Helena Konanz

“My riding has Canada's oldest population, but our emergency rooms are closing and our local hospital is losing all its neurologists. Meanwhile, thousands of trained doctors in Canada cannot practice because of federal red tape. I want the government to create a program that quickly licenses these doctors so my community can get the care it needs.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to bring a voice to a deep and painful crisis unfolding in the beautiful riding of Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay. The people of my riding are being left worse off by the failure of the Liberal government’s health care policies. According to the latest census figures, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay holds the distinction of having the population with the oldest median age of all 343 ridings in Canada. Our seniors who built this country and paid taxes their entire lives make up the very heart of this riding. However, when they need specialized care the most, they are met with empty hallways, locked doors and a complete system collapse. Just last week, the local medical community in our riding issued a heartbreaking open letter. Because of unworkable and bureaucratic mandates, all three neurologists providing bedside on-call care at the Penticton Regional Hospital tendered their resignation. Let that sink in. Canada’s oldest population, facing higher statistical risks for degenerative neurological disorders, strokes and age-related conditions, will soon have zero local neurologists left to cover bedside care. If a senior in Penticton, Oliver, Osoyoos, Princeton or Keremeos wants a basic checkup because they are deeply concerned about their neurological health, they will now lack a local option. They will be forced to travel hundreds of kilometres while struggling with concerns of degrading neurological health. This is not an isolated case. Across our region, we have watched a concerning wave of ER clinic closures rip through local communities, forcing families to worry about whether they will be able to receive the urgent care they would need in an emergency. This side of the House continues to demand that the government step up for our aging population. We believe that treating seniors with dignity means ensuring that they have direct local access to specialized medical care. How does this relate to federal policy? The Liberals love to shrug their shoulders and say that health care is provincial, but it is federal red tape and a lack of leadership that are choking the pipeline of new doctors. Right now, estimates say there may be as many as 13,000 trained medical doctors throughout Canada who are not practising. They cannot get into a two-year residency position. These are fully qualified, brilliant medical professionals. Many of them are Canadians who studied abroad and want nothing more than to work and to alleviate the pressures on frontline staff. However, they are trapped in the web of red tape, unable to practice, while our rural ERs close and our specialists vanish. Our seniors deserve better than an empty neurology department and closed ER doors. When will the Liberal government commit to a blue seal program to fast-track our 13,000 unaccredited doctors and give the people in my communities the care they desperately need?”

“I have concerns with this bill. It is not currently possible to verify people's ages safely, as Australia's experience shows. We also cannot make big tech companies keep their promises to delete stored data.”

“Madam Speaker, this is a very important subject. The member across the way mentioned that there would be highly secure age verification. How would this be done? It is not actually possible right now, as we can see with what has happened in Australia with its policies. He also mentioned that the big tech companies would promise to erase the data they store. How is that possible to regulate? He can understand why we have concerns with the bill.”

“Children need real protection online, but I question whether this bill is the right way to do it. This method is not working in Australia.”

“Mr. Speaker, children need real protection online. Is Bill C‑34 the best solution? This method is not working in Australia.”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“We need oversight, but we cannot take it away from parents. A single commissioner making all the decisions is a problem. We need this House and parents to have oversight too.”

“Mr. Speaker, we need to have commissioners. We need to have oversight, but we cannot take oversight away from parents. We need to make sure parents keep their oversight over their own children. If there is one commissioner who is making the decision, it can be problematic, so we need to make sure there is a lot of oversight, not only from the House, but also from parents themselves.”

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In response to a question from Maxime Blanchette-Joncas

“This bill is very important for children and families. We need to listen to parents, kids, and every province. We should also learn from other countries so we get this law right.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think everyone in the House knows that this could be one of the most important bills during our mandate that could affect the most people, in particular children and families. Yes, we need to get input from all provinces, including Quebec. We need to get input from parents. We need to get input from children. We need to look at what other countries have done, because we are not the first to approach this situation. We need to make sure we learn from past mistakes, from countries like Australia, to learn from them and, again, make sure this legislation is done right for the sake of our children.”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“We cannot rush this bill. Children's lives are at stake, and we cannot just redo it if we get it wrong. We need to study it very carefully in committee.”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member’s passion for this. I know how important it is to him that this bill passes, that this bill goes through and becomes legislation, but he must also understand that, if we do not do this right, it is not just something we can do a redo on. There are children’s lives at stake here. There are families’ lives at stake. We need to do this right, which means we need to bring it under careful scrutiny, and we need to make sure this is brought under careful scrutiny in committee.”

