse that she should do the right thing and consider MAID. The nurse told her that she was being selfish and that she was not living but merely existing. There is the well-known case of Christine Gauthier, another heroic former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, and a Paralympian, an accomplished, successful, powerful woman who was simply fighting for a home wheelchair ramp. Instead of giving her the equipment she needed in order to live, bureaucrats proposed facilitated death and offered her the equipment for that instead. Meet Kathrin Mentler. She faced mental health challenges and wanted to become a counsellor in order to help others. The Tyee reported on how she was treated in the midst of crisis: Mentler found herself in crisis and took herself to Vancouver General Hospital's Access and Assessment Centre to get help. “That day my goal was to keep myself safe.”...she says Mentler says she told the counsellor she was scared she’d “never not feel horrible.” She also [discussed] her history of mental illness and self-harm. Mentler says the counsellor then told her the mental health system was “completely overwhelmed,”... “It was pretty disheartening and made me feel helpless,” Mentler says. “I’m coming here because I’m looking for help and you’re telling me there is no help.” That’s when the counsellor [suggested to] Mentler [that she consider] medically assisted suicide. Mentler says she was “shocked” and “sickened” because she came to the Access and Assessment Centre for help, “not for recommendations on how to kill myself.” These stories are not one-offs. They reflect the regular experience of many people with mental health challenges and with disabilities here in Canada, and also the experience of some people who are aging, as they interact with the health care system and other systems that are supposed to be providing them with services. As Krista Carr from Inclusion Canada told the finance committee, “People with disabilities are now very much afraid, in many circumstances, to show up in the health care system with regular health concerns.” She later identified that she heard complaints from people with disabilities on a weekly basis about this problem. This is the sad reality of what has come to happen in our Canadian society. People with challenges but also with immense potential and capacity are repeatedly being told when they try to access unrelated public services that they should die instead. On their behalf, I am begging colleagues in the House to listen to these cries for help and to work constructively on solutions. Moved and angered by these stories, I have brought forward Bill C-260, a bill that would begin the vitally necessary process of affirming the dignity of the human person confronted by MAID coercion. The current law allows people to pursue MAID, and it defines who can provide MAID, but the law is completely silent on the question of who can propose MAID. Due to this gap in the law, anyone can propose MAID: a counsellor, social worker, teacher, professor, parole officer, veterans services worker or CRA call centre employee. Literally anyone in a position of authority could tell a person seeking help that maybe they should die instead. This gap in the law has left the door wide open for people who are seeking unrelated public services, who do not want to die, to have death repeatedly pushed on them, simply because of characteristics like age or disability. My bill seeks to begin the necessary process of filling this gap in the law by proposing legal limitations on what MAID and when MAID should be proposed to a person seeking public services. Now, my bill is narrow in scope. It provides that a person cannot have MAID proposed to them by a bureaucrat in a case where they have not first asked for information about it. It only applies in cases involving a government employee in a position of authority or trust, and it exempts doctors and nurses. In cases where a bureaucrat in a position of authority or trust proposes MAID to a person who is not seeking it, Bill C-260 introduces a new Criminal Code offence, punishable on summary conviction. The penalty is minimal. The goal is not to punish people but to establish a standard and deter behaviour so that people with disabilities, the elderly and all Canadians can access public services without being treated as useless or expendable. This bill is indeed modest. It starts a conversation and it establishes a minimum standard, something that all members of Parliament, I hope, should be able to get behind. If people do not think that Veterans Affairs Canada, caseworkers and other bureaucrats should be, out of the blue, proposing MAID to those who are seeking access to other public services, then please vote for Bill C-260 at second reading. Since tabling this bill, I have had a lot of conversations with veterans, people with disabilities and groups that represent them. Many people are very supportive of this bill. The biggest complaint I have heard about Bill C-260 is from those in these communities who say that the bill does not go far enough. MAID coercion is a massive problem for these communities and the bill's limitations and exemptions, particularly the blanket exemption for doctors and nurses, leave open the possibility for MAID coercion to continue in many contexts. Now, from my end, I actually completely agree with those who would like this bill to go further. I agree that this bill does not address every instance of MAID coercion, and that there are many instances of coercive behaviour involving those who are not included in this bill. I also see this bill as a meaningful step forward. Today, people with certain characteristics are bombarded with the suggestion that they die, suggestions potentially coming from anyone and everyone who is responsible for offering them public services. My bill would significantly narrow the number of instances in which these suggestions can be made. It is an important step because it reduces that pressure and introduces a new concept into law, providing additional protection, even if it leaves certain kinds of situations unaddressed. Bill C-260 does not seek to prohibit all conduct that is problematic or potentially problematic. It does not pretend to. However, the scope of this bill is designed to respond to the realities of this Parliament. I cannot pass a bill without at least some votes on the government's side. I have proposed therefore a bill that I believe is realistically calibrated to the sentiments here and a bill that would have a chance of helping us take a step towards confronting this problem. I would also note that action to confront MAID coercion involving licensed professionals like doctors and nurses is possible at the provincial level. I was very pleased to see the passage of Bill 18 in Alberta, for example, which goes further than Bill C-260 by using provincial jurisdiction over health care to introduce protections which likely would not receive enough support to pass at the federal level. I want to congratulate justice minister Mickey Amery and all who have made this happen. Alberta is a safer place for all people as a result of their work. I hope that legislators in other provinces will join the fight against MAID coercion with their own provincial changes. Every legislator must look realistically at the chances of getting something passed in the place where they serve. Some provincial environments provide an easier context for more action. I hope that these opportunities will exist here in the near future, but I am doing my best with what we have for the time being. The work of a legislator is always to try to turn their visions of an ideal society into practical and incremental steps towards a better world. I would like to see a society in which the dignity of the human person is always recognized and defended, but piling all aspects of such a vision into one piece of legislation is not the most productive way to move forward in the real world. Still, there is always the possibility of amendments that remove or adjust exemptions, and I will be supportive of those amendments as long as they do not imperil the bill as a whole. I invite those, who wish we had gone further, to support us at second reading and to make their case for those amendments when we come to committee. However, we need to win this vote in order for us to have that opportunity. This is where high principle meets the world of practical politics until, perhaps, the configuration of Parliament allows us to do more. For my part, I will always defend the immutable dignity of the human person: the simple idea that human rights are for humans, including the elderly, the sick, those with mental health challenges, those with disabilities, the very old and the very young. This is something that a truly just society must ultimately recognize.

