SoVote

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

Apr/27/23 11:40:05 p.m.
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Uqaqtittij, I guess another aspect of freedom is what we do and how we ensure that we ourselves practise in our country our own freedoms and how we ensure countries are safe. For example, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is not allowing a lot of Ukrainians to be safe, to be free. The budget implementation act talks about amending the customs tariff to remove Belarus and Russia from the list of countries entitled to most favoured nation tariff treatments. I think that this is going to be an important measure to make sure that we are doing better, to ensure that countries like Ukraine are getting the support that they need to achieve the peace that they need. I wonder if the member can comment on voting against this type of provision in the budget implementation act.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Apr/27/23 11:41:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, obviously this omnibus budget implementation act contains many different kinds of measures. We are going to find pieces here and there where we say, yes, we agree with that, but we have to vote overall on the direction of the budget. I think there has been a great deal of unity in this House on many issues to do with Ukraine. In fact, where we have been critical of the government with Ukraine is where it granted exemptions to sanctions, where it failed to be tough in moving sanctions forward early enough or implementing them fully. For one example, we spent a long time trying to push the government to rescind a waiver it gave to Gazprom, effectively allowing the export of turbines that would have facilitated the export of energy from Russia to Germany. We think it would have been better to be promoting the export of Canadian gas to Europe to relieve their dependence on Russia, rather than the government's decision to grant a temporary waiver that could have helped Russia export its gas to Europe and, at the same time, not acting to allow Canadian gas exports to Europe. There has been a substantial measure of unity. If anything, certainly, we have been pushing the government to go further in its response to these events and, in particular, recognizing the role Canada can play in supplying the world with clean, secure, stable energy.

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Mr. Dean Allison (Niagara West, CPC)

