44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 22, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, in my 18 years in politics, I have never seen Canadians suffer as much as they are suffering now. I just criss-crossed the country and met a lot of people. In fact, 93,000 people registered for my events. I make a point of listening to all their stories, and I never leave the room until I have spoken to everyone who wants to meet me. I heard some heartbreaking stories.
We are talking about young people, 35-year-olds, who have done everything they were supposed to do. They earned a degree and they are working hard, yet they are still living in their parents' basement or in a small, 400-square-foot apartment because the price of housing has doubled since this Prime Minister took office. Our housing bubble is the second largest in the world. Yesterday we learned that the percentage of Canadians who own their own home is at its lowest level in over 30 years.
When the Prime Minister took office, Canadians were paying 32% of their income on average to maintain a mid-size house. Now, the average family has to pay 50% of their income just to keep their house. This increase is due to higher costs, but also to an increase in interest rates, which this government had promised Canadians would not happen for a long time. It told Canadians not to worry, to go ahead and take out big loans, since interest rates would remain low for a long time, and there would never be any negative consequences. Now we are seeing interest rates rises 300 basis points, or 3% in simple terms.
This phenomenon is not only affecting the housing sector, it is also affecting the price of food. I will take this opportunity to read out some headlines, because even the media is starting to notice a problem. “Rents are so high in Toronto that students are living in homeless shelters.” “Inflation: Child hunger a major concern in Canada amid skyrocketing food prices.” “GTA food banks say they're facing the highest demand in their history.” “Nearly 6 million people in Canada experienced food insecurity in 2021, U of T study says.” People can no longer pay for food. Some single mothers are even watering down their children's milk because they cannot afford food.
As for gas prices, I met a young man who works in the mines in northern Ontario, and he told me that he could not go see his dying parents in Thunder Bay because diesel was over $2 a litre. He was not able to say goodbye to his own parents.
What is the Prime Minister doing to respond to this crisis? First, he is trying to divide people by attacking them because he thinks that if Canadians are afraid of one another, then they will forget that they cannot pay their bills. The Prime Minister is keeping in place vaccine mandates that every other country has lifted. He is still insisting on the use of the ArriveCAN app, which really does not work. He is trying to divert people's attention away from the cost of living by dividing Canadians and creating problems and division.
The next part of his plan involves increasing income taxes and taxes on gas, heating and food. The first thing the official opposition has called for since I became leader is for the government to do away with the tax hikes so that Canadians can keep more of their paycheques in their pockets and so that energy, gas, heating and other costs become more affordable.
That is our role, here in Parliament, to turn pain into hope. Canadians need hope. The comment I heard most from the people who attended my events was “Thank you for giving us hope”. For the first time, people believe that things can improve, and they will. We can change things.
The first thing we need to do is axe all the tax hikes, but we also need to control spending. Today's inflation is the result of a spendthrift government. The government's spending is increasing the cost of living. The $500-billion inflationary deficit increased the cost of what we buy and the interest that we pay. Inflationary taxes are increasing costs related to our businesses and our workers who provide products and services. The more the government spends, the more things cost. That is “Justinflation”.
We can reverse this trend by introducing legislation to limit government spending. This will subject politicians to the same economic rules that families have to follow. When a family increases spending in one column of their budget, they have to cut spending elsewhere. They have to find a dollar to spend a dollar. The same principle should apply to governments. During the Clinton years, the United States passed a law that helped Americans balance their budget and pay down $400 billion in debt. It was, at the time, the largest debt repayment in the United States. As soon as the law was struck down, Americans were plunged back into a deficit. This is proof that we need to put legal limits on politicians' spending and that politicians should have to follow the same spending rules as single mothers and small business owners.
Furthermore, instead of just printing more money, we need to produce more of the things that money buys, produce affordable food, energy and natural resources here in Canada, and we need to build more houses. We need to remove the barriers that the Prime Minister has put in place.
Let us start with food. The Prime Minister increased farmers' taxes. That increases the cost of fertilizer and of the energy needed to produce food. Now he wants to limit the use of fertilizer. That will require farming more land to produce the same quantity of food. Tractors and other equipment will have to cover a larger area, burning more diesel and other fuels. More food will have to be imported. Bringing this food from other countries to Canada will again require using more energy.
