Happy Wednesday everyone and welcome back!
The House is back so of course the first week was mostly spent on people submitting Private Members’ Bills, official questions, and petitions. We’ve only really got one Motion that was discussed last week, so this will be a short one.
Opposition Motion
Violent Crime and Repeat Offenders
Larry Brock (Conservative, Ontario, Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations)
Larry wants to run a Motion that targets repeat offenders. There’s a few problems with this Motion, but first let’s take a look at it:
That, given that the Liberal government has changed the law to allow for house arrest for serious offenders and lets repeat criminals go free within hours of their arrest, which has resulted in a 50% increase in violent crime, the House call on the Liberal government to replace these changes with a “Three-Strikes-And-You’re-Out” law that will stop criminals convicted of three serious offences from getting bail, probation, parole or house arrest and keep violent criminals in jail for at least 10 years.
So right off the bat it’s worth remembering that Larry’s talking about mandatory minimums being removed. Mandatory minimums that were deemed to violate our Charter Rights. And now he’s calling for a minimum of 10 years jail time for these crimes, which again violates Charter Rights and will immediately be struck down.
It looks like the Liberals plan on introducing a bail reform bill in the next few months, so there’s a good chance Larry is just trying to get some sound bites in before that happens as I’m sure he’s well aware this Motion will just lead to another expensive court battle before it goes away again.
No votes have been held on this Motion yet, that should happen this week.
Closing Fun
And that’s all for the week!
Here’s our fun thing for the week, while skimming through the questions put up for official government response I noticed an interesting one from Arnold Viersen (Conservative, Alberta, Peace River—Westlock). Arnold wants to know about cricket protein. He wants to know everything about cricket protein. How much money the government’s spent since 2016 on funding projects to produce it, the full details of each of these projects, how many jobs were supposed to be generated versus how many actually were, if Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or Health Canada have done studies on the effects of humans eating cricket protein, and what the government’s official position on humans eating cricket protein. I just kind of found his need for in-dept details on all things crickets amusing. Full text of the question here for anyone interested:
Q-28 — Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock) — With regard to spending by the government related to the production of cricket protein, since January 1, 2016: (a) how much funding has been provided for projects supporting the production of cricket protein, broken down by year; (b) what are the details of each project in (a), including the (i) location, (ii) project description, (iii) amount of funding originally announced, (iv) amount of funding distributed to date, (v) date on which the funding was transferred to the recipient, (vi) recipient, (vii) current status, (viii) original projected completion date for the project, (ix) actual completion date for the project, if applicable, (x) current projected completion date for the project, (xi) reason for the project delay, if applicable, (xii) type of funding (grant, repayable loan, etc.), (xiii) amount repaid to date, if applicable; (c) for the announcement on June 27, 2022, to invest up to $8.5 million for Aspire to support the building of a commercial facility to produce cricket protein, (i) what was the reason for exceeding the AgriInnovate Program’s maximum contribution amount of $5 million, (ii) how many jobs were expected to be generated, (iii) how many jobs initially were generated, (iv) how many jobs are currently supported by the grant; (d) has Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada or Health Canada conducted studies or analyses on the production of cricket protein or the human consumption of cricket protein, and, if so, what are the details, including findings of any studies or analyses; (e) did Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada consider any negative impact on agriculture that the production of cricket protein would have, and, if not, why not; (f) did Health Canada seek any feedback on the human consumption of cricket protein, and, if so, what are the details, including what feedback was given; (g) what is the government’s official position on the human consumption of cricket protein; and (h) for each year since 2016, what was the annual amount of cricket protein produced in Canada, in total and broken down by (i) domestic versus exported usage, (ii) human consumption versus animal consumption? — Sessional Paper No. 8555-451-28.
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