Apr/27/23 11:42:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was listening earlier to a number of people, and I think one thing we all agree on in the House is that it is an honour and a privilege to serve the people who elected us to be here. I want to thank the people of Niagara West, and I do not think I could ever thank them enough. I would never take that for granted. I was reminded of that as a number of my constituents were in Ottawa today, whom I had a chance to meet and get caught up with, from various parts of my riding, such as St. Anns, Wainfleet, West Lincoln, Grimsby and Jordan. It was great to have them take the time to come up here. I rise today to talk about this year's budget. As we all know, every year the budget is one of the most important items we discuss in this chamber. It is important because it is a road map for our country's finances for the next year and beyond. It is important because it is an opportunity to support families and businesses, and to grow our country's economy. Each year, many of my constituents look forward to reading the budget to see how this country's finances will be managed. Currently, our country has several crises the Liberal government is unable to address. The first is the overtaxation of families and businesses. The second is inflation-inducing spending. The third is the cost of living crisis we are in. Last, but not least, we have a major housing crisis. The folks in Niagara West and, frankly, millions of families from across Canada, are not happy with how things are going financially for them. Families and businesses are struggling. I truly do not believe the government is addressing the needs of Canadians and Canadian businesses. I have said that many times in the House over the past eight years. I get many phone calls and correspondence from constituents saying that their paycheques are no longer covering their monthly expenses. That means they have to go deeper into debt each month to pay for the essentials, whether that is for food, heating their home, putting gas in the family vehicle or other necessities. Seniors on fixed incomes in my riding are also expressing the same concerns. As prices for everything increase, on what seems like a weekly basis, household budgets are not just strained, they are broken. This is something that is extremely concerning to me. My constituents have made it clear to me that their quality of life has become worse under the Liberal government. At this point, my constituents do not trust the Liberal government to ensure their money is well spent or that it will deliver on its promises. From the Liberal promise that the carbon tax rebate would cover the cost to families, to the promise that the deficit this year would go down, my constituents simply cannot rely on the Liberals to be honest. I have had to tell folks who were calling my office that the reason gas for the family vehicle went up again on April 1 is because of the carbon tax, which added another 14¢ per litre this year. Driving kids to school and hockey is not the only thing that will be more expensive with a yearly rising carbon tax. Every year the Liberals hike the carbon tax, they also make it more expensive for families in my riding to heat their homes and get to work. Let me put it this way so the folks who are listening will understand what is really happening: Every time the Liberal government increases the carbon tax, virtually everything we purchase and pay for gets more expensive. It is that simple. Out of the many misguided fiscal policies of the last eight years of the government, the carbon tax is especially devastating to family budgets. Believe me, the Liberals know it. I am just not sure they care. They promised the carbon tax scheme would be revenue neutral. They promised that what Canadians pay through the carbon tax would be returned in rebates. They promised that Canadians would not pay more. The Liberals broke that promise. Who is paying more? Canadian families around the country. Folks feel like they have been scammed, but for how much? The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that the average Canadian will spend at least $1,500 more in taxes than what they get back in rebates. At the end of the day, Canadian families realize that the carbon tax is a tax plan and just another tax. The government was disingenuous when it said it would help the environment. Why is that? It is because it has not hit a single emissions target yet. What did it do instead? It implemented the tax, which increases every year on April 1 and leaves families, on average, $1,500 poorer each year. Ultimately, the carbon tax is not an environmental plan, as the Liberals continue to falsely claim. It is a costly tax plan that is especially damaging to Canadians, especially those on fixed incomes or living in rural Canada. I have heard colleagues tonight talk about the differences and challenges of living in rural Canada. We do not have public transit. It is not easy to get around when we need a car for everything we do. We should have that choice. The government continues to have this false idea that it can spend and tax its way to prosperity. That is a fundamental mistake that is costing millions of families across Canada thousands of dollars a year, and it will only get worse. The government is unable and unwilling to rein in its spending, so it will just increase taxes to cover its extra expenses. Its out-of-control spending is pushing up inflation. It knows it, and we know it. At this point, everyone is feeling it and knows it. The Liberal inflationary spending has caused the cost of food and groceries to skyrocket. As a result, one in five Canadians are skipping meals and people are literally going to food banks asking for help to end their lives, and not because they are sick but because they just cannot afford to eat. This is actually happening right here in our country. Let me repeat this because I do not think it can be stressed enough: People are going to food banks, asking for help to end their lives and not because they are sick but because they cannot afford to eat. By the way, food bank usage is at its highest levels ever. In the meantime, the government talks about its grocery rebate. Sure, it is giving a rebate; that is true. However, the rebate would give $234 for a single adult to cover the rising cost of food that the Liberals' inflationary deficits helped create. They are giving with one hand and taking with another, so that kind of reminds me of the Liberal government's view of the economy and it can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, they tax it; if it keeps moving, they regulate it; and if it stops moving, they subsidize it. In fact, Canada's Food Price Report 2023 predicts that a family of four will spend up to $1,065 more on food this year. That is almost $600 more than the $467 rebate they will receive. That is why it is difficult to hear the government members consistently repeating falsehoods, misinformation and disinformation with respect to how good they think Canadians have it, especially when I hear folks in my riding struggling because of the Liberal government's misguided and flawed approach to the economy. More inflationary spending and increased taxation will put our country in increasingly worse shape, year after year. The interest rate alone on the debt that the Liberals are racking up is mind boggling. Most Canadians are not aware of the astronomical amount of debt that our country owes and the enormous interest payments that have to be made on this debt. For the folks watching at home, Canada's federal debt, as was mentioned earlier by my colleague, for the 2023-24 fiscal year is projected to reach $1.22 trillion. That is nearly $81,000 per household. The cost to service Canada's debt this year is projected to be at $43.9 billion. Imagine that: almost $44 billion just to service our national debt. These kinds of numbers are almost impossible for people to relate to and easily understand; perhaps that is the Liberals' intention. Look, it is quite straightforward. At a time when Canadians are facing rising costs of living, thanks to inflationary deficits, families and small business owners cannot afford to pay more and especially not more taxes like the carbon tax. Our party, the Conservative Party of Canada, when we form government after the next election, is committed to scrapping this monumentally flawed tax. We believe that we should protect our environment with technology and not with ever-increasing taxes that clearly do not work. We do not believe in punishing working people for heating their homes and driving to work. If you will allow me, Madam Speaker, I would like to discuss another topic that I find particularly troubling. Everyone knows and even the Liberals acknowledge that we are in a housing crisis. There are just not enough houses for Canadians and houses on the market are ridiculously expensive. The average rents are almost out of control. We are seeing the dream of home ownership disappear for young new Canadians under the current government. A staggering statistic is that nine in 10 people who do not own a home say they never will. That is because since 2015 when the Liberal government came to power, the down payment needed to buy a house has doubled. The minimum payment has gone from an average of $22,000 to $44,000 across Canada. Forty-five thousand dollars is almost impossible to save for a down payment. In 2015, the average monthly payment of a new house was $1,400. Today, it has gone up to over $3,100. In 2015, one needed only 39% of the average paycheque to make monthly payments on the average house. That number has risen to 62%. These numbers are clearly unsustainable. These numbers indicate that there is something immensely wrong with how the Liberal government has approached housing since being elected in 2015. What is even more concerning is that there is no end in sight. My concern is that we provided solutions to the Liberals' failures, but they are not listening. It seems like they are not listening because the ideas are coming from the other side of the House. I think I can speak for my Conservative colleagues when I say that we stand ready to provide effective ideas to get Canada back on the right financial track. If the Liberals do not take us up on this offer, we will have to clean up their mess after we form government in the next election.

