SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 186 - Apr/27/23

Apr/27/23 10:38:55 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, I would like to know what the member would say to his constituents about all the benefits that all the different populations of people in his riding in Northumberland—Peterborough South are going to be getting. There is dental care, the GST rebate being doubled and the grocery rebate. What is it about these benefits, which are going to his constituents, that he is so against?

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Apr/27/23 10:39:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the challenge is that those benefits do not come from air; they come from taxpayers, and my constituents are tired of paying the bills for the government. Not all that money comes back to Northumberland. There are sticky fingers here in Ottawa that keep a large portion of that money. That money is better to keep in the pockets. I believe that a Canadian can spend the money better on themselves than any bureaucrat in Ottawa.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Apr/27/23 10:40:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just wanted to ask my hon. colleague about the carbon tax. He did not talk too much about it, but I know the carbon tax is a massive driver of inflation here in Canada, and I was just wondering if he has any thoughts on what we should do with the carbon tax.

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Apr/27/23 10:40:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Tiff Macklem, in response to my question, wrote to the finance committee and said that half a percentage point of inflation was directly related to the carbon tax. That means that if we want to reduce inflation by 20% today, we can get rid of the carbon tax.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Apr/27/23 10:40:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will not dispute it, but I deeply disagree with my friend from Northumberland—Peterborough South. I wanted to ask him a question on something I know we agree about, and that is the failure of the budget to invest in Via Rail. Can he comment on whether, particularly in his local area, enough is being done to get passenger rail back on track?

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Mr. Philip Lawrence

Apr/27/23 10:41:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was an absolute pleasure to work with that member on the rail caucus. I think we are doing great work there. I can tell members that because of those last eight years, just listening to several experts from Transport Action Canada, the rail system with Via and otherwise is in a state of disrepair because of the government's inability to get anything done.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins (Red Deer—Lacombe, CPC)

