What does Karina Gould do as House Leader ?

By Pepper Parr

September 27th, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

So just what does the House Leader do?  Is there a job description?

Last week Burlington MP Karina Gould stood up for the government – that’s part of her job.

Here is what she had to say on Friday.

Karina Gould sitting in the House of Commons while then United States President Obama addresses a joint session.

Madam Speaker, I have a lot of respect for my colleague. I consider him a very honourable member, and for that very reason, I cannot understand why he is telling only half the truth when he talks about the price on pollution.

As a member from Quebec, he knows full well that this does not apply to Quebec.

Why will he not be honest with Quebeckers about the actual policy?

Why does he keep repeating the same comments as his leader, who is not being honest with Canadians?

Later the same day she spoke about the Business of Supply

Madam Speaker, it is a little awkward that we are here again today, just a few hours after the House voted non-confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, but here we are. It is a little awkward because there is only one party in the House that does not want to work for Canadians.

Burlington MP Karina Gould sits beside the Prime Minister most of the time.

Yesterday, after that vote of non-confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, the Conservatives moved to obstruct debate so that we could not get to a second confidence motion on the ways and means motion. I guess they would be embarrassed to have lost two of those votes in one day. It is the only reason that I can surmise for moving to obstruct the business of the House. Then again, we know that those in the Conservative Party of Canada, its leader and its members, are only here for their own personal political gain. Its members are not here because they actually want to work on behalf of Canadians.

Yesterday, we saw that there are three parties in the House that want to work for Canadians. They are the Liberal members of Parliament, the Bloc members of Parliament and the New Democratic members of Parliament, and they are all here to get work done for Canadians. That is unsurprising to me as we have seen, particularly since this leader has become the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, that he treats our democratic institutions as a joke. He does not take them seriously.

What I have found interesting is that today, even though they are moving again for non-confidence in the government, there is not the pomp and ceremony. In fact, it feels a little deflated in here. It feels like those Conservative members of Parliament do not have that same energy because they lost that motion yesterday and they are doing it again today. It feels kind of sad and desperate. That is what it feels like to me.

Let us look at the Conservatives’ record. When we listened to the speech from the Leader of the Opposition on Tuesday, when he moved that first motion, he asked that we look at his record. He asked that we judge him on his record. There is really only one thing of note that he has ever done when he was in government, and it was not a positive thing. He, when he was minister of democratic institutions, brought forward what was considered to be one of the worst bills when it comes to electoral changes in Canadian history. It was widely panned by experts. It was widely panned by anybody who cares about rights and democracy. The only thing that he was able to accomplish was to make it harder for 500,000 Canadians to vote.

If we want to look at his record, we can see that the only thing he was able to achieve was to limit and decrease the rights of Canadians. He talks about making Canada the freest country in the world, but the only thing he has ever done is to take people’s freedoms away. That is not something that Canadians want in a Prime Minister, and it is certainly not something that they want in the Leader of the Opposition. We think about his record as he talks about housing, and it is really cute to hear them talk about housing because of his record as the minister of housing. I can actually count on two hands how many houses he built: one, two, three, four, five, six. There are six in total. That is the record he is putting forward.

Gould: “Let us take him at his word.”

Let us take him at his word and look at what his record is for Canadians.

The other thing that he did, and he did not do this as a private member, is that he was the architect behind the Conservative plan, when they were in government, to put anti-union, anti-worker, anti-women and anti-abortion private members’ bills in place. This is a typical Conservative tactic.

Yesterday in the House, the Leader of the Opposition said that he would not reopen the abortion debate, but then he kind of did a wink, wink and nudge, nudge because that is exactly what Mr. Harper did when he was Prime Minister. He had his members bring those forward as private members’ bills, through the back door, so he could pretend that it was not the government that was doing it.

We see that the Leader of the Opposition speaks on one side to say that, no, he is not going to do this, but then he looks at the members of his party who are social conservatives and tells them not to worry, that they can go, all-expenses-paid, down to Florida to anti-abortion conferences to talk about how they are going to bring those American-style politics up to Canada, to limit a woman’s right to choose and to limit their ability to access reproductive health care in this country. He says that he will tell everybody that he is not going to do it, but to not worry because they can do it through the back door.

 This is the issue that we have when it comes to the Leader of the Opposition: He refuses to tell Canadians the whole truth.

Let me get back to housing because the member who was just speaking talked about the Conservatives’ great housing plan. They talk about their great housing plan, but they are not going to provide any funding to municipalities until they build the houses. For anyone who knows how municipalities work, or how development and planning work, are they just going to have a whole bunch of empty houses with no roads to get there, no sewers to use and no electricity? Those development charges, the funding that funds all of the stuff that builds healthy neighbourhoods, are required to get those houses built. The vision that the Conservative leader of Canada is putting forward is a whole bunch of empty homes with nobody able to get there or use them because there will not be any of the necessary services.