Did we not learn during the COVID-19 crisis that it is irresponsible to rely on other countries for what we need?
We should be able to grow our own food here, in Canada. Our farmers are the best in the world. We should remove the barriers that the government has put in place. We will cancel these taxes on farmers, scrap the government's plans to reduce the use of fertilizer and eliminate the paperwork that is so expensive for our farmers.
Second, we will provide incentives to our municipalities to cut their red tape. At present, Canada has the lowest housing units per capita in the G7, even though we have the largest land area. That is ridiculous. That is why housing prices in Canada are the second highest in the world relative to household income. With regard to home ownership, Vancouver is the third most expensive market in the world, and Toronto is the sixth. A Conservative government will tie the dollar amount for infrastructure in big cities where housing prices are too high to the number of houses built.
This will encourage them to cut red tape and reduce the cost of building permits so that more housing can be built. Every time a federal government funds a public transit station, we will make sure there is intensive densification in the surrounding areas so that young people can live in homes and apartments next to public transit.
Third, we will sell 15% of the 37,000 federal buildings so that they can be converted into housing and create millions of homes that our young people could buy in order to start a family.
Instead of importing foreign energy, we will get rid of laws like the ones arising from Bill C‑69 and others to allow energy to be produced here in Canada. This will create jobs and make the cost of energy more affordable. It will increase Canadians' purchasing power by raising the value of our dollar. When our energy sector is strong, our dollar goes up. The value of the dollar is tied to our purchasing power. When the dollar is low, it costs more to buy anything on international markets. Let us strengthen our dollar, produce our own energy and end oil imports.
By the way, where are the Liberal and NDP environmentalists to protest the foreign oil we are importing? Why are we funding dictators? We should be funding Canadians' paycheques here at home.
Finally, we want to give Canadians back control of their lives, in the freest country in the world, where the dollar keeps its value so that Canadians can have the life they work so hard to build. We should be a country that rewards hard work, a country where people can keep more of their money. We need to reform the tax system so that hard-working Canadians who contribute to the economy can keep their hard-earned money and provide better for their families. We should be a country that encourages and supports those who work hard, take risks and help build our country.
It is good to be back in the House, but would it not be nice if our young people could have a home? That is what we should be working towards. Unfortunately, yesterday we learned that the rates of home ownership are at their lowest levels in a generation. House prices have doubled under this Prime Minister. In fact, when this Prime Minister took office, the average family could afford their monthly housing costs with 32% of their paycheque. That has rocketed up to almost 50%. Vancouver is the third-most overpriced housing market on planet Earth. Toronto is the sixth. We have the second-worst housing bubble on planet Earth. No wonder nine in 10 young Canadians say that they cannot even dream of affording a house.
Now, from housing to food, we see the headlines. Even the media has noticed: “Rents are so high in Toronto that students are living in homeless shelters”; “Child hunger a major concern in Canada amid skyrocketing food prices”; “GTA food banks say they're facing the highest demand in their history”; and “Nearly 6 million people in Canada experienced food insecurity in 2021, U of T study says”.
Then there is energy. I met a young man in northern Ontario who said that he could not afford to put the diesel in his car to go and see his dying relatives one last time, who are hundreds of miles away in Thunder Bay. I met a working man, an energy worker ironically, in St. John's, Newfoundland, who said that the rising cost of gas meant he could not afford to replace his boots so he was taping them up with duct tape.
Canadians are suffering, and why is this happening? The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. Half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits means more dollars chasing fewer goods, leading to higher prices, bidding up the cost of the goods we buy and the interest we pay. Inflationary taxes drive up the cost of businesses and workers to make our goods. The more Liberals spend, the more things cost. It is just inflation, and Canadians are paying the price for it.
What has been the Prime Minister's response? His first response was to attack the people who were suffering, to call them horrible and disparaging names, to divide and distract. His strategy is simple. He thinks if people are afraid of their neighbours, they will forget that they cannot pay their bills, so he keeps in place divisive and unscientific vaccine mandates to shut truckers out of their ability to transport goods across the border and soldiers, who have served our country bravely and loyally, out of their jobs. He does this all to stigmatize and attack so a single mother who is putting water in her kid's milk might forget, he hopes, how badly she is suffering under his watch because she will be afraid of her fellow citizens. It is time to replace fear with freedom. It is time for us all to unite.