Apr/27/23 10:42:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to get up on my feet today and thank the fine people I represent in my riding of Red Deer—Lacombe in central Alberta. They are some of the hardest-working people we will ever find. Red Deer, for those who may not know who are watching, is Alberta's third-largest city. It is in a tier of communities, after Edmonton and Calgary, which are, of course, cities I think everybody in this country has heard of. However, places like Red Deer, Lethbridge, Fort McMurray and Grand Prairie would be the next tier of cities that we have in Alberta. Red Deer is the epicentre of central Alberta with a quarter of a million people. The city services that community all the way from Maskwacis to Ponoka to the north; down to the Olds-Didsbury area in the south; to Stettler, in my friend from Crowfoot's riding to the east; and, of course, the Rocky Mountain House community that I used to represent to the west. That is colloquially known as central Alberta, with all the communities and people that are there. I was on Facebook earlier today and I saw that the Viking pipeline and Viking Projects in central Alberta is closing its doors and there will be a liquidation sale early next month. Every time I see these things happen in my constituency, I think I age a little more, because I know these people. They are my friends and my neighbours. One of my dearest friends had a very successful oil field trucking company. He fought to hang on through the eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, and through four years of Rachel Notley as the premier of Alberta. He hired numerous good people, paid taxes and grew our hometown. We live in Lacombe, and these are the stories that are all too common. It is really a shame that even though Albertans seemingly are working harder than ever, and it seems that Albertans have never worked so hard, they have a feeling that they just cannot get ahead. That is because the dollars they earn, the jobs they have, the businesses that they try and keep afloat in the middle class, and those desperately trying to cling to it, simply do not have the purchasing power, and their dollars do not go as far as they did even though they might be working harder. Of course, I do not have to go too far back in history to give examples in my constituency where people doing the same job just a few years ago are getting paid substantially less for the same job today, because the profitability and the viability of industries, such as agriculture, oil and gas, manufacturing and technology, are simply not as valued by this current government as not only the previous Conservative government, but might I even say the previous Liberal government. It seems like the only time that we face economic and political crises in Alberta in the context of Canada is when we have a Liberal government with a prime minister that holds a certain last name. Members would be surprised to know that as I go and talk to people in my riding, of course, they certainly miss the policies of the previous Conservative government, which rewarded hard work, innovation, those who took a risk and those who were willing to work hard to get ahead, but even the previous Chrétien-Martin government is remembered somewhat fondly in the context of the Kyoto protocol and everything else that was not necessarily good for the industries in Alberta. I just wanted to give that context to those who might be watching at home today, because as hard as Albertans are working, as optimistic as we remain, as strong as the Alberta spirit is, it is still very difficult for many people in my constituency. We hear the stories in this country, but there is simply nobody in my riding talking about this. The budget was tabled on March 28 and it was a two-day story. Nobody is talking about anything because people realize their lives are still just as difficult as they were before the budget. Little do they know that their lives could get more difficult. I want to talk about our position. Contrary to what others are saying in this place, we made our decision. We had conditions. The leader of my party had conditions of three things to be met. We wanted to bring home powerful paycheques with lower tax and scrap the carbon tax so that hard work would pay off, and that is certainly something we can relate to in central Alberta. We wanted to bring in homes that people can afford by removing government gatekeepers to free up land and speed up building permits. We wanted to bring home lower prices by ending inflationary debt and deficits that drive up inflation and interest rates. It is because none of those things are happening in this budget that we are voting against it. I want to talk about the carbon tax and the effect it has had, the anti-energy policies the current government has had in Alberta and the massive closures we have had. Some of my colleagues touched on this earlier. When Stephen Harper became the Prime Minister of Canada in 2006, the year I came to this place after being elected, we virtually inherited nothing insofar as major energy projects from the government. Of course, it was involved in the Kyoto protocol and its discussions. We left the government that is in place today a balanced budget after going through the recession of 2008-09. We left the government in a strong fiscal position with fiscal anchors and decreasing debt-to-GDP ratios that had gone down from the mid 20s to low 20s during that tenure. We also left the legislative framework here, notwithstanding the fact that prime was going down. The Bloc Québécois and the notion of separatism in this country and alienation in parts of this country were at an all-time low. There was relative peace and political harmony in this country, notwithstanding all of the bluff and bluster from the other side. During that time, things were pretty darn good in Canada. People were generally fairly happy and we certainly were not talking about the myriad of scandals and problems that we are talking about today. In 2015, the government inherited numerous pipeline projects. It inherited the northern gateway project. It inherited the energy east project. It inherited Keystone XL. It inherited the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion. All of these projects were proposed and going through the regulatory process with private money. It was money from shareholders, money from investors and money from risk takers. They were creating jobs. They had partnerships with indigenous communities where those pipelines happened to go. During my time on the NATO Parliamentary Association, I had frank conversations with members of Parliament from Europe who were keen to have a conversation with me and with our Canadian counterparts every time we went to Brussels, every time we went and had these conversations, because they wanted to have the option to remove their dependence on Russian energy. They had an interesting policy because they understood that part of keeping peace was creating economic prosperity on both sides. They wanted to have that ability. The government inherited over 15 LNG export projects, but one of the first things it did, which is why we cannot balance a budget and we do not even try any more in this country, was it clamped down on the most profitable and prosperity-generating industries this country has. Our number one export industry was the oil and gas industry. That is what it did. I look forward to answering some well-articulated questions on the absolute economic disaster the government has caused the people of central Alberta.

