Tamara Kronis

“This bill aims to help build homes faster and better. That goal is very important because families in my area and across Canada are struggling to find housing.”

“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-20 aspires to help Canadians build more homes faster and promote innovative and efficient building techniques for the housing sector. The goal matters deeply in communities like Nanaimo—Ladysmith. As I said at the beginning of my original speech, I am splitting my time today. Across the mid-island, families are facing the same housing pressures we see across the country.”

In response to a question from Sébastien Lemire

“My riding depends heavily on trade and resources, and our unemployment rate is 8.5%. I want the member to explain how the government's economic policies are hurting ridings like mine.”

“Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has a lot of expertise in the area of trade. I, of course, come from a riding and a place in this country that is heavily dependent on resources, on trade, on forestry and on north-south exports and imports. Unemployment in my riding is now at 8.5%. I wonder if the member could talk about how the economy is not being felt the same in different parts of the country and, perhaps, explain to the members opposite why their economic policies are hurting ridings like mine in particular.”

“I support this bill. It makes it a serious crime to permanently stop someone from having children without their real consent. This has happened to too many vulnerable people in Canada, especially Indigenous women, and our laws need to make it clear that it is illegal.”

“Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of Bill S-228, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to forced sterilization procedures. This is a short bill, but it deals with a grave wrong. It speaks to bodily autonomy, consent, human dignity, the equal worth of every person and the duty of the state to protect those who have been harmed by the systems that should have protected them. Bill S-228 would amend the Criminal Code to make it crystal clear that a sterilization procedure performed without consent is an act that “wounds or maims a person” for the purpose of an aggravated assault. It would also define what is meant by a “sterilization procedure”, including any procedure that permanently prevents reproduction. At first glance, some may ask why this change is needed. We already have laws against assault. We already have rules around consent in health care. We already have medical standards and professional oversight. However, the painful truth is that those protections have not always protected people equally. They have not always been clear enough. They have not always been enforced. For too many women, especially indigenous women, racialized women, women with disabilities and others in vulnerable situations, the promise of protection and the promise of consent have been broken in this country. A forced or coerced sterilization is not a minor medical error. It is not a paperwork problem. It is a profound violation of the person. It takes away from someone the ability to make one of the most personal decisions they will ever make in their life. It will affect their body, their mind, their family, their culture and their future. It is a harm that can last for generations. There is a saying in my own culture that when a person saves a life, it is as if they have saved the entire world. The corollary to that is that a person who prevents someone from making a life is preventing them from creating an entire world. No one should be pressured into giving up the ability to have children. No one should be asked for consent while they are in pain, in fear, under the effects medication, in labour or under the control of a person in authority. No one should be treated as though their poverty, identity, disability, race, age, family situation or social standing makes them less worthy of respect. Consent that is forced is not consent, no matter the situation. Consent that is coerced is not consent. Consent given without proper information is not consent. If someone has to ask why we need a bill like this in 2026, they are lucky. They are lucky to not know someone who has been in this situation. They are lucky not to have experienced this in their community. This bill is about drawing a clear line in federal criminal law. It would tell survivors that Parliament sees them. It would tell the health care system that vague language is not enough. It would tell prosecutors, the police, professional bodies and institutions that this is not a grey area and this is not a decision to be made on the fly. This is not something that someone can do because they think it is best in the circumstances. It is violence and it is a violation, and we will have a law in this country that makes it clear that it is to be treated as such. I want to recognize Senator Yvonne Boyer and everyone who has made it possible for all of us who have spoken this morning to stand in this House today to make it clear that this is not just something that Canada recognizes, but something that we will take concrete steps to prevent in the future. Everyone in this House believes in the dignity of the person. We believe in personal freedom, but freedom is not real when a person’s body can be controlled by someone else. We believe in accountability, but accountability is not real when the people who commit or enable serious harm to another human being in this country face no clear consequences. We believe in equal justice under the law, but justice is not equal when vulnerable people are less likely to be heard, believed or protected. We have an opportunity in the House today to do the right thing, not just for past generations, but for future generations and for those who are still suffering today with the burden of having had those experiences. The history behind this bill is hard to face. Canada has had a long record of forced and coerced sterilization, often tied to racism, eugenics, colonization and the idea that some lives are less vulnerable than others. Those ideas were not harmless theories. They shaped policies, institutions and medical practices. They harmed first nations, Métis, Inuit and other indigenous peoples in this country. They harmed Black and racialized women. They harmed people with disabilities, people living in poverty and people who were placed in institutions and stripped of control in their own lives. By acknowledging these wrongs in the House, by putting them into the record of this place to be read and seen by future generations, we do not make Canada weaker; we make Canada stronger. We must also be honest about the fact that this is not only history. Survivors have come forward in recent years. They have spoken about being pressured in their most vulnerable moments. They have spoken of procedures that they did not understand, did not freely choose and did not consent to. They have also spoken of the shame, grief, fear, distrust and deep injury that has come with that. That is a second, additional injury that we have done to those people in this country, on top of the forced sterilization they had to endure without their consent. Many have had to carry that pain in silence, so all who speak to this bill in the House this morning lend our voices to them. We want to make sure they know that they do not have to suffer in silence, but even when they have to suffer in silence, we in this place will suffer with them. When survivors share these stories, our first duty is to listen, but our second duty is to act. Bill S-228 would not fix every harm in this country, but it is a start. Criminal law is a tool. Health care is, of course, largely within provincial and territorial jurisdiction. Professional regulation belongs to colleges and licensing bodies. Hospitals, health authorities, medical schools and governments all have work to do. There must be better training on informed consent. There must be cultural safety. There must be clear reporting pathways. What we have done this morning in the House, and what my colleagues have done with Bill S-228, is a start. We have made a powerful pronouncement about what is to be tolerated in this country. Hopefully, in doing that, we will not only make sure that these atrocities do not happen to future generations but bring comfort to the people who have come to this place to advocate for the bill, letting them know that their advocacy, their actions, the things they have done and the messages they have brought to this place have been heard, that their sacrifices and the things they have done matter and that they have been a part of the solution for future generations. I urge every member of the House to stand with survivors and with those who were never able to be born, today and always, through this bill.”

