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Mr. Mario Beaulieu (La Pointe-de-l'Île, BQ)

Apr/4/22 1:22:18 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, Bill C-8 marks the first time we see the federal government interfering in the area of property taxes. We moved just one amendment and tried to find a compromise to ensure that property taxes do not apply in a province without its consent. The Liberal chair of the committee ruled that the amendment was out of order. I would like to know what my colleague thinks of that.

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Mr. Glen Motz

Apr/4/22 1:22:49 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I am not familiar specifically with the issue that he raises with respect to the impact of property taxes and Quebec's desire to have a say in that area. Our party certainly supports some provincial autonomy and the ability for provinces to make decisions on issues that impact them, rather than the “federal government knows best” policy. I certainly do not support any measure whereby the federal government imposes some of their measures on the responsibilities of the provincial governments.

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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

Apr/4/22 1:23:32 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I have two comments and two questions for the member. We know when we talk about Canadians filling up their tanks that the oil and gas companies have price-gouged Canadians for many years. It has been documented in many studies. They jack up prices far beyond what they should normally charge and they keep those prices high even when the price of crude has come down. Does the member agree that price-gouging is not something that oil and gas companies should be doing to Canadian consumers? My second question is around the transition to clean energy and the fact that the federal government plays a role in a just transition and making sure Canadians can go to electric vehicles, which are very much more cost effective. Does the member agree with me that this would be an important initiative for the federal government to undertake?

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/4/22 1:24:30 p.m.
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The hon. member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner has one minute to respond.

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Mr. Glen Motz

Apr/4/22 1:24:34 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I hope to take the entire minute. I thank my friend for his question. While we disagree on many fronts, I have always appreciated his approach and the depth of his questions and I know he cares deeply about his constituents. It is important to recognize that in a fair market, we would hope that companies would be responsible to the consumer. We have seen in many different sectors, and not just in the energy sector, that this is not always the case. I do not have an easy solution to that issue. It is exacerbated by the government continuing to raise taxes at all levels, including excise taxes and carbon taxes on the price of fuel. With respect to the transition to electric, I find it difficult when I see electricity generators being operated by diesel in many vehicle charging stations across the country. They are diesel-powered electricity generators. I find that ironic, quite honestly. In my own riding, I could not travel across my riding in an electric vehicle without having to charge it a number of times if I wanted to get back home in the same day. I—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/4/22 1:26:01 p.m.
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I have allowed the hon. member some additional time over the one minute, but there is no more time. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan.

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Mr. Fraser Tolmie (Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, CPC)