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Mr. Chad Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, Lib.)

Apr/27/23 11:52:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, some of the narrative tonight is a bit stranger than fiction. I have been keeping a mental note in terms of some of the criticisms that have been levelled against the budget and the investments that we are making. We heard, this evening, the reference to transit and that we should be doing more. We have heard housing has been a consistent theme. We have heard about infrastructure. We have even heard about support for private investment. We have had lots of discussions tonight about our investments in Volkswagen, which is incentivizing the private sector to great jobs and assessment for municipalities. We have talked extensively about our national housing strategy and all the programs that we have and so we are making those investments. For whatever reason, there is an ignorance on the other side of the House as it relates to recognizing that all the things the members are complaining about are in the budget and there is support there for all the sectors they have complained about.

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Mr. Dean Allison

Apr/27/23 11:53:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek is right in my neighbourhood. Fundamentally, the difference between Conservatives and Liberals is that Liberals like to take the money from people who actually earn it and work for it and then like to give it back out in the ways they control. Conservatives believe moms and dads, people who work hard for their money, actually know how to spend their money best. That is the basic difference in philosophy. Liberals are talking about all this grandiose spending they are doing. In reality, what they are doing is bribing people with their own money.

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

Apr/27/23 11:54:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Niagara West and I have been long-time friends, but gosh darn, when he throws out these figures, he is neglecting some of the most important figures of how the Liberals have followed bad Conservative management. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us that over $30 billion a year goes to overseas tax havens. These are largely tax treaties that were signed by the Harper regime and that the Liberals have continued. If we take the numbers over the last 15 or 16 years, we are talking about half a trillion dollars that went to overseas tax havens. Here is another number: Between the two of them, the Liberals and Conservatives together have provided well over $866 billion in liquidity supports to Canada's big banks to increase their profits; that is nearly a trillion dollars. We put those numbers together, and we realize Liberals have basically followed bad Conservative habits. Will the member admit Liberals are much closer to Conservatives than is the NDP, which is providing good fiscal management?

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Mr. Dean Allison

Apr/27/23 11:55:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it would appear to me, based on the relationship in the House, that the NDP is actually closer to the Liberals than the Conservatives are. It has been propping them up through all these times. The member talks about offshore money that needs to be collected. We agree with these things. As Conservatives, what we tried to do when we were in government was to create an environment where companies wanted to come and invest. We were moving towards this. At the end of the day, companies wanted to invest their money in this country, not taxpayers' money. There was still a lot of work that needed to be done on that, but we lowered corporate taxes, we spent money on infrastructure and we looked at dealing with immigration, where we helped to bring people in for jobs that were here. At the end of the day, the difference in philosophy is that we want to create the environment for people to want to invest in this country versus needing to pay people to come here.

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Taxpayers

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

Apr/27/23 11:56:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, am I then to assume the reason the member and the Conservative Party do not support the Volkswagen deal is that there are federal dollars involved in ensuring we can have that battery plant?

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Mr. Dean Allison

Apr/27/23 11:56:56 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, at this point, the reason we have not given a full approval or not had much of a comment is that we do not understand what the actual deals were. If one thinks about the whole process of what we have gone through over the last couple of weeks, it was very hard to get any kind of information on what dollars were spent. Now we are trying to figure out what they are for and what will be created; we need more details before we can offer any kind of judgment.