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-29

“If you really spoke to CEOs, you would know small businesses have ideas for jobs. Stop taxing them with your massive, bloated budget! Your budget punishes the young. Stop it.”

“You want good things for workers and you're spending taxpayers' money on it. But you also want to raise job-killing taxes to pay for your pet projects. That's bad. I don't like that.”

Government Orders

2026-04-27

“I agree that trust in government is important and weak. The current government has made people trust it less for many years. It hides information. It tries to change rules to keep its own power. People feel like that government doesn't listen to them. We should make government act better so people trust it again.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, this question of trust in institutions is a very important one. We would all like to see a situation in which institutions are both trusted and worthy of that trust. Our democratic institutions, though, have been weakened over the last 10 years under the Liberal government. We see continuing efforts to undermine those institutions, including the failure to hand over documents when ordered to, efforts to unilaterally impose changes on the structure of Parliament and the pursuit of power regardless of the constraints that are supposed to exist on that power. That has implications for how Canadians view, and feel represented within, our institutions, and the right response is for those institutions to try to rise to the occasion and be worthy of that trust once again.

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“I say a nice word about those sad families. Then I talk a lot about how government is slow and messy because a lot of people need to agree on things. My party is very responsible. We did our part to help make things work. But now the government wants to make the rules so it can just do whatever it wants. That's bad. Canadians didn't vote for the government to ignore everyone else.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, my heart goes out to those families in his community. When it comes to the work of the House and its committees, I would say that, in minority parliaments, such as what Canadians chose in the last election, we are forced to work together in a different way, because anything that moves forward at committees requires two parties, at minimum, to be able to have a meeting of the minds. That process of negotiation is not always easy, but I think we have seen in the last year that things can get done and done well, especially because our party has been responsible. We have expedited legislation where appropriate and we have opposed it where necessary, but now the government is trying to eliminate the need for that co-operation and create the circumstances in which it can impose its will undemocratically on the House. It is wrong, and it is not what Canadians voted for.

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“You are upset we are talking to our voters. You had your chance to talk to them too. I'll embarrass you again if you want. You are very bad. People are mad at you.”