“I do not support this bill. It creates a new government agency instead of actually building the homes people need. We already have agencies that can do this work. This plan will build very few homes and will waste time and money on more bureaucracy.”

“Madam Speaker, when it comes to housing, bureaucrats count starts. They count units. They count dollars. They count funds, programs, agencies and promises, but in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we count something different. We count the months our adult children have been living in the spare room because rent has eaten the down payment they were trying to save for. We count the number of graduates who cannot find a job that pays enough to cover rent. We count the number of people with no home at all as we pass them on the way to work. Before I forget, I will be splitting my time. On a more serious note, we count the graves of friends lost to addiction, the treatment beds that are not there, and the people who make it through detox only to be sent back to the same chaos they were trying to escape. We continue to measure the distance between the government’s language and our reality. That distance is the distance between a young person with a diploma and a job and having no real path to owning a home in the community they grew up in. It is the distance between a person who is coming out of detox trying to stay clean and housing where drug use is not happening down the hall. Those are not separate crises. They are part of the same failure of government. We have lost the link between housing and hope. Canada does not lack for housing announcements. In the last decade, we have had strategies, accelerators, funds, agencies, accords and photo ops, including some that have their own complete purpose-built backdrop. What we do not have is enough homes that people can afford. In Nanaimo—Ladysmith, we do not have enough of the right homes for people who are trying to rebuild their lives. Now we have Bill C-20, which would create Build Canada Homes to promote, support and develop the supply of affordable housing. From the speeches, it sounds ambitious. The question is whether it will be useful once the media has packed up and gone home and the sets have been dismantled. All this bill does is create the skeleton. It creates the framework and the corporation itself. The government is presenting Build Canada Homes as a generational housing investment, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it will only have a modest impact. The headline number is $13 billion, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer says the actual planned spend is $7.3 billion over five years on an accrual basis. The projected result is about 26,000 homes over five years, or roughly 5,200 homes a year across the entire country. This would increase housing completions by only 2.1% above the baseline and address just 3.7% of the estimated housing gap. Even with Build Canada Homes included, planned federal housing spending is set to fall by 56%, from $9.8 billion in 2025-26 to $4.3 billion in 2028-29. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has put the scale of the new housing gap plainly: Canada needs 3.2 million net new housing units by 2035, which means an average of 290,000 units a year for a decade. The PBO also warned that this would still not fully solve affordability in every region, because income, interest rates, regional gaps and the kind of housing built all matter, as my colleagues have pointed out in their speeches. That last point matters the most to growing communities like mine, because we do not just need more housing; we need the right housing in the right places for the people who need it. Housing experts have made this same point over and over again. Mike Moffatt’s report says, “Canada needs to build millions more homes, but not just any homes.” They have to be homes built for today’s needs, and getting there is going to require bolder reforms, in our opinion, than those that have been put forward so far. Bill C-20 would not speed up local approvals. It would not give our provinces and municipalities the infrastructure they need. It would not service land, and it would not set binding targets for how many homes will be completed by when, for whom, at what price. What Bill C-20 would do is create another federal bureaucracy on top of at least four others in this space. There is CMHC, which already has the power to finance housing, lend, guarantee loans, invest and run federal housing programs. The Canada Lands Company already has the power to develop federal land. Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada already manages federal housing funding and agreements. The Canada Infrastructure Bank already has the power to finance infrastructure that unlocks housing. In other words, the functions are already there, and Ottawa does not lack agencies with housing powers. What it lacks is results. Building another bureaucracy means time spent setting it up. Offices need to be set up, executives hired, mandates written, files moved around and programs reorganized, and that is time and money that could be spent getting homes built. That is the problem. The government is using language that Canadians want to hear, but the structure does not match the urgency of the moment. Young Canadians understand this instinctively. We tell them to study, work, save and be patient. Then they graduate into a labour market where entry-level jobs are harder and harder to find, where rent consumes too much of their income and where ownership feels less like a goal than a memory from someone else’s Canada. This week, a recent software engineering graduate came to a committee of the House to say that he could still not find entry-level work in his field. When asked whether he was working, he said yes, but not as a software engineer. The Liberal MP’s reply was, “At least you’re employed.” That answer reveals something deeper than one exchange. It shows a government that has lowered the bar. I will continue my speech when the House resumes next week.”