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In response to a question from Maxime Blanchette-Joncas

“Social media harms children, but this bill is flawed. It is too vague, its rules can be easily dodged by kids, and checking people's ages risks their privacy. I want us to fix this bill with clear rules for tech companies that protect children and put control in parents' hands, not the government's.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-34, more commonly known as the safe social media act. I believe that everyone in the House agrees that the rapid development of social media has created enormous challenges for families across Canada and the world. What is the answer to this challenge? The vast web of global connection it has brought us has also created serious mental health and addiction challenges for children and teens. As a mother of two grown children, I saw the beginnings of this phenomenon, with the Internet’s opening and expansion into digital spaces, when my children were very young. As early as the mid-1990s, the centre for online addiction was established and Internet addiction disorder was first recognized. In 1997, the New York Times wrote that psychologists are beginning to treat patients who spend 40, 50 or 60 hours a week in chat rooms and online games, ignoring spouses, children and jobs. They described the classic cycle of tolerance, withdrawal and a desperate reliance on the glowing terminal for emotional gratification. This could well describe the same challenges we face today but, instead of just addicted adults, it is children whose health and development are being harmed. The Internet’s uniquely absorbent nature, along with chat rooms and online games, has only become more dangerous because of smart phones, algorithms and AI models. Nowadays, these addictive and mind-altering spaces have become available anytime, anywhere. Ask any parent or teacher, and we will find that children view their digital lives as intertwined with their everyday lives. Purely online friends and hangouts have become commonplace. These spaces let them educate and express themselves. It is why children and teens report the longest screen time and highest social media use of any age group. We know that spending seven-plus hours on personal screen time is significantly more likely to lead to anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. These platforms were never designed for children, yet children are vulnerable to their design. Recommendations for algorithms, push notifications, endless scrolling and autoplay can repeatedly direct them toward content that keeps them engaged. These design choices can amplify exposure to harmful material and make it difficult for young users to disengage. At the same time, AI chatbots and digital companions are becoming increasingly integrated into the platforms young people use, creating new and largely untested risks. Parents who once set computer time now know that these barriers do not exist when children under 10 can readily access TikTok, Instagram and ChatGPT. They cannot control their children’s algorithms or be notified when harmful material appears. One of the most tragic case studies on this subject involves the death, last year, of 13-year-old British Columbian Maddy Croswell. Her parents and the coroner’s office found this case of teen suicide to have occurred after a social media platform she was using repeatedly pushed hundreds of hours of harmful content onto her feed advocating self-harm and eventual suicide. Her parents thought they had done everything right. They had parental controls on her phone. They monitored her screen time. They believed they had created a safe, loving home environment, but it was not enough. Sadly, many more cases like this exist across Canada. Parental involvement is not enough to challenge the enormous reach of social media algorithms that can push dangerous and harmful content to young children and teens. According to Stats Canada, one in four children aged 12 to 17 experienced cyber-bullying. Police reported that online child sexual exploitation incidents reached 16,000 in 2024, up 347% from 2014. I have heard from many parents about the helplessness they feel and the fear they have for their children. They feel they are in a David versus Goliath battle with Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. AI companies and their algorithms are also increasingly dangerous in this respect. Reports that the shooter at Tumbler Ridge was assisted in planning this deadly shooting by ChatGPT is sickening for all Canadians. OpenAI’s failure to report clear warnings of violence has left a community devastated for generations to come. Parliament must act on this, but as lawmakers we must ensure that what we pass is good law, not just good intentions. For myself, I would like to see legislation that accomplishes three main goals: protect children and teens from harmful content online; set clear rules on tech giants that affect all our lives; and put more control in parents’ hands, not the government’s. Canada also has the opportunity with this legislation to review other jurisdictions that have established similar measures and see what has worked and what has not. Australia, which was the first to move forward with the social media ban for those under 16, has found that the measure it chose to restrict access has frequently been circumvented. Surveys by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner showed that 61% to 70% of young Australians aged 12 to 15 who previously used restricted platforms still have active accounts. Children still using the apps report that it is easy to bypass the restrictions and still have active accounts. If we were to ask children nowadays what they think about this type of bill, they would say that they would find a way to get through if they have to. Teens easily dodge the rules by lying about their birth year, having older teens create new accounts or using facial recognition workarounds. Platforms also do not always enforce regulations consistently across their sites. We have also had concerning evidence that bans in other countries led to a spike in teenagers using virtual private networks, VPNs, to mask their country of origin when accessing social media platforms. Using VPNs often means youth are accessing unregulated underground platforms that could lead them to more unsafe content rather than less. What can we do to get ahead of this? We have to consider the downstream consequences. If we ask any teenage visitor to the House of Commons today whether a ban we enacted would discourage them from accessing Instagram or TikTok, they would probably laugh and say no. That is why we need to ensure the bill has real teeth, not just vague regulation for future bureaucrats to interpret. For example, Bill C-34 leaves the definition of “regulated social media services” to future regulations, but will it be based strictly on active Canadian user accounts, annual revenue or specific platform features? Will the age restrictions be determined by facial recognition, ID uploads or credit cards? What about privacy? Who will be asked to store this information? Would it be government, third parties or tech giants themselves? How long can they store it, and how secure will it be? The bill’s regulations for chatbot services will soon face open-ended AI models that let almost any website create a functioning chatbot service for everything from customer service to online shopping. Given the Liberals’ poor track record on online regulation and censorship, the House must move carefully as it considers Bill C-34. Previous failures and fiascos, such as Bill C-11 and Bill C-63, infringed upon Canadian civil liberties. This cannot be allowed to be repeated when so many parents are asking us to help them hold dangerous digital platforms and addictive social media companies to account.”