Apr/4/22 1:26:13 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I had no problem with my colleague continuing on. I appreciate my colleague from Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner. It is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-8, the economic and fiscal update implementation act, 2021. I would like to thank the people of Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan for their overwhelming confidence in sending me to Ottawa to serve them as their member of Parliament. In my maiden speech, I recognized the sacrifices of my family. I would be remiss today if I did not recognize the team of volunteers who door knocked, canvassed, made phone calls and contributed to help get me here today so that true Saskatchewan values have a voice in this House and so that people from Saskatchewan can participate in Confederation and bring a voice of reason to this House. I want to focus today on something that affects everyone daily but that the government seems to have forgotten about: the skyrocketing costs of living. Last Friday, Canadians got a rude April Fool's joke played on them in the form of a 25% hike to the carbon tax. This means that when I drove to the airport last night, the price of gas in my riding had gone up to $1.68 per litre. This came at a time when inflation had already hit a 30-year high of 5.7%. The Liberals, when challenged on this issue, always compare us to other countries. I have just witnessed that. We are not here to compare ourselves to others. We are here to fight for the interests of our constituents. Just because inflation here is not as bad as it is in another country does not mean that it is good. The Liberals must address this and take responsibility for it. Inflation is increasing the cost of everything, including groceries, housing and everyday essentials that Canadians rely on. How did the Liberals decide to try to help Canadians who are already struggling? It was by hiking their taxes yet again. The problem with raising the carbon tax is that it does not just target the cost of gas; it hits everything that is transported or harvested with gas. Essentially, everything we buy is affected. Raising the carbon tax even increases inflation. The Bank of Canada told us recently that the tax accounted for 0.4% of the latest inflation numbers. A few weeks ago we, the Conservatives, offered a solution to these high gas prices. We proposed a motion to pause the GST on gas. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals voted this down. We are saying, and I have been saying since my maiden speech, that policy needs to be there and exist to help people, not punish them, and hiking the carbon tax during the current inflationary crisis is hurting Canadians. The least the government could do is postpone this tax grab. The largest contributor to the global economy is the consumer. Those consumers in this case are citizens and taxpayers. Reducing their buying power actually slows down the global economy. This has created a bureaucratic cycle implemented by this Liberal government. How does this happen? The Liberal government taxes someone with one hand and then, with the other hand, gives the money back to them. That bureaucratic cycle costs the taxpayer their hard-earned dollars, because someone has to administer and oversee the tax. This lost money should be used by consumers to purchase goods and services to support their own households. We see this in every policy that the Liberal government comes up with. It is like going to the carnival and seeing the giant pea and shell game. It is just moving money around. Everyone knows that this is a bureaucratic mess. Leading up to the federal budget, we are hearing more and more about the number of big-spending promises that the Liberals have made to buy the support of their coalition partner, the NDP, such as national dental care and national pharmacare. On top of these pet NDP causes, we have the Russian invasion of Ukraine that is forcing the government to finally rethink defence spending. I am glad to see that the government is finally buying the F-35s that Stephen Harper, the former prime minister, agreed to buy nearly a decade ago, but it is coming at a higher cost and at a time when Canada will struggle to afford it. As someone who has served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, increasing Canada's defence spending is something that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, times like this are why we need a prime minister who thinks about monetary policy. A leader who spent any time thinking about it would know that all of these big-spending promises cost Canadians. The Canadian debt is skyrocketing under the Liberal government. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the national debt is now over $1 trillion. It is growing by $16 million per hour, and each Canadian's share of it is over $31,000 at this point in time. My youngest daughter is six years old. We are spending money that her children will be paying back, and probably her grandchildren, too. We expect the government to set an example and be reflective of who we are as a society. We do not remortgage our homes to buy something for ourselves. We mortgage our homes to have a place to raise our families and to leave something to our children when we have paid it off: to leave a legacy. What legacy are we going to be leaving behind at this point? I talked about this theme in my maiden speech. It is our shared responsibility to leave something to our children and to future generations. Leaving them a trillion-dollar national debt is not what I had mind. Last week, we debated another Conservative motion calling on the government to exercise any semblance of fiscal restraint in the upcoming budget. We voted on that and, unsurprisingly, the NDP-Liberal coalition voted against it. Let us not fool ourselves. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a member of the CCF: It was the precursor to the NDP, prior to 1965. Now, this coalition is coming full circle and showing the current Prime Minister's true colours. It took this country decades to dig our way out of the debt that Pierre Trudeau left us. How many decades will we be cleaning up his son's mess for? I would like to spend a bit of time talking about Canadian veterans. I sit on the veterans affairs committee, which has been studying the rising backlog of cases under the current government. The average wait times are bad enough, but they get even worse if people are francophone or female. Heaven forbid if someone is a female francophone. I expect we will see some mention of this in this week's budget; however, I know that it will not be enough to fix the lingering issues. The fact that we are planning to spend nearly a billion dollars on electric infrastructure just shows how out of touch we are, and that we are not focusing on veterans: that number is a sizable chunk of the entire budget for Veterans Affairs Canada that could be used. I am concerned about the future of our country.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/4/22 1:36:08 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the tail end of the comments of the member opposite, I think we can do both. We can continue to support seniors, and in particular veterans, as the member referred to. We have seen huge investments in supporting veterans in recent years. We have reopened many, if not all, of the offices that the Stephen Harper era shut down. I also believe we can continue to move forward on the environment in green initiatives. We have seen it, and I look forward to seeing more of that in the upcoming budget. Would the member not agree that we can move forward on both of those items in a budget?