“My community has a serious drug crisis. People trying to recover cannot do it while living next to drugs. I want the federal government to spend housing money on sober housing in Nanaimo.”

“Madam Speaker, in Nanaimo—Ladysmith, the addictions crisis is not an abstract policy debate. It is on our streets, in our parks, in our shelters and in the lives of families who are praying their loved one gets one more chance. Too many people are trying to get clean while living next door to the very thing they are fighting to escape. That is not compassion. That is setting people up to fail. Nanaimo needs every kind of housing, including sober housing. We need safe, stable places for people who have chosen recovery, people who want to rebuild their lives without being surrounded by drugs. This Monday, June 8, Nanaimo city council is convening a special governance and priorities committee meeting to discuss the urgent need for sober housing in our community. I am pleading with the government to pay attention and to allocate a share of federal housing funds for sober housing in Nanaimo because recovery needs more than hope. It needs a home.”

“Canada is in a recession and people in my riding cannot afford to live. I want the Prime Minister to explain to them why this is happening.”

“Mr. Speaker, under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada is the only G20 country in any kind of recession. Maria from my community worked her whole life but lost her home because she and her husband could not make ends meet. She needs help because CRA made a mistake on her file, but she needed to know we could help her before making the drive to my office, because the cost of fuel is so high that she cannot afford to waste the trip. I hear from more and more Marias every week. Will the Prime Minister please tell Maria whether her hardship is because Canada is in a recession, or is it just a technicality he will continue to ignore?”

In response to a question from Linda Lapointe

“This bill is very long and complex, but we have only debated it for three and a half hours. Can my colleague talk about how hard it is to properly debate this bill when the government wants to cut off debate?”

“Madam Speaker, the member spoke to one aspect of the 330‑page bill, which has 16 divisions plus the Defence Investment Agency. He was just asked a question about a different part, presumably, of the bill. Could my colleague speak to the difficulty for members of the House to be able to address the bill in a meaningful way when we have only had three and a half hours of debate, and the government is trying to shut down debate on it, given the complexity and the length of the bill?”