“Why do you think the government's promises to help culture in Quebec never lead to real results?”

“Madam Speaker, why does my colleague think that the Liberals’ promises to support Quebec’s cultural sector never translate into concrete results?”

In response to a question from Kevin Lamoureux

“The government promised to build things quickly, but it has built nothing. This bill just adds more red tape instead of actually getting projects built.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague needs to remember that there were promises that Canada would soon be building at unimaginable speeds. Instead, what we are hearing now is that the Liberals need another layer of bureaucracy in order to start building at those unimaginable speeds. The member promises there will be thousands and thousands of projects coming forward. I would like to see one thing built. I am looking forward to it.”

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In response to a question from Elizabeth May

“I voted for this infrastructure bill, but the government rushed it through and built nothing. They announced a new project last week only because of public criticism. I doubt it will actually happen.”

“Mr. Speaker, I remember Bill C-5 because it was one of the first bills I voted on. I was happy to support anything that would bring infrastructure to our country and infrastructure to create a more sovereign country. I think because of the criticism that the government has had for not creating any projects with Bill C-5, even though it was rushed through so fast, the Liberals made an announcement last week. Is it actually going to happen? Is that project going to come through? I doubt it.”

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“I do not support this bill. It will not make building major projects faster. It just creates more delays and paperwork to work around old Liberal rules that should be repealed instead. My riding urgently needs better roads, cell service, and airport upgrades, but this bill will not get them built. If it goes to committee, workers must have a chance to speak on it.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to speak in this House on behalf of my constituents of Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, especially on legislation of such national importance as Bill C-39. I cannot help but feel some déjà vu. One of the first votes I took in this chamber after election last year was on Bill C-5. At that time, the Liberal government presented it because faster approvals for the Canadian economy were getting trapped in the Liberals’ own rules and red tape. In my experience at the local government level, when we heard from builders that a piece of red tape was restricting their ability to get critical infrastructure built, we would do what we could do, and I would do what I could to remove it. However, the Liberal government passed new laws that allow them to ignore the old Liberal laws. Those burdensome regulations, like antidevelopment laws Bills C-69 and C-48, still exist and are still applying to projects that are struggling to get built. If the government would like to introduce legislation to repeal those bills, I would be pleased to help it pass quickly. The Liberals chose to build complicated workarounds that sacrifice clear rules in favour of ministerial influence. In other words, there is a lot of red tape. Nonetheless, I supported Bill C-5 as the only available option to get around that red tape, because I support building the critical infrastructure that is needed to strengthen our economic sovereignty. However, here we are a year and a half later debating another law, Bill C-39, which again seeks to adopt a workaround to bad Liberal laws. What happened to C-5? Is this because 18 months after we passed Bill C-5, zero major projects proposed under it have been built? With Bill C-5, the Liberals promised Canada would soon be building at unimaginable speeds. It has taken a year and a half and I am not seeing those projects. No one is. Instead, we are still stuck in the same delays and bureaucracy they created in their 11 years in office. For these 18 months under the Prime Minister, we have only seen projects stack up on desks around the city of Ottawa. Hundreds of proposed projects are stuck in bureaucratic processes across the many agencies and impact assessment offices we find across government. The government now proposes Bill C-39 as a solution, another Liberal solution to a problem a Liberal bill caused. Too much of what the government claims as success exists only on paper and not in reality. There is no concrete steel rebar we can touch, just signatures on paper and MOUs. Certainly, in my region, as a major centre of the Canadian economy when it comes to lumber, mining and agriculture, infrastructure upgrades are certainly needed but have seen no urgency. One example is that cellular reception remains critically poor in 90% of the communities in my very large riding, something I have raised with the Liberal government several times with no