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Mr. Fraser Tolmie

Apr/4/22 1:37:01 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague bringing that comment forward. I think that there are obviously two components. Let us focus on them. Veterans in my riding are being challenged. They are suffering. Their pensions and buying power are being lost. Another component has to do with green initiatives. I have said that policy should not be there to punish us. It should be there to help us. We have not seen that. We have just seen money going from one hand to the next hand. Someone, being the taxpayer, has to pay for that process. We are losing buying power because of bad policies.

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Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)

Apr/4/22 1:38:02 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleague from Saskatchewan talking about the wait times experienced by francophone veterans and veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces in the processing of their cases. That fact really struck home. In my riding, one veteran has been caught up in red tape for a decade. To illustrate how ridiculous this situation is, he stated that if the government had put as much energy and money into solving his problem as it has put into constantly challenging his arguments, officials would probably have been able to help many veterans like him. However, my question is about another matter. In Bill C-8, there is new interference in jurisdictions. We are used to seeing the federal government interfere in provincial and Quebec jurisdictions, in particular health care. This time, however, it is interfering in another jurisdiction, which is just as astounding. The federal government wants to meddle in municipal jurisdictions by getting involved in property taxation. Would my colleague like to comment on that? Does my colleague believe, like me, that the federal government is taking its interference a bit too far?

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Mr. Fraser Tolmie

Apr/4/22 1:39:22 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments concerning Veterans Affairs and the challenges that francophone veterans are facing with the backlog. I find that unacceptable. If people have served in our forces, it does not matter if they are men or women, or English or French. They have served this country. They deserve and are entitled to fair treatment and fair service. I want people to please know that when we sit at committee, we will be fighting against that poor service and backlog. I am very disappointed that that is a challenge we are facing. With regard to municipal taxation, I am a former mayor of the city of Moose Jaw. What happens is that the municipality gets 8% of tax revenue. That same taxpayer is paying 92% to the federal and provincial governments. Municipalities deal with cleaning garbage, paving roads, providing parks and all those essential things, as well as infrastructure required so that Canadians can get to their workplaces and have a healthy lifestyle. There is overreach. We continually see an overreach by the Liberal government in everything, whether it has been the municipality tax or the Emergencies Act. It is always overreaching and always overstepping the mark.

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Mr. Randy Hoback (Prince Albert, CPC)