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Mr. John Aldag (Cloverdale—Langley City, Lib.)

Apr/27/23 11:57:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this budget and budget implementation act are so fantastic, I could go all evening on them, well into the night. As I have sat here listening to our colleagues across the floor, I think we have read separate documents, because all I see are really positive things, both for constituents in Cloverdale—Langley City and for all Canadians. This budget really builds on the positive measures and budgets we have had previously. We have done some really big things in Canada as a Liberal government. We have introduced child care, and I heard just today from Trevor, in my riding, about how our child care initiatives are saving his family over $1,000 a month right now. This is putting money right into his pocket. This budget is going to continue to be transformative for Canadians. It would invest almost $200 billion in improving health care funding to the provinces. This would allow us to make all sorts of improvements. It is a top issue I hear about when I am door knocking and talking to constituents in Cloverdale—Langley City, and we would be making the investments that would actually make a difference in the lives of Canadians. However, there are other big things. The budget would continue work on the implementation of the dental care program. Figures show that over 240,000 children are already benefiting from this program, and as we get into the implementation of this budget, more families and individuals would benefit. Children under 18 would benefit, seniors would benefit and persons with disabilities would benefit. The budget would also have families earning under $90,000 benefiting from this program, and this is because the Liberal government saw the need. We are implementing this to make it real and meaningful for Canadians right now, and that is fantastic news. I would say that there are also some other big initiatives. Addressing climate change is so important, and we recognize that. We are investing in building a sustainable economy, fighting climate change and creating new opportunities for businesses and workers. I would like to say that there are also a lot of small actions that build on these huge and transformative actions. Some of the small ones that would put money into the pockets of Canadians again and be really meaningful as we continue to fight inflation and deal with higher costs of living are the grocery rebate we have heard about tonight, and as I said—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/28/23 12:00:03 a.m.
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It is midnight, so the debate has to stop now.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Apr/28/23 12:00:36 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government has a habit of prioritizing the interests of its well-connected friends by giving money to consultants that could be better spent on helping and supporting Canadians. For a number of months, Conservatives have been highlighting the government's approach to McKinsey, in particular. McKinsey was led by Dominic Barton, someone who at least the Prime Minister and the finance minister said were friends of the Prime Minister. Dominic Barton said, no, they are not friends, that he barely knows these people. However, the finance minister spoke about how closely connected he was with the Prime Minister and that he was someone who was very accessible and could be reached on the phone at any time, and so forth. We have some contradiction there about who were or were not friends. In any event, Dominic Barton, this person who worked closely and was closely associated with the Prime Minister and finance minister, was leading McKinsey and since the government has taken office, McKinsey has gotten over $100 million in contracts from the government, over $100 million, which is a massive increase. We have seen, by the way, substantial increases in spending on the public service, but, at the same time, massive increases in spending on outsourcing. There is the expenditure issue there, the fiscal propriety question of all the money that was spent on McKinsey, big questions about what it actually did after giving money to this external management consultant that was run by Dominic Barton. There is also this question of who McKinsey is. What are the ethics of this company? What are the values this company upholds and represents? It claims to be a values-driven company, so-called. This is a company that fuelled the opioid crisis in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. It fuelled it by advising Purdue Pharma on how to turbocharge opioid sales. It advised it to do things like pay bonuses to pharmacists in cases where there were overdoses. It advised it to develop a system of circumventing traditional pharmacies through mail-in pharmacies. This is the kind of company that McKinsey is. McKinsey did a report for the Saudi government on what Twitter accounts were most vocal in criticism of the Saudi government. That report was subsequently used for the harassment and repression of dissidents. This is a company, frankly, that has been implicated in corruption and scandal all over the world, at least in dealing closely with governments or individuals that were highly compromised. It was hired here in Canada to provide advice on immigration. It was hired in the U.S. as well to provide advice on immigration. Apparently, in both cases, it provided what the governments wanted, even though that advice was contradictory. In Canada, it said to massively increase immigration as it is a great economic opportunity. In the United States, it advised the Trump administration to cut spending on food for immigrant detainees. This is the kind of company that McKinsey is, run by Dominic Barton, who the Prime Minister and the finance minister suggested was a friend, but he said he was not a friend, in his view. His company benefited significantly. What I find particularly striking now is the revelation that the government is actually planning on joining B.C.'s class action lawsuit against McKinsey. The government has indicated that it plans on joining B.C.'s class action lawsuit against McKinsey precisely because of its role in the opioid crisis. The government has, across departments, hired McKinsey to do over 100 million dollars' worth of work for it, but there is a tacit acknowledgement of the ethics problems because now, at this stage, after doing nothing for a long time, following pressure from the Conservative leader, it finally said it would join this lawsuit again McKinsey. Which is it? Will the government recognize that it should stop dealing with McKinsey and that it should stop spending all this money on outside consultants?

