Luc Berthold · TranslatePolitics.ca

Oral Questions

Finance

2026-05-27

“I say Prime Minister spending lots of money. His programs all cost too much. Taxes and debt and prices all go up. Hunting and space and health data costs all bad. He should spend less money.”

Government Orders

Privilege

2026-05-25

“I'm not going to give a real answer either. Maybe we'll say something later too.”

Oral Questions

Finance

2026-05-05

“The government spends too much. Young people need better options. Debt is out of control.”

Oral Questions

The Economy

2026-05-04

“I want to pressure you into giving the answer I want.”

“I want you to say whether the government answered the question.”

Oral Questions

Finance

2026-05-04

“The Liberals are spending too much money and it's making everything cost more. Their debt will be a big problem for our kids. The Prime Minister should stop spending so much.”

“I'm asking when the Prime Minister will stop spending so much of taxpayers' money. The rising debt will be paid for with higher taxes and leave less money in families' pockets.”

Oral Questions

Business of the House

2026-04-30

“I want to criticize the government for scripted answers and lack of transparency. Will the House be more open next week?”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to ask this highly awaited question at the most exciting time of the week in the House of Commons, the time when the opposition asks the government what business will be done tomorrow and next week. Today, in question period, we heard a wide variety of opposition questions, but what we got in return were scripted answers from the Prime Minister's Office, 41 scripted answers to be exact. That got me worried. Given the new circumstances in the House, where we have seen four committees go in camera, I worried for a moment that the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons would say that the House would proceed in camera for question period. However, everyone knows that we believe in transparency on this side of the House. For the sake of transparency, can the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons assure us that question period will not be held in camera tomorrow and next week, and will he tell us what issues we will be addressing during that time?

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-30

“You're the negative ones. You have twice the debt of Justin Trudeau. I'm asking about hungry families. You brag about more spending. That spending will increase inflation. I don't oppose sports. But Canadians need food to be healthy. Why don't you want Canadians to eat?”

“Families are struggling. Parents skip meals. The government spends and borrows too much. I want them to cut that back. Look at all the debt -- how much more proof do you need?”

Statements by Members

Closure of Business in Lotbinière

2026-04-29

“The US is hurting our furniture sales. It's sad when people lose jobs. The Prime Minister said he'd fix this. He didn't. The government should do something.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, “if we turn our backs on the Canadian wood products industry, we are sacrificing our industrial sovereignty and collective pride in favour of cheap imports”. That is a quote from Charles Laflamme, the general manager of South Shore Furniture, who sent a letter to the Liberal Minister of Finance in February. It was a cry for help from Mr. Laflamme, who was dealing with a shrinking U.S. market due to Trump's tariffs, as well as dumping by China and Vietnam, which are currently selling off products at fire sale prices on the Canadian market. During the last federal election, the Liberal Prime Minister created the illusion that he was the best person to make a deal with the Trump administration. Here is where we stand one year later: Aluminum and steel tariffs have doubled, and new tariffs have been imposed on finished products and mould makers. South Shore Furniture announced on Monday that it will be shutting down after 86 years serving Sainte‑Croix, in Lotbinière. That means 126 people are going to lose their jobs. It is time for action, not illusions. It is time to get real results for our businesses and for Canadians.

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Oral Questions

Seniors

2026-04-28

“The Liberals are arrogant. They say they're helping seniors, but really life is getting harder. Seniors can't afford food and the cost of living keeps going up. The Prime Minister and his expensive budgets are the problem. Stop spending money we don't have and making the debt bigger!”

Government Orders

Strong and Free Elections Act

2026-04-24

“I don't like letting people sign multiple nomination papers. It let too many people run and sent a political message. A $1000 deposit could block some people from running. I want to stop too many people from running without a deposit. The other guy must have ideas to not have confusing long ballots or making people write in names. I missed his first ideas. We need to talk more at committee.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am just trying to understand my colleague's position on signing multiple nomination papers, because we saw that this was a major problem in some ridings. People are using the election to send a political message. That never used to happen because a $1,000 deposit was required, which was just as problematic for some people who could not afford to pay that amount to run for office. I know we will have the opportunity to discuss this in committee, but we absolutely must find a way to put an end to this election protest. How can this be solved? I missed part of my colleague's speech, but what solutions does he propose to prevent us from ending up with ballots that are too long or ballots on which people have to write a candidate's name, when we know that a certain percentage of people—

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Oral Questions

Finance

2026-04-24

“I have a sad story. Now I'm saying the government is making costs and debt go up. Stop making it worse.”