The Prime Minister's second approach has been ever predictable. He wants to raise taxes with a new tax hike on paycheques that will take effect on January 1, meaning that Canadians will take home less of what they earn. Small businesses will have to pay a higher cost for every single person they keep on the payroll, forcing many to make the painful choice of laying people off. A few months later, on April 1, April Fool's Day, he will continue to carry out his plan to triple the carbon tax. He wants to increase gas taxes, home heating taxes and, indirectly, food taxes because, of course, food requires energy. This is going to make things worse. The Conservatives have made the demand that the government must cancel all its tax increases on our workers and our seniors so that their paycheques go further and their energy becomes affordable.
We in this House have a duty to transform the hurt into hope. That is what Conservatives will do, because things can get better. There is nothing wrong with Canada, with our country, that cannot be cured by what is right with this country. We have the answers that will counter this inflation and reinforce the purchasing power of Canadians.
We will call for a cap on taxes so that Canadians pay no more to the government and can keep more for themselves. We will call for the government to cap its own spending, and it can do this by simply following the same rules that everyday families follow. If a family decides it wants to build a porch in front of their house, they cancel their vacation or, better yet, they go out and find a deal on lumber and look for a way to keep their vacation costs down so that they can do both but for the same budget. This is how small businesses function as well, but not government.
The great Thomas Sowell said that the number one law of economics is scarcity, that people always want more than there is to have and that the number one rule of politics is to ignore the number one rule of economics, because politicians are the only creatures in the universe who do not have to live with scarcity. The birds in the trees, the fish in the seas, all must make maximum use of limited resources, but the politician just passes the cost on to someone else in higher inflation, debt and taxes. A “pay-as-you-go” law would force politicians to make the same either-or trade-offs that everyday Canadians make in their lives.
The principle is very simple. If the government brings in a new dollar of spending, it should find a dollar of savings to pay for it. All of the existing spending that is in the budget goes ahead into the future, but when the government steps into this House to introduce a new measure, it should accompany it with savings to pay for it. The government did this in the United States during the 1990s and that allowed the American government to balance its budget, pay off $400 billion of debt, have booming job growth, record-low unemployment and a massive increase in prosperity, but as soon as it let the law lapse, it went right back into deficit, proving that politicians need the same legal limits on their spending that families follow every single day. Our families have been pinching their pennies long enough. It is time for government to pinch its pennies, too.
Instead of just creating more cash, why not create more of what cash buys? Why do we not grow more food, build more house and produce more Canadian resources right here in our country instead?
Let us start with houses. As I have said, we have the fewest houses per capita of any country in the entire G7, even though we have the most land on which to build. Why? Local government gatekeepers stand in the way.
In Vancouver, the cost of government gatekeepers, that is permitting, delays, consultants and taxes, is $600,000 for one unit of housing. It is about $350,000 in Toronto. This prevents people from owning a home.
I propose is this. The government should link the number of dollars big overpriced cities get for infrastructure to the number of houses that actually get built, so we have an incentive for them to remove the gatekeepers, lower the costs and increase the speed of building permits so we can get more houses.
Let us require every federally funded transit station be pre-approved for high-density housing around it, so our young people do not even need to own a car. They can live right next to transit. Let us sell off 15% of the underutilized and overpriced 37,000 federal buildings, so we can convert that into housing. Let us create millions of new homes, so our newcomers, immigrants, young people and working-class people can re-establish the dream of home ownership.
Let us put an end to importing overseas oil into this country. Where are the protesters? Where are the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberal protesters standing in Saint John, New Brunswick to greet all those big tankers coming from overseas? They say that they are against oil, but they have no problem if that oil comes from foreign dictatorships. There are 130,000 barrels of overseas oil every single day arriving at our shores and taking our money back to their countries at the same time.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister violates his own sanctions against Putin by sending back a turbine so the Russians can continue to pump gas into Germany, so the Germans can fund the Russian war against Ukraine. It is incredible. Those members are against pipelines in Canada, but in favour of maintaining the turbines for Russian pipelines that fund foreign wars.
Meanwhile, we have 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that could be used to free Europe from its dependency on Putin, meanwhile bringing back paycheques to this country. We have the ability to produce it cleaner than anywhere else on planet earth. In fact, the shortest shipping distances to both Asia and Europe from North America are right here in Canada.