He talks about cutting taxes, but taxes pay for the services and programs that we care about as Canadians. They pay for the health care we receive, the education our children receive and the child care our children go to.

Gould: The government contributes to the cost of building roads and the public infrastructure.

They pay for the roads, the public infrastructure and everything that makes this country great and gives Canadians a fair shot at success.

Over the past nine years, our government has ensured that people have a fair shot at success and that the Canadian dream is an equal playing field, so that income, family background or where people come from do not matter. All people have an opportunity to succeed because Liberals believe that is the Canadian dream. When we have a Leader of the Opposition who only talks about tearing down the institutions that we have in Canada, the very institutions that have made this country great, that is not leadership. That is not someone who believes in this country or who wants to build a prosperous, successful and equitable Canada where everybody has a chance at success.

Our government is very proud of the record it has had over the last nine years. The Canada child benefit lifted 650,000 children out of poverty. Let us compare that to what the Conservatives did. They had the UCCB, which sent $100 a month to all parents, but it was all taxable. The Canada child benefit is tax-free. That is money in people’s pockets that helps with the high costs of groceries, rent and raising a family.

When it comes to senior citizens, what is the record of the Leader of the Opposition? He was in a Conservative government that raised the age of retirement from 65 to 67. He was in a government that cut seniors’ pensions.

What have the Liberals done? The first thing we did was increase the guaranteed income supplement by 10%. We increased old age security for those 75 and over by 10%. We also increased the Canada pension plan for future seniors to make sure that everybody would have a dignified retirement in Canada. Our record speaks for itself.

Let us talk about workers’ rights. The Leader of the Opposition is going around talking to workers saying that he supports them. He has one of the most anti-worker, anti-union records in Canadian history. He has done everything possible to try to bust unions, limit workers’ rights and make sure they do not have the strength they need to continue to support labour rights in this country.

Gould: “What he has actually delivered for Canadians workers, and it is anything but pro-union and anything but pro-worker.”

One of the first things we did when we came into office was to reverse those anti-labour laws that Stephen Harper and the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, who was the minister of employment at the time, put forward. His record speaks for itself. He is anti-union and anti-labour. He simply does not care about workers’ rights. What Canadians see, when they hear him speaking, is that he only tells half the truth. He neglects the part of the story that does not fit the narrative he wants to put forward, and he is hiding his true agenda. He can tell workers he supports them, but let us look at the facts. Let us look at what he has actually delivered for Canadians workers, and it is anything but pro-union and anything but pro-worker.

Let us talk about the future of the country. Let us talk about the fight against climate change. This is one of the most existential threats that our country, and indeed the world, is facing. If we want to have a country where our children can prosper and grow, and where our grandchildren can prosper, we have to fight climate change. That means we have to have a comprehensive plan when it comes to the price on pollution, the work to do with industry partners and investments in clean technology. We have to have that whole picture because this is a whole-of-society fight that we need to engage in.

The Leader of the Opposition says that he will do things for climate change, but right now, all he has is imaginary ideas that nobody has ever tested.

The fact of the matter is that, when he was in government, when Stephen Harper was Prime Minster, we had the worst climate record in the world.

Canadians were ashamed of our actions on climate change when the Leader of the Opposition was in government.

We just received news that our climate plan is working. The equivalent of 60 million cars has been taken off the road in climate-emission reductions because of the work we have put forward. Now, let us talk about our international record. Last fall, I thought the House was going to unanimously pass the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. I thought that would be something that would go smoothly. Instead, we saw obstruction at every single turn, which was led by the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Canada has stood strong with Ukraine against Russia’s illegal occupation and war. Again, we saw obstruction at every moment from the Conservatives. This was apparently because there was something about a price on pollution in the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, which was an absolute red herring since Ukraine already had a price on pollution. This was simply an update. It was a wink and a nod to the people online who are supporting the Russian occupation. The Leader of the Opposition did not want to necessarily rock that boat because he is one of those people who goes down those conspiracy theory rabbit holes.

This was not one of Gould’s best photo ops. The elderly gentleman was later identified as a member of the Nazi party as a youth during the war.

He was absolutely against moving forward in support for Ukraine. Finally, he was shamed into doing so, but it took a very long time. It is shameful that he was trying to obstruct and obscure our standing alongside our allies. If we think about it, the very fact that he cannot even get allies in the House to support his little political games makes me wonder how in the world he is going to get allies around the world to support Canada’s objectives moving forward.

The Leader of the Opposition takes this place for a joke. He takes Canadians for a joke. Canadians deserve more than that. They deserve more from their political leaders than to be treated as props and to be treated as symbols for political advancement.

On this side of the House, and indeed among the other political parties, the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals, we are here to work for Canadians.

We will continue to do that. We will continue to advance the important work of the House. The only question we have today is whether the Conservatives will stop playing their silly partisan games, get over these ideas of grandeur and, instead, actually work for Canadians. All we see today is the fact that the Conservatives are only here to work for themselves.