“The Prime Minister says affordability is the best in 10 years. But his government spends $90 billion more and pays $55 billion interest each year. Canadians pay more for houses, food, and transportation. Experts say we are in a fiscal fantasy. Is he going to spend even more? Will he raise the cost of living more for families?”

Government Orders

Government Business No. 9—Changes to Standing Orders

2026-04-23

“If you really care about collaboration, then listen to committees. You rejected their ideas! Is that your compromise?”

“I don't like how the government changed committee composition without asking us. They might use closure to get their way. The old Liberal government used lots of gag orders and now this one might too. The Liberals don't listen to ideas from other people.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised an extremely important point. Committee composition is usually a collaborative decision involving the opposition parties. When a new government is elected, the parties meet and decide on the composition of committees. Now we have been told that it will no longer work that way because the government decided to add two members without consulting us to see if we were adding one, two or three or taking some away. We might have preferred to take some away rather than have the government add two. There was no collaboration. They even floated the possibility of closure. I know my colleague is fairly new here, but I remember, back when we had a Liberal government, it was one gag order after another. He should get used to this. If things go on like this, obviously the government will impose closure every time opposition members oppose its ideas. The Liberals do not like anyone's ideas but their own.

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“You're bad. I don't trust you. Things are worse since you took over.”

“I'm filling time with kind words and saying nothing anyone could pin down later.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speeches by my colleagues, including my colleague from Winnipeg North. I listened to the speeches of several members. I certainly do not want to miss the speech by my colleague from Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, with whom I will be sharing my time. His speech will surely be very interesting because he is a very capable man, particularly in matters of parliamentary procedure. I think he is a reference here, after the Speaker, of course. There is something wrong with the Liberals' logic right now. It is something I have noticed since the beginning of the speeches today and since I read the first version of Motion No. 9. Something just is not right, and I think it is coming from the top. It is coming from the Liberal Prime Minister himself. For years he was a CEO, a chief executive officer. He came here and decided that, from now on, he would get his bills and rules passed, that he would decide everything that was going to happen and that he was going to dig Canada into the hole. He may not have used those words, but that is what we are seeing right now. That is what is happening. He forgot just one minor detail: Parliament is not a business. The Prime Minister is not Parliament's boss. All members of Parliament are equal, and every member of Parliament has the right to vote. The votes of all members of Parliament are what enable us to move bills and motions forward by working together. Something else bothered me earlier. It seems that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, Parliament is supposed to work to ensure that the government gets its bills passed. That is nonsense. That is completely false. It is up to the government to convince Parliament to pass its bills. I have to say that, since Canadians elected the minority government, things had been going relatively well. We offered to co-operate with the government on important bills, to boost the economy and to improve our relationship with the United States, because the Prime Minister said two very important things. He said that he was the only one who could resolve the tariff crisis with Trump. He also said that Canadians should judge him by grocery prices. Now a year has passed. Opposition parties co-operated, but what happened to tariffs? People are paying more. What happened to food prices? For the fourth month in row, food inflation in Canada is the highest in the G7. We are co-operating. We have supported the government. The Prime Minister and the government decided things should get even worse. They decided to make trouble on their own. That is what we need to keep in mind because the Liberals had the reins of power. Our role was to co-operate and help them do things well, but, unfortunately, they felt that things did not go well. It is true that things did not go well, but that is not the opposition parties' fault. It is because they do not know how to run things. Earlier, the government House leader said that the Prime Minister was clear: He expects a Parliament that produces results for Canadians. However, he was mistaken: the Prime Minister expects the government to produce results. We need to agree on the words “results for Canadians” because the Prime Minister has thus far failed to produce any results whatsoever. How did they do that? We have heard a number of times that there were by-elections, that they have a majority and that the House and the committees must reflect the majority obtained in the by-elections. That is another falsehood. The outgoing members before the by-elections were Liberal. The people who were elected in the by-elections are Liberal. The by-elections did not change the makeup of the government at all. What changed that makeup, then? The government was determined and this CEO turned Prime Minister was obsessed with the idea of recreating in Parliament