Apr/4/22 1:41:15 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, it is great to be here this morning talking about government spending again. Spending is something the government knows how to do very well, and it has been very actively spending taxpayers' dollars as it sees fit, as if it is the government's own slush fund. I am here to speak against Bill C-8, because some of that bill would actually do the exact same thing that has happened before. Let us review what is going on in the Canadian economy as we speak today. Typical housing prices have gone from $345,000 to $810,000 in the biggest one-time gain of all time. Newly created government cash, $400 billion, was pumped into the financial markets, and a lot of that money went into high-risk mortgages at rates less than inflation. Those are concerns that Canadian taxpayers should have going into the future, because we are insuring a lot of those high-risk mortgages. We are seeing the price of food going up, and that is something I hear of quite often. The price of chicken, for example, is up 6.2%, beef is up 12%, bacon is up 20% and bread is up 5%. Those are old numbers. Those numbers are no longer relevant. We could almost double them today and that is what we would see when we go to buy things at the grocery store. Inflationary pressures, not COVID pressures, are starting to become a major factor in what Canadians are facing moving forward. We see the economies opening up here in Canada. Saskatchewan has been open for literally over a month and a half. Masking mandates have been removed and vaccine passports have been removed. Canadians are getting back to business, except for federal employees who, for one reason or another, decided not to be vaccinated or not to reveal their status. Those people are still sitting in unemployment lines or have been laid off or fired. It is really sad when we look at the history of these people and what they have contributed to our economy and to our civil service. These are penitentiary guards and other federal workers who have given their hearts and souls to their jobs, only to be told, because they did not release their medical status, that they were no longer needed or wanted. It is amazing to lose people with that type of skill set and that experience at this point in time, in a situation where we have unemployment. People are demanding and looking for labour. The government is going to have a huge problem filling the shoes of those people who have left. I think the government has forgotten history, and I am going to go on a trip down memory lane, just as I did last week when I was talking about our motion to look for a way back to a balanced budget. The government has not remembered the mistakes of the past. It has not talked to former Liberal members who went through the process of trying to actually balance the budget after they were told they had to. Let us go back to the 1990s. Let us look at the situation in 1992 and 1993. All of a sudden, the warning signs were going off. We had inflation. We had gone through a period in the eighties when, if someone got a mortgage at 14%, they were excited. I can remember buying my first house. I was excited. I got a mortgage at 14%. Now, if I cannot get a mortgage at 2.5% or 3%, I am mad. That really tells us the difference between where we are sitting right now and where we are possibly heading again. We saw rapid inflationary pressures. We were seeing oil and gas pressure. The Canadian economy was showing strides. If someone had a job, they were excited. When I was coming out of high school in 1984 or 1985, if I got a job at McDonald's I was taking it, because there were not a lot of jobs to be had. A lot of people flocked to university, just because they had no options other than continuing to go to school. There were no jobs to be had. In 1994, Moody's investors lowered our credit rating. In 1995 and 1996, we had more people jumping on that and saying that Canada needed to do something, and in 1996 Jean Chrétien and finance minister Paul Martin had to go through the process of making decisions they did not want to make. They were decisions I hope no future governments will ever have to make. The federal government, for example, wanted to block transfers to the provinces. It cut health care funding substantially, compared with 1993 levels, and those levels did not return to normal, or 1993 levels, until 2004. It took that long to get things back in order so that we could actually start putting more money back into our health care system. Basically, we saw a situation where people were looking at the economy and were in dire need, and there were just no financial resources there to help them out. We had spent the cupboard bare, and the government had to make all sorts of difficult choices, both at the federal and provincial levels, to pay back the excess of borrowing that happened in previous governments, such as the Trudeau governments of the early and late seventies. I do not want to see that repeated. I do not want to see that handed on to my kids or my grandkids. Hopefully I will have grandkids somewhere down the road. We are spending a lot of money. We are seeing inflationary pressures and all sorts of instability around the world. We are spending our reserves, which we may need to save for another rainy day, like we did when COVID-19 first hit or when we had the great recession of 2008. At that time, we had the fiscal capacity to spend some money and strategically use it in such a way to advance our communities and help things that needed to be done get done earlier so we could get back to balanced budgets in 2015. Now we are seeing the government spending like crazy. Part of it is okay. I have to admit that part of it is fine. Supporting people during the time of COVID-19 was important. We had to be there for people. I think all parties agreed with that. However, now as we get out of COVID and start looking into the future post-COVID, all of a sudden we have not learned a lesson and we continue to keep spending and spending. We have to wonder: What is the role of taxpayers? Are taxpayers really on board with this type of spending? If we go back to the last election, they did not vote for a coalition government. They did not vote for a new dental care program or a new pharmacare program. They did not vote for a coalition government. If we asked them that today, they would be totally against it, and it would have changed their voting habits in the last election. When we look at the costs of these types of programs, one has to wonder: Who is going to pay for them? How are we going to pay for them? There are some options. If we want a dental care program or health care program, there are options to pay for that. One of them is to quit shutting down the industries that actually would pay for it, like the oil and gas sector, for example. We have the safest and most ethical oil and gas in the world. We just need to get it to market. By getting it to market, we would have royalties that could be used to keep our deficits low, pay for services like a dental care program, increase funding to health care and education and transition to a green economy, which is somewhere we all know we have to go. However, our transition is not going to be paid by royalties off oil and gas; it is going to be paid off with deficits and debt. The Liberals call this investment. That is fine, but in the same breath, why are we borrowing money when we have the ability to raise the money? That is what drives me and a lot of Canadians crazy, because they see opportunities for the government to get this economy going and what does it do? It brings in regulations and policies that slow or shut it down. It brings in policies that are not being followed anywhere else in the world and it is putting Canadians through restrictions that nobody else has to face. A classic example is the oil and gas regulations for the environment we have here in Canada, and our friend President Biden and the regulations he put in place. If he was so in favour of what we have done in Canada, why did he not copy us? Why did he not bring in our regulations? Why did he not bring in the exact same regulations we have here? Has he done that? Is he going to do that? The answer to that is no, because he will not risk the U.S. economy in light of what he needs to do in moving forward with electronic vehicles or the green economy. He is not going to throw that away. He is basically going to try to do both at the same time, which is what Prime Minister Harper was trying to do. He was balancing the economy and the environment together. We can look at other sectors. If we talk to those in the manufacturing sector, they are saying we are losing manufacturing left, right and centre. They are saying nobody is reinvesting in Canada because it is too expensive to operate here in Canada. I was in the U.S. two weeks ago and had some closed-door meetings with some senators. They were saying the reputation of Canada being a great member of the supply chain is at serious risk. They were saying that we cannot seem to get it together and that we do not have the ability to be part of a supply chain anymore. They said we are great for one-off purchases, but if we want to part of and embedded in the supply chain, we need to improve our border efficiency, our reliability and our tax structure. Not all of these are federal problems; I will agree with that. Some of them are municipal and some are provincial. However, we need to get to work on them, and that is where we need to focus. When we look at things we could be spending money on, things that could grow our economy and make things grow stronger, that would be wise to consider. More importantly, we need to be smarter and more proactive. Let us spend money where it is needed and required immediately, not chase new dreams and new structural deficits and debts that will leave our kids basically out in the cold, making the exact same decisions that Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien had to make. Even Ralph Goodale was part of that role. I encourage the Liberals to talk to some old Liberals. I think a lot of the old Liberals, like Dan McTeague, would say, “What is this party?” [Technical difficulty—Editor] what the government has been doing. They would not endorse it. They would not say this is a prudent way forward. They have the scars of going through the 1995-97 cuts and have experienced that. Let us not make the same mistakes. Let us learn from history. Let us move forward and do it in a prudent, proactive way.