In response to a question from Connie Cody

“I support this bill. It lets parents keep their parental leave and benefits if their baby dies. Grieving families should not have to deal with paperwork or lose their income.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-222, the relieving grieving parents of an administrative burden act, also known as Evan’s law. The bill is called Evan’s law because it was inspired by the experience of a grieving family whose son Evan died while they were receiving parental benefits. After his death, the family had to deal not only with their loss, but also with the bureaucratic consequences of our EI system, including benefit disruptions, paperwork and administrative requirements during a period of profound grief. I want to thank the member for Burnaby North—Seymour for putting this bill forward on behalf of every parent who has grieved a baby in my riding and across our great nation. I also want to thank all the witnesses who appeared before the committee and shared their pain. The death of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. It is a loss that changes a family forever. In those moments of grief, families should be surrounded by compassion, support and understanding. The last thing they need is paperwork, bureaucratic hurdles, confusion about government benefits or being forced back to work, yet that is exactly what can happen under our current employment insurance system. This bill would address that problem in a practical and compassionate way by allowing parents who have already qualified for parental benefits to continue to receive those benefits for the remainder of the approved period and through other means. It would also provide corresponding protections under the Canada Labour Code for employees in federally regulated workplaces. I believe this bill reflects values that all members of the House can support, and I am grateful to all parties in the House for coming together to do the right thing. It is heartening, as a member in my first term in this place, to see members who understand that government systems should serve people, not the other way around, and who understand that compassion and common sense are not partisan principles, but are principles that should guide us whenever we legislate. Sometimes the most meaningful changes are ones that affect a relatively small number of people, but make an enormous difference in their lives. For the parents impacted by this legislation, the effect will be that government stays out of their lives at a time when the last thing they need is government. Instead of worrying about paperwork, they can worry about each other and focus on grieving. Instead of being wrapped in government bureaucracy, they can stay wrapped in the arms of those who are helping them grieve. There is also a broader principle at stake here. One measure of a society is how it treats people during their most vulnerable moments. Government cannot erase grief. No law passed in this chamber can undo the loss of a child. We cannot restore what has been taken away from a family, but we can ensure that our public institutions respond with humanity rather than rigidity. Too often, government programs are designed around standard circumstances. They assume life will unfold according to expectations, yet life does not always follow a predictable path. Families experience tragedies, illnesses, accidents and unexpected hardships. When these moments occur, government systems should have the flexibility and compassion to respond appropriately. Bill C-222 helps move us in that direction. The stories behind legislation and the words of those who have spoken in the House today remind us why these changes matter. Behind every policy discussion, there is a real person, a real family and real experiences. I want to thank all of my hon. colleagues for the stories they have shared with us today. I also want to extend comfort to all those who carry burdens that are too heavy to share. Statistics can help us understand the scale of a problem, but they cannot help us understand pain. Words matter. A government that removes unnecessary obstacles and does not kick people when they are suffering from shattering pain matters as well. This bill would recognize that reality. It would acknowledge that stability and certainty have value during a period of crisis. For those reasons, I am pleased that we are all supporting Bill C-222, and I want to thank all those involved in this bill for bringing us—”

In response to a question from Dan Albas

“Government tribunals should make life simpler, but they are too slow and complicated. People end up needing lawyers. The government needs to clear these backlogs and solve problems faster.”

“Mr. Speaker, a central problem with tribunal systems, and I have had experience with them, is they are intended to make life simpler for Canadians. They are intended to be a process that is outside the court. However, as anyone who has dealt with any of these tribunals knows, people inevitably need a lawyer and inevitably need to navigate all kinds of complicated case law. If the government is serious about making life simpler for Canadians, it will clear these backlogs and provide redress in a faster, more efficient way, because the longer these cases sit in tribunal systems, the more paper they accumulate and the more complicated they get.”

“Canada is the only G7 country in a recession. The government spent too much money and brought in too many people. This caused higher prices for housing, health care, and food.”

“Mr. Speaker, two quarters of negative growth mean we are the only G7 economy in a recession. Excuses and deflection will not cut it. StatsCan has the receipts. Liberals chose to add more debt, more spending and more people. By doing that, they created more pressure on housing, health care and food costs than the system can bear. Every dollar the government adds to the national credit card eventually shows up in the grocery aisle. When the only thing growing faster than grocery prices is the lineups at the food banks, it is no wonder these Liberals have stopped talking about the middle class and those seeking to join it.”