What else do we have in Canada that allows us to liquify natural gas so it fits on a ship? Cold weather, which is our most abundant natural resource. That actually lowers the cost of liquefying natural gas by 25%. With Quebec, Newfoundland and British Columbia hydro, we can do it emissions-free. Why do we not ship our clean Canadian natural gas to Asia to shut down coal-fired plants there and ship it to Europe to break European dependence on Putin? Let us turn dollars for dictators into paycheques for Canadians.
Let us make work pay again in our country. Let us stop punishing people for the crime of getting up early in the morning and putting in a hard day's work. According to a Finance Canada document, if a single mother with three kids who earns $55,000 a year goes out and earns another dollar, she loses 80¢ of that dollar to government clawbacks and taxes. If she makes $25 an hour, she takes home $5 of that. No one should work for $5 an hour. That is below minimum wage, and yet our tax and benefits system punishes her for trying to work a little harder so maybe her kids can go to camp in the summer or maybe they can join the little league team.
We should reward hard work in our country. We should set out to reform our benefit and tax systems, so that every time someone works harder, takes another shift, earns a bonus and gets up a little earlier they keep more of what they earn.
My parents raised me to believe that it did not matter where I came from; it mattered where I was going. It did not matter who I knew, but what I could do. That is the country I want my kids to inherit. I want this to be a country again where it does not matter where people start off. If they work hard, if they take risks, if they study, if they learn, if they build and if they contribute, they can achieve anything they want. Right now, people do not feel that way, but hope is on the way.
We are going to bring change to our country. We are going to put change back in your pocket and we are going to make this the freest country on earth.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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Madam Speaker, the only way for all Canadians to avoid inflation is for the government to stop causing it in the first place. The Canadian dollar is the only national currency and will always be the only national currency of our country. Unfortunately, the government is devaluing the purchasing power of that currency.
With a half-trillion dollars of inflationary deficits, it has driven inflation to its highest levels in 40 years. It has doubled housing prices, which has reduced the purchasing power of the dollar in terms of real estate by half, That is what we have to fix. We need to reinforce the power of the Canadian dollar by cancelling the inflationary deficits and inflationary taxes that have caused this inflation crisis in the first place.
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Madam Speaker, the member is right about the fact that the Liberals are creating new programs when they cannot even manage the existing ones. Our health care system is already in crisis, and the federal government has done nothing to fix it. The government is doing nothing to protect our borders from people crossing illegally and from gun smugglers. This government cannot even issue passports.
Why should we believe that this government can manage the housing crisis and dental benefits? A government that cannot assume its existing responsibilities should not be taking on new ones.
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Madam Speaker, the member is quite right to say that Canadians are suffering under the policies that he is supporting. He is a part of that costly coalition.
Everything that is happening in Canada is the paradise for which the NDP has been dreaming of all these years. They are now realizing all of the policies they always wanted. Basically, we have an NDP prime minister. What has that given us? Forty year highs in inflation, double the housing prices, record-low home ownership rates, people who, like the member said, cannot afford the basics of life. That is the consequence of that costly coalition of bigger government and smaller citizens whereby Canadians are carrying this heavy load.
Here is the question. Why would we trust the government to create new programs when it cannot run the programs it already has? It cannot protect our borders. It cannot keep out the guns. It cannot stop the crime even though the Criminal Code is a federal responsibility. It cannot even deliver a passport. How can we expect it to run our lives?
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Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise that institutional investors have been able to outbid everyday working-class Canadians for housing. Why? Because the government flooded the financial system with $400 billion of newly created cash. When it pumped that cash into the financial system, it went into mortgage lending. Who is preferred to borrow that money? Wealthy, well-connected institutional investors. They got their hands on that money and they used it to bid up housing prices out of the reach of the working class, meaning that young people, who not long ago would have been able to afford a home, are now permanent renters.
We need to change this system. We need to stop the money printing, ensure that we have a financial and monetary system based on hard, sound money.
Finally, we need to incentivize local government gatekeepers to get out of the way, deliver faster and more affordable building permits, so we can get houses built for our youth.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals are like the Bourbon dynasty: They learn nothing and forget nothing. They are right back to the same policies.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau ran monstrous money-printing deficits. Of course, that led to 12% inflation, 12% unemployment and then ultimately 19% or 20% interest rates. If we combine unemployment and inflation, we get the misery index. It reached a record-smashing 24% under the first Trudeau, which delivered the highest suicide rates in Canadian history in 1983.
