Carbon Pricing  Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the member across the way. He must live in some alternate reality. Alberta is one of the most affordable provinces to live in this whole country. Housing is relatively affordable in Alberta, compared to the rest of the country. No matter what he says, affordability is less of an issue in Alberta, particularly when it comes to housing.

Carbon Pricing  Mr. Speaker, just this morning, my office was in communication with a local food bank, which confirmed that food bank use continues to go up. Barrhead and District Family and Community Support Services, in a town of fewer than 5,000 people, saw 184 new families using the food bank in 2023.

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act  Madam Speaker, I am happy to support that initiative. I would say we can do both of these things. This bill is to try to prevent, in the first place, any of this content from being uploaded, rather than trying to deal with the mess after the fact. What the member is suggesting is more about dealing with something after it has been uploaded.

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act  Madam Speaker, Bill C-63 has no criminal offences around the uploading of this kind of content. In this bill, it would be a criminal offence to upload. We want to make sure this content never hits the Internet. A 24-hour takedown period is not good enough. We want to ensure that companies are doing their due diligence to ensure that their content is of people who are of age and that people consent to it.

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act  Madam Speaker, there are a number of initiatives around the world that seek to tackle this online content and child safety online. I would point to the work of Baroness Beeban Kidron in the U.K. The U.K. Parliament, in general, has been working to try to tackle some of these things.

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act  moved that Bill C-270, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (pornographic material), be read the second time and referred to a committee. Madam Speaker, imagine being the parent of a teenage daughter who has been missing for months and somebody discovers 50 explicit videos of that daughter being sexually abused on Pornhub, the most popular porn site in the world.

Housing  Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, Canadians cannot afford to live. Rent and the cost of owning a house have doubled. The Liberal government is out of touch and not worth the cost. This week, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation said that the problem is only getting worse.

Softwood Lumber  Madam Chair, the NDP members, particularly from B.C., should talk to their provincial government about getting more access to fibre. That is entirely a provincial problem and one of the NDP's own making in British Columbia. On the one hand, we have NDP governments limiting access to fibre, and on the other hand we have a Liberal government that is limiting our ability to market the softwood lumber around the world, particularly to the United States.

Privilege  Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more. That is precisely why this privilege motion has been brought forward. We are trying to get the answers to who authorized these contracts and what funny business was going on when the government allowed the company to write its own contracts and also suggested that other companies contract through GC Strategies, rather than directly with the government.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, I hope we can restore some trust in our democratic institutions, and that we can make it so that, when people are required to come to committee and are sworn in, they tell the truth and help us get to the bottom of it. The member opposite wants to cast this narrowly as being about one individual coming to the bar so he can be questioned and we can get the truth from him, but it is likely that, when we get the truth from him, it will only lead us to more questions on the extent of the corruption, the extent of the taxpayer money waste and all of these things.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, it is precisely the ability for members to hold the government to account. I hear from constituents all of the time who are wondering what will be done about this. It seems obvious that money was wasted and somebody was defrauding the government. It seems obvious that the government was asleep at the switch, not paying attention to where this money was going and not considering the value for money.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, as I begin my speech, I want to talk a bit about how Canadians cannot afford the higher taxes and inflation that the government has brought on, and they cannot afford the Prime Minister. That is why we have been calling for judicial use of taxpayer dollars. We have been calling for the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, in terms of one of the contracts that was signed with GC Strategies, GC Strategies actually designed the parameters of the contract and then got the contract later on. Was my hon. colleague aware of that, and could he explain it a little?

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to stand up today to present a petition. The petition I am presenting today comes from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the consent and age verification of those depicted in pornographic material. The petitioners are asking the government to follow recommendation 2 of the 2021 Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics report on MindGeek, which would require all content hosting platforms to verify age prior to uploading content.

Privilege  Madam Speaker, the member talked about $46 billion in our national debt servicing. This money is going to service a record debt. The Prime Minister has doubled the national debt. I am just wondering if the member has any hope that this debt will be paid off within his lifetime or the lifetime of his grandchildren.