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

Apr/27/23 10:52:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member cannot rewrite history. The facts speak for themselves. He wants to talk about Stephen Harper. Stephen Harper inherited a multi-billion dollar surplus and even before the recession kicked in, he had already turned that into a multi-billion dollar deficit, from a surplus to a deficit. The Conservatives had a multiple-billion dollar trade deficit which we have actually converted into a surplus. The member himself needs to recognize that his reality of the past is not necessarily accurate when we take a look at the facts. The facts clearly demonstrate that Stephen Harper's policies of constraint and cutbacks, including reducing national defence spending to less than 1% in one of his years, is something which one should not be overly fond of or proud of.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins

Apr/27/23 10:53:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I guess what my colleague is saying is that he is grateful for the fact that Stephen Harper signed so many trade agreements that we finally erased the Liberal trade deficits that we inherited from the previous administration in 2006. From that perspective, if he wants to say thanks, I will tell him he is welcome but he does not get to change the facts. The first several years of the Harper administration, yes, we did inherit a surplus and then when Stephen Harper became the prime minister, the first couple of years, the first budgets that we had, we continued to actually pay down the debt because that was the responsible thing to do. Then 2008 and 2009 came along. Liberals begged and demanded. I remember Rodger Cuzner screaming at the top of his lungs in this place demanding that the Conservative government spend more, do more, spend more, borrow more money. Now the member across the way is complaining that we gave them a yes for an answer at the time. The heights of hypocrisy never cease to amaze me where Liberals are concerned.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Apr/27/23 10:54:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was not here during the Harper years, so it is always great to hear some of the stories of the glory years of Canada. I know that Alberta flourished under those years. I know that Conservatives have worked hard to bring down taxes all across the country. I am wondering if he has any other good stories about the Harper years of bringing down taxes.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins

Apr/27/23 10:55:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I remember writing an op-ed, after, I think, we had reduced taxes 160 times. We reduced taxes for individuals. We reduced taxes for businesses. We reduced taxes virtually across the board. We reduced the GST from 7% to 6% to 5%. I wrote an op-ed in the Red Deer Advocate and somebody wrote back saying, “Sure, you did. Please list these 160 taxes.” I did. I wrote a letter back to the Red Deer Advocate. It took so many words for me to list all of the taxes the previous Conservative government had cut that I actually got into a fight with the folks at the Red Deer Advocate. They did not want to print the entire list of 160 different tax cuts, so the Red Deer Advocate and I finally agreed that in my response they would put a link to a website that contained all of the information that made life better for everybody in this country.

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Ms. Lindsay Mathyssen (London—Fanshawe, NDP)

Apr/27/23 10:56:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am reminded of some of the “wonderful”, and I put that in air quotes, things that Harper did and it reminds me of all of the incredible people they say they supported, but what about seniors? What about when their OAS, their GIS and their pensions were cut, when they had to rely upon OAS only at the age of 67 instead of 65? What about those people? Maybe he should talk about seniors.

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Mr. Blaine Calkins

Apr/27/23 10:57:19 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague has asked a question about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. The riding of every single member of Parliament in this place has a community of seniors in it. The seniors in my constituency were, by and large, very happy because they had income splitting. They had a tax-free savings account they could have moved their money into that was $10,000 a year and moving up, but has been clawed back. We moved the age they would have to withdraw money from their RRSPs or LIRAs. Seniors who did not have to make those withdrawals could keep their savings a little longer. Their purchasing power when Stephen Harper was prime minister was so good that they did not even need to go into their RRSPs and LIRAs at the rate they need to today. That is what our record was when Conservatives were in government and it is a far cry from the government's record today.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen (Peace River—Westlock, CPC)