results or announcements. Another example is that infrastructure links are vital in the south Okanagan, a growing region that is seeking to supply Canadian meat, fruit and agriculture products alongside critical minerals and lumber products from the Similkameen and Boundary to our country and the world. Our region is entirely dependent on transporting goods north or south on a two-lane highway, Highway 97, in a region heavily affected by both wildfires, as we heard about in Summerland and Penticton this past summer, and flooding, where there are regular landslides, accidents and the like, and the road is blocked or closed on the one artery we have between the north and south Okanagan. The Minister of Transport has heard and seen the proposals made by myself and my colleague, the member for Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, for a partnership of investment between the province and federal government into constructing a permanent secondary route between Kelowna and the south Okanagan to expedite transportation times through the Okanagan in times of crisis. Similarly, the minister is aware of my advocacy for the upgrades needed to the Castlegar airport that services the Selkirk College Ion-source Research Centre, which drives particle acceleration and ion-source technology innovation for global medical, semiconductor, clean energy and research markets. Yet, no concrete action on the upgrades that the Castlegar airport requires have been followed up on. Will these projects be better served under Bill C-39? These are just examples. The bill promises to accelerate the Liberals’ complicated project approvals, but will it? On first reading, it seems it would only create more delays instead of completions. The Liberals opposite have been saying that Bill C-39 would create a one-year approval process, but when does the clock start on that process? It would not be until the subsection 19(4) completeness determination is issued by the responsible authority. What is the timeline or deadline for that assurance? There is none. The bill sets no deadline for making that determination. It is no good saying that we will deliver a pizza in 30 minutes if the pizza shop cannot decide when that 30 minutes starts. A one-year timeline for project approvals is not a finish line if we cannot tell the applicant where and when they start. Those looking to apply need certainty and predictability, especially when we are talking about projects that may cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The government is also promoting that Bill C-39 would create the transportation projects office, another office perhaps for my local regional districts or airport authorities to apply to, which is more red tape. However, nothing in this legislation would provide this office any authority. It seems to be yet another concrete filing cabinet where applications go, but never come back out. This is no different from the current process and the hundreds of proposals stranded in office towers all around this city. Real legislation to open major construction, private investment and industrial development would require eliminating the industrial carbon tax, which increases the cost to build with Canadian-made steel and aluminum. It would also require repealing the Liberals’ antidevelopment law, Bill C-69, which gums up our major infrastructure projects in constant reapprovals to satisfy vague rules. How vague? The legislation states that project applications would still have to consider, “any other matter relevant to the impact assessment that the Agency...requires to be taken into account.” That is about as vague and unhelpful to a private developer or a municipal planner as we are bound to find. Lastly, I want to touch quickly upon the issue of labour and the changes proposed to the Labour Code, which are extensive and merit scrutiny. I have heard from many residents opposed to the bill because of these changes, and I appreciate them sharing their feedback with me and my office. Any time Parliament touches upon workers’ rights in their workplace or in their union, we owe workers an extensive right of response. It is my hope that when the government passes its bill on to the committee stage, workers can have a seat at that committee table to have their voices heard. I will certainly look forward to following the debate as it continues.”

“I want to know what happened to the government's last building law. The government promised it would build things faster, but I have not seen any projects come from it. Why did it fail, and why do we need this new bill?”

“Mr. Speaker, my question is pretty simple to my colleague across the floor. I appreciated his presentation. I am fairly new at this. I have only been an MP for a little over a year, close to a year and a half. I just want to know what happened to Bill C-5. Why did it not work? The government was supposed to build at speeds unheard of. I cannot name a project that has come through; maybe the member can. What happened to Bill C-5 and why do we need this new bill?”