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Mr. Damien Kurek (Battle River—Crowfoot, CPC)

Apr/4/22 1:51:15 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, regarding Bill C-8 and, obviously, the significant impact it would have on our country and our fiscal situation, I would like to ask my colleague's opinion. The Liberals have an opportunity to vote in favour of a Conservative motion here this afternoon that would provide some important context to address some of the fiscal realities that our country is facing. I wonder if my friend and colleague could comment on that vote, which will take place just after question period.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/4/22 1:51:55 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of people are following this vote very closely because it sends a signal to Canadians about how, and whether or not, the government is going to act responsibly. Having a game plan on how we are going to pay back our debt or get to a zero deficit is not a bad thing. Having a strategy in place to say this is our focus as we go out of the COVID world into an economy that is possibly facing another global war with what we are seeing in Ukraine and Russia is probably a good thing. Actually making sure that we have our ducks in a row physically and financially is very important. Canadians want to see that out of the government, but right now what they are seeing out of the government is confusion. They are seeing a lot of spending. They are seeing a lot of untargeted hyperopia on things the government wants to do moving forward, but nothing that really focuses on Canadians to actually set their families up for the future, and nothing that will prevent our kids from making the horrible decisions the Liberals made in 1995-96 because of the irresponsible spending before them.

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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

Apr/4/22 1:53:00 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I am a bit surprised to hear him argue against dental care. I would imagine that getting reimbursed for dental care would save people in his riding a lot of money. However, I would also suggest to him that, if we want to pay for new services, then we need to go and get the money where it can be found. What does my colleague think about a special tax on the indecent profits being made by the big banks? They made $60 billion in profit last year, which represents an increase of 40% in just one year. Why not tax the super-rich and corporations like banks that make outrageous profits?

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/4/22 1:53:41 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, the hon. member makes an excellent point. One would think people in Saskatchewan want dental care, and yes, they do, but they do not want to burden their kids with all sorts of expenses they cannot afford. This is a structural change in government spending, so we need tax revenue, not just today but in the future, to pay for it. How we are going to do that? We just shut down the oil and gas sector and we just heard from the manufacturing sector that it is leaving, so what are we going to do? My suggestion, if we want a dental program and pharmacare program, is to maybe get the cash first. Maybe pay for it instead of financing it through deficit and then waiting for somewhere down the road to pay for it. We talk about the big banks and the people who make tremendous amounts of money with their corporations. Proper taxation is very important, no question about it, but keep in mind that when a big bank makes money, what does it do? It pays out dividends. What do shareholders do? They reinvest it back into the Canadian economy. They buy things, or they borrow from the bank and use the money in their business to function their operating capital. If we want to have fair taxation rates for banks, let us talk about that; let us make that part of the debate. However, why not raise that money first before we start committing Canadians to a structural expense that they may not be able to afford?