Apr/27/23 10:58:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is great to be able to follow the speech from the member for Red Deer—Lacombe, who is one of my mentors in this place and one of the first members of Parliament I ever met. Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: That's scary. Mr. Arnold Viersen: Madam Speaker, the Liberal member across the way is saying that is scary. I am not sure who his mentor is, but I assure him the member for Red Deer—Lacombe has been a great mentor to me in this place, and I want to thank him for that. I do not say this often, but the Liberals have got something right in this budget. Members might be surprised to hear that from me. I hope the people at home will stay on to listen a bit longer to my speech, because the Liberals got something right on page 92. If one checks out the budget booklet that was handed out in this place, page 92 mentions “Getting Major Projects Done”. I cannot agree more with that. This country has a deficit of major projects getting built. Under Stephen Harper, under the Conservatives, there was a great focus on developing our natural resources, on building things and on being a country that made things, built things, got our resources to market, that ensured our grain was moving on trains, all these kinds of things. The Liberals are finally admitting in the latest budget that this is a country that cannot get things built and they are going to need to pay special attention to getting major projects built. A case in point is the Trans Mountain pipeline, a pipeline that was approved under a Conservative government. It is a pipeline that was ready to be built. A private company was going to use its own money to build it. The Liberal government came along and said it would buy it, so it bought the pipeline for $6 billion and figured it would cost another $6 billion to build it. We are now at over $30 billion spent and that pipeline is not built. This is a case in point that the Liberals cannot build major projects. We have seen over 15 different pipeline projects and LNG projects that were ready to be built and going through the approval process back in 2015 when Conservatives were in government all disappear off the books one by one as companies took their money and looked elsewhere. In my own riding of Peace River—Westlock in northern Alberta, the Carmon Creek project was a major oil sands development by Shell. It was a $5-billion project, if my memory serves me well. Shell, in 2015, had already spent $2 billion on that project and cancelled it. It walked away from the $2 billion it spent in northern Alberta, took the rest of the money and invested it in a new project. It was fascinating to watch. A week after it cancelled the Carmon Creek project, it announced it was pursuing an oil development project in Kazakhstan. That just goes to show the world noticed Canada was not open for business. Since then we have seen a dramatic reduction in the production of all the things Canada produces. I want to point out the way Liberals think. It is an interesting way of dealing with things. Their measure of success is how much money they spend on things. It sounds good. I get it. The Liberals will say they spent a certain amount of money on something. Especially when it is in the billions of dollars, one thinks that if that much money was spent, it is great, but what they never reference is what we get for that. A case in point brings me back to the Trans Mountain pipeline again. That pipeline was going to be built by private money with no money from the government. The Liberal government bought the pipeline and is now spending taxpayers' money to build that pipeline. The money that was spent there is not a success at all. We could have had that pipeline built in Canada by a private company that would be paying tax revenue to Canada. The amount of money the government has paid to build pipelines in this country is not a success. No matter how big the number is, it is never going to be a success. It uses that for a whole host of different things. When we point out to the Liberals that our border is not secure, they say they are spending more money than the Conservatives ever did on security. It is a fascinating thing that the border used to be much more secure. We did not have problems with people running across the border when the Conservatives were in power. When the Liberals came to power, that became a problem. They have spent more money on border security and have less of a secure border. That is not success. It is paying more and getting less. That is the worst. I once made a speech in this place about what kind of car we are buying. The Liberals will tell us that they spent x amount of dollars or lots of money buying a particular car, but they never tell us what kind of car they bought. If they bought a Rolls-Royce for that kind of money, we might say “Oh, good job”, but if they bought a K-car, we would say “Oh, we are getting ripped off here.” They never tell us what kind of car. They never want to talk about that side of the equation. That is really what we are after here. We have also seen record 40-year highs in inflation. I want to note that the member for Winnipeg North was saying that since this budget was introduced, inflation has gone down. If we are driving away from town at 100 kilometres an hour and we slow down to 80 kilometres an hour, we are still moving away from town. The inflation rate is like the speed we are going at. Therefore, when the member says that the rate of inflation has slowed down, that is great, but the inflation would actually have to go negative for a time in order for us to return and get the prices of things back to what they were two years ago. We would have to go to a negative inflation rate. Therefore, when they say that the inflation went from 6% or 9% down to 4% or 5%, it is great that the inflation is heading in the right direction, but it actually has to go negative for a time before we are going to get the prices of things going back. If we want to head back to town, we actually have to stop, get to zero kilometres an hour, turn around and head in the other direction. It is quite misleading when the Liberals say the inflation is going down. The inflation is the speed of things or the rate of things; it is not the direction in which we are going. We need to turn the inflation around. We need to ensure that Canadians' paycheques can buy the things that Canadians need to live. Money is the measure of things and not necessarily the value of things. Probably the fundamental difference between Liberals and Conservatives is our view of money. I also want to talk a bit about the carbon tax and its inflationary impacts on Canadians. I have talked to folks from across the country, and particularly in my riding, about how the carbon tax is just killing everybody's ability to get to work, buy groceries and heat their homes. I talked to people at the big lumber production facilities in my area, and the amount of carbon tax they pay in a single month is just astounding. Some of these facilities use a lot of electricity, and the carbon tax on that is astronomical. Therefore, when the Liberals say that most Canadians are getting back more than they pay, that is not true. Even if that were true, still the major industries that we deal with in this country are paying the carbon tax on electricity that our competitor countries that are producing the same products are not. We are importing those products across the border without charging that carbon tax on them. We are putting ourselves at a massive disadvantage. Finally, I want to talk a bit about the strike that is happening right now. The Liberal government has increased the public service dramatically. It nearly doubled the cost of the public service over that last eight years. Never before have we seen such a big strike in Canadian history. We have never had the public service go on strike like this before, so we are very concerned about the fact that the government would spend so much more money on the public service and yet still continue to get a strike out of the deal. We need to support our public servants. We need to back them up. We need to not use them as fodder for political scandals that happen in this place. We have seen, over and over again, that when the Prime Minister runs into trouble with his own ethical scandals he throws some public servant under the bus and skates away from the issue. Therefore, we will be opposing this budget. We will be putting forward a Conservative vision of Canada and we look forward to facing the Canadian public in the next election.