My earliest memories are of that time, and my parents suffered because, while they were school teachers and did not lose their jobs, they got hit with those interest rate hikes just like everyone else and lost their rental properties. We ended up having to move to a smaller place because of that. We were among the lucky since we were able to get into a home.
We are following the same policies. We have 40-year highs of inflation. Inflation is higher than at any time since the last Trudeau. If we do the same things, we get the same results.
The good news is that after Canada was liberated from Pierre Elliot Trudeau, we spent a lot of years doing the exact opposite: shrinking the size of government, reforming our taxes, opening up our economy and standing up for working-class people. That is exactly what we are going to do again, and we are going to get even better results next time.
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- Sep/22/22 2:19:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is good to see the Prime Minister here on a visit to Canada to refuel his private jet. However, here on the ground, in Canada, things are not going well. According to the Financial Post, rents are so high in Toronto that students are living in homeless shelters. Food banks are facing the highest demand in history. This is the worst time to increase costs for Canadians.
Will the Prime Minister cancel his tax hikes on gas, heating, food and paycheques?
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- Sep/22/22 2:21:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has effectively admitted that his carbon tax has not worked and, therefore, he needs to triple it. According to the Liberal Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, the forthcoming hike in the carbon tax will mean that the total cost increase for a Newfoundland senior living in the countryside, on their heating bill, will be 80%.
Canadians cannot afford that, but just for clarity, if someone is a Newfoundland senior, how much will their home heating bill rise as a result of the forthcoming hike in the Liberal carbon tax?
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- Sep/22/22 2:22:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the leader of the Liberal Party has an opportunity to respect the fact that heating one's home in January and February in Canada is not a luxury, and it does not make those Canadians polluters. They are just trying to survive. This from a Prime Minister who burned more jet fuel in one month than 20 average Canadians burn in an entire year.
Will the Prime Minister ground the jet, park the hypocrisy and axe the tax hikes?
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- Sep/22/22 2:23:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we will not support tax hikes on Canadians. Speaking of tax hikes, they plan to raise taxes on paycheques.
Now, yesterday, the finance minister claimed that all the EI tax hikes they would collect would go to EI benefits. In fact, I looked it up. Over the next three years, they are going to collect $10 billion more in EI taxes than they pay out in EI benefits, allowing the Prime Minister to grab up the difference and use it to feed his insatiable spending appetite.
Canadians cannot afford a bigger bite off their paycheques. Will the Prime Minister cancel his tax hikes on Canadian paycheques?
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- Sep/22/22 2:25:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister is quite wrong. Today, payroll taxes on the average $60,000-a-year worker are about $700 higher than when we left office and, by the way, we left with a balanced budget.
Now he wants to raise those taxes even further, a bigger bite off of Canadian paycheques at a time when inflation is at a 40-year high, when students are forced to live in homeless shelters and when home ownership rates are at the lowest level in a generation. Does he not understand that now is the worst time to raise taxes? Will he cancel those tax hikes?
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- Sep/22/22 3:31:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what an honour it is to have the legendary heroes of the Summit Series among us today.
It is an honour to welcome to the House today members of Team Canada for the 50-year anniversary of their victory over the Soviet national team in the 1972 Summit Series.
It was the year 1972 that the Cold War spilled into the world of sports. In July, American and world chess champion Bobby Fischer had defeated the Soviet champion and number two world competitor Boris Spassky. In the Munich Olympics, the American basketball team lost a bitter and still-contested gold medal game against the Soviet Union.
However, neither of these events produced the drama or the lasting glory that the Summit Series did. The series pitted, for the first time, the best Canadian professionals, though some of them looked too young to have been there, against the Soviet players who were, at the time, underestimated but preparing quietly for a surprise. It was to be a true test of hockey supremacy, played under the shadow of a much deadlier contest for global supremacy.
The Canadian Department of External Affairs suggested that the encounter could be called a “friendship series”. Thank goodness the players ignored that and had the good sense to compete fiercely. Although most commentators and most Canadians expected the series to be an easy one, after a shocking 7-3 loss in game one in Montreal, it became clear that the series would not be a friendly exhibition of Canada's superiority.