the structure of a company where he can pull all the strings, so much so that he decided to set up a whole operation to attract floor crossers. Through secret backroom deals we are not privy to, he wanted to attract people who set aside their values and principles, those for which they were elected and for which they were given a mandate from their voters, in order join the government's side. They said so themselves. They said that they were going over to the government side, the Liberal side at that. That is how the government managed to cobble together a majority. It made secret deals behind closed doors so that the Prime Minister can continue to do what he has always done. He is going to make all of the decisions himself and run things into the ground, just like he did everywhere he went and with all of the organizations that he ran. We obviously do not want to let that happen. We do not want to leave all that power in the hands of a Prime Minister who has not yet delivered any results and who has not kept any of the promises that he made to Canadians. We were talking about history. The members opposite keep repeating that, never before in the history of Parliament has a majority government not been reflected in the committees and that the committees must absolutely reflect the composition of Parliament. However, there is one small thing they are forgetting to mention. Never before in the history of Parliament has a government gained a majority by making secret deals with members. That has never happened. The membership of committees has never been changed during a parliamentary session and during a Parliament. This is the 45th Parliament. How was the government formed in the previous 44 Parliaments? A majority or minority government was formed based on the votes of Canadians. In the last election, Canadians did not trust the government to give it a majority. They elected a minority government with a very strong opposition because they had doubts. Not everyone believed in the Prime Minister's message and pretty words. Canadians decided to give him power, but with a strong opposition to ensure he could not do whatever he wanted. Unhappy with the election results, the government worked very hard to send messages to almost every member of the other parties to try and see if it could draw people in and change the composition of the government. That is how we ended up with a majority government today: through secret negotiations and secret deals. Now that they have their majority, what do the Liberals want? They want to change the composition of committees even though, once again, that has never happened before in history. Not only is the government going to change the committees' composition, they do not intend to do it by half measures. Instead of reflecting the composition of Parliament, where the Liberals have roughly 50% of seats, Liberal representation on committees is going to climb to about 57%. In other words two Liberals will be added to each committee to form a supermajority. What will happen to all the great inquiries we conducted on ArriveCan, all the inquiries we were able to do on the Liberal green fund, or all the corruption scandals we managed to uncover because we demanded that documents be produced and because, as a Parliament, we were able to obtain papers that the government refused to hand over to members? What sad fate will befall committees? The Liberals are going to consistently vote down these motions, adjourn debates and use every available means to avoid being held accountable to Canadians. That is what the government wants. This government does not want to be held accountable to anyone. There is a reason that we seldom see the Prime Minister rise here in the House to answer questions during question period. He does not want to be held accountable to members of Parliament. He does not want to do his job as Prime Minister. He prefers his job as CEO. When people say that we have nothing to offer, that is not true. We have put forward a motion. Today, we proposed an amendment. We are prepared to vote in favour of this government proposal if the Liberals agree to let the oversight committees, namely the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, do their work and not change their composition. No one can claim that we have not made an attempt at a compromise, but they have not made any at all. It is all about power at any cost. They have given themselves the privilege of doing whatever they want, and too bad for Canadians and what they thought during the last election.

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“The Liberals play games to get a majority. They made backroom deals. I don't like that. They want to control committees too. It's not an official majority but they find ways to win votes. This is the second time they did this! I want to hear what you think.”

Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, this is not the first time the Liberals have played games to secure themselves a majority in the House. There have indeed been backroom deals in the past with certain individuals who chose to cross the floor. In fact, the by-elections had nothing to do with this outcome. Those seats were Liberal before and remain Liberal now. The Liberals bought themselves a majority and now they seem to want to buy themselves a majority on the committees. The Liberals even had an agreement in the past with the NDP that allowed them to manipulate the proceedings of the House to secure precisely that majority. It was not an official majority, and we sometimes managed to get the NDP to vote with us. However, this is the second time in two terms that the Liberals have played games with democracy. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on that.

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