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

Apr/27/23 11:08:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is no surprise that the member is voting against the budget. We knew that even before the budget was produced, because that is what the Conservatives said they would do. It seems that the later it gets, the more the Conservatives are trying to rewrite history into this Harper wonder world of reality that did not exist. The member who spoke before him, his mentor, indicated that the Harper government signed more trade agreements, which is just not true. No government in the history of Canada has signed off on more trade agreements than this particular government. That is the fact. Then we get the member saying that the Harper government invested in natural resources and the Conservatives built things. They did not even build an inch of pipeline going to coastlines. The Trans Mountain pipeline, which the member referenced, was completely collapsing. Then the member talked about LNG. In one of the biggest agreements with the private sector and government sector, working with the NDP in the Province of British Columbia and the national government, we have LNG in B.C. I wonder if the member wants to rewrite this, and what else he has to say.

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Apr/27/23 11:09:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I had many more things to say, and one of the other areas I wanted to talk about was the crime rates in this country. Under Stephen Harper, the crime rates had fallen to historic lows. Violent crime was down to places it had never been before. If we look at graphs of violent crime, there is a distinct downward trend until 2015 and since then it has gone exponentially up. After eight years of this Liberal government, Canadians do not feel safe on their own streets.

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

Apr/27/23 11:09:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I came in halfway through the member's speech. He was referring to this mythical time in Canada when there were manufacturing, jobs and value added. I could not understand what he was talking about until I realized he was talking about the period of the Harper regime. I was there and saw the softwood lumber sellout and with all of the related sellouts of the Harper regime, how manufacturing collapsed in this country. British Columbia went from having a vibrant manufacturing industry to raw log exports. We saw minerals that were transformed before the Harper regime becoming exports of raw minerals. There was the export of raw bitumen. We saw health care being slashed and cut. We saw seniors being forced to work years longer in hard, physical labour because the Harper regime decided people could not retire at 65 anymore. My question is very simple. Why are Conservatives so delusional about the years of the Harper regime?

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Mr. Arnold Viersen

Apr/27/23 11:11:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to point out that currently in northern British Columbia, logging companies are shutting down mills. Under the Liberal government, logging cannot continue in this country. It also has a lot to do with the NDP government, which is a do nothing—

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Mr. Peter Julian

Apr/27/23 11:11:09 p.m.
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It has the best economy in the country, the best job creation—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/27/23 11:11:34 p.m.
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The hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby had an opportunity to speak. There might be another opportunity to ask another question, so I would ask him to hold onto any questions he may have. The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock.

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