As the losses mounted, the pressure on our players grew, the low point being the series' game four in Vancouver when some of the crowd rained boos down on their defeated heroes. Canadians simply could not understand how these NHL all-stars, these legendary names they knew so well, could be outscored by a team of Russian amateurs.
The Canadian fans had not yet realized what had become clear to the Canadian players: These Russians were actually really good. They were playing a different game than the NHL players were used to. It was a game of speed and finesse, of long-lead breakout passes and pinpoint cross-ice accuracy.
By the end of the series, the names of those faceless Russians would be household names in Canada. We know them now. We knew them then and now many of them play in the leagues on this side of the ocean, or at least their children and grandchildren do. They have names and faces Canadians would come to know and respect in international tournaments and in exhibitions pitting Soviets against NHL competitors.
By the time the Canadian team left to train in Europe ahead of the four games in Moscow, the idea of a “friendship series” was long dead. From this side of the Cold War, knowing how it ends, we can afford to look back objectively, but in the moment, and at that time, the series had become, to borrow the name of the 40th anniversary documentary, the Cold War on Ice.
The 1972 series was the first time the term “Team Canada” was applied to a Canadian hockey team. In the minds of Canadians and fans following the series around the world, and on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Team Canada versus Team Russia had become us versus them. There were two styles, two different ways of life and two fundamentally incompatible ideologies and systems of government. It was democracy versus totalitarianism, communism versus free enterprise and freedom versus repression.
Clichés never tell the whole story, but they often tell the most important part. This is true of the stories we are told today of the 1972 series. Before the series, we told ourselves that we were the best hockey country in the world and that our way of playing was the only way to play properly.
During the series, we realized that this was not quite true. For having lost those four games and having seen the competitive grit and the finesse of a team of a different style, we learned that we needed to up our game. In the last game on home ice, the frustration of Canadian fans in Vancouver's Pacific Coliseum erupted as boos rained down from the bleachers. Team Canada lost, falling 4-2.
In a now iconic post-game interview, the legendary Phil Esposito pleaded with Canadians. To quote the elder Esposito brother, he said he was completely disappointed and he could not believe it. He said, “Some of our guys are really down in the dumps...We know we’re trying...They’ve got a good team and let’s face facts. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not giving it our 150 per cent, because we...are. Every one of us guys, 35 guys, came out to play for Team Canada. We did it because we love our country”.
On foreign ice, in front of hostile fans, with their backs against the wall, down two games, Team Canada rallied to win the last three games, each by a single goal. Each of those winning goals was scored by the great Paul Henderson. His name is immortalized in Foster Hewitt's frantic play-by-play call that erupted through hundreds of thousands or probably millions of televisions and radios in classrooms and workplaces across the country: “Henderson has scored”, and the crowd goes wild.
The ladies and gentlemen in the audience would not have been so pleased of course, but those here on the other side of the world would have applauded and cheered with such a vibrating and powerful force that it would have been heard all around the globe. It is a call that still thrills us all half a century later, even those of us who were born after 1972. We have only heard the echo of those cheers but still revel in the legacy they represent. When we hear those calls and we see those names, the names of those who are here today, Yvan Cournoyer, after the winning goal, for example, it takes us back to a different time and a different world.
It was 17 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Just a few months before the wall fell in May of 1989, a 20-year-old Alexander Mogilny would become the first Soviet star to defect to the west to play in the NHL. He was charged with deserting the Soviet Red Army, in which he was nominally an officer. Shortly after that, a crumbling and cash-strapped Soviet hockey system and Soviet Union would come crashing down as well. Two years after that, in 1991, the Soviet Union, which in 1972 had appeared almost invincible, officially came to an end. I say almost invincible because this Team Canada showed that they were anything but.
That is something the Canadian spirit brings alive in hockey, but also in all aspects of our lives. I think what is so special about the gentlemen gathered here today is that every single Canadian can see their own triumph in this legendary win. They have made us all proud. They have given us one of the defining moments of Canadian history. In fact, I think if any Canadian were asked to close their eyes and dream up the most Canadian moment, it would be hard to think of anything more Canadian than the '72 Summit series victory.
Therefore, on behalf of all Canadians I wish them a great congratulations and thank them for their contributions to our national story. May we all live up to their incredible example of grit, determination and victory.
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