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Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Apr/4/22 1:54:51 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, released a report this morning at 11 a.m. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about it. For example, the report states that projected carbon dioxide emissions from existing and currently planned fossil fuel infrastructure exceed the total emissions that would limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That is a big deal. Furthermore, the IPCC calculates that, by 2050, the equivalent of $1 trillion to $4 trillion U.S. in fossil fuels must be left in the ground to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about that.

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Mr. Randy Hoback

Apr/4/22 1:55:34 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, well, I have not seen the entire report so it is hard to comment, but with regard to his comments about fossil fuels and keeping them in the ground and emissions, let us talk about a few things. First of all, this is a global crisis, and where is the most environmentally friendly fossil fuel in the world? It is in Canada. If we want to shut down the Canadian industry, okay, shut that down, but it is going to get replaced because people are still burning fuel. What the Europeans found out when they could not get oil and gas from Russia is that they are still burning fuel, so where is it going to come from? It is the areas that are not environmentally friendly, which will actually increase the speed of carbon emissions in the world and provide cheap, dirty, unethical oil all over the world. We have a choice to make, and it is a very clear choice. We can have energy security here in Canada, with a very safe, green, ethical fund growing in Canada's oil and gas sector, whether it is in Newfoundland, Alberta or Saskatchewan, or we can get oil from Venezuela or from third-world dictatorships like Russia. What do we want? We have to decide, because right now the decisions that are being made do not make a lot of sense.

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Hon. Ed Fast (Abbotsford, CPC)

Apr/4/22 1:56:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, my colleague for Prince Albert has it right. Canada is the place where we should be investing. We should be harnessing the power of our energy sector to get clean energy to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal coalition government does not understand that. We know that this Thursday, the NDP-Liberal government is going to be tabling its 2022 budget. Quite frankly, based on the government's track record these past seven years, I expect it will again fail to meet the expectations and aspirations Canadians have for their future. For two long years, Canadians have been resilient, hoping to see a return to normal once mandates began to lift, lockdowns were lifted and Canadians were vaccinated, but instead, Canadians are struggling more than ever due to a soaring consumer price inflation rate, which stands at 5.7% today and is going up. In fact, the Governor of the Bank of Canada has suggested that it is going to get worse before it gets better, and Canadians have a right to be concerned. They see inflation at a 30-year high and skyrocketing housing prices, which have exacerbated the mess that our Liberal government has made of the economy. Economists have been warning for well over a year that there was an inflation crisis coming, yet the experts in our government assured us that inflation was transitory and there was nothing to see here. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of dollars in special stimulus, as the Prime Minister called it, was being pumped into our economy. Of course, those were taxpayers' dollars, and they were beginning to flood into our economy, with the excess cash driving the inflation rate and driving up the cost of everything. The Conservatives had warned the finance minister that out-of-control borrowing and spending without a plan to return to balanced budgets and a plan to manage the massive debt the Liberal government was leaving behind would leave future generations of Canadians to pay for this mess, this huge albatross hanging around their necks, going forward. However, we understand why this has happened. It is because, as members know, the Prime Minister said that he does not think about monetary policy. For the leader of this country not to care about monetary policy and its role in driving inflation in this country is appalling. When I have an opportunity to continue my speech after question period, I would love to elucidate and expand on those comments.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.)

Apr/4/22 1:59:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, April is Sikh Heritage Month. My bhaji, back in 2019, brought in legislation that was ultimately passed unanimously by all sides of the House, recognizing the importance of Sikhism not only to Canada but around the world. It is with a very proud heart that I say to people that April is the month in which we should be recognizing the importance from Sikhism from coast to coast to coast here in Canada. April 14 is a very special day. It is the day in which we celebrate Vaisakhi. At this time, I would like to wish everyone a very happy Vaisakhi. I have been touched and blessed since 1988 when I was first elected to the Manitoba legislature, and I know the importance of Sikhism. I want to say to everyone, Sat Sri Akaal.

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