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

Apr/28/23 12:04:40 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I always find it somewhat interesting to do a late show with the member opposite given the twist he puts on things. He is like a hound out here sniffing for scandals of any sort. Whether he finds something genuine or not, he is quick to jump to his feet, try to make connections here in there and try to make something look as bad as possible. When the member was talking about McKinsey, he was saying how bad it is and that the Government of Canada should not be supporting McKinsey after having contracted with it. However, in the same four minutes, he said that not only is Canada doing this, but the United States has contracts with it. He changes the issue: In one situation McKinsey is emphasizing a certain direction, and in Canada it is emphasizing another direction. The point is that McKinsey has contracts with many countries in the world. When we think of the reason for the contracts, I am not too sure if the member is not in favour of the government contracting out to consultants in order to provide the independent input that is often needed to establish good government policy. Throughout the pandemic, a great deal of money was spent, and we had already increased the size of the public service. There were great demands on the public service at the time. There is a need for governments there. That should not surprise anybody, because at the end of the day, governments of all different levels and of all political stripes do participate in the contracting out of contracts. That is done for a multitude of different reasons. We can look at the other issue the member tries to say is bad, and that is the so-called relationship. He constantly wants to bring up Mr. Barton and give the false impression that the Prime Minister and Mr. Barton are the best of buddies and good friends. We know that is not the case. We do know that. Whether it is Mr. Barton or others who are affiliated with McKinsey, we are very much aware of it, so trying to make some of these connections just does not fly. At the end of the day, I think the member needs to move on to some other subject matter and maybe give this one a bit of a rest. Yes, we have concerns with McKinsey and the Province of B.C. The member has made reference to that. Ottawa is always doing its due diligence in making sure that the best interests of Canadians are, in fact, being served, and we will continue to do so. However, let us not fool anyone here. At the end of the day, as Stephen Harper did and as other governments have done in the past, going to and using outside consultants is done on a regular basis, as I indicated, whether it is by different levels of government or different political parties. I think the member needs to take the fishing rod out of this particular hole and look for another hole to dip it into.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis

Apr/28/23 12:08:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not think my friend across the way really understood the question. Aside from dipping fishing rods in different holes, the question was about McKinsey getting over $100 million in contracts from the government. The member says that I try to make things look as bad as possible. Respectfully, it is not very difficult in this case. This is a company that literally advised on how to turbocharge opioid sales. It paid over half a billion dollars in compensation for its involvement in the opioid crisis. The question is quite simple: Why did the government give over $100 million in contracts to this Liberal-connected firm with such an obviously shady track record? Why?

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/28/23 12:09:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, first and foremost, the member is wrong to try to give the false impression that it is a Liberal-friendly firm. The company the member is referencing has had dealings with Conservative-minded governments. This is about the idea that governments of all political stripes, at different levels, recognize the value of using consultants. It has been very effective in many different ways. With regard to the specifics of the negatives the member has highlighted, I can assure the member that the government takes them very serious and will ensure that due diligence is done when contracting out. There is a process in place.

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Ms. Bonita Zarrillo (Port Moody—Coquitlam, NDP)

Apr/28/23 12:10:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am here late into the night because when I asked the government why it has not followed through with its promise to convert the Canada caregiver tax credit to a refundable benefit, it responded with answers that were not even related to the tax credit. Its members talked about health care transfers and paid workers. This worried me, because it appeared the government did not know about its promise to support unpaid caregivers, so let me remind it. The mandate letter the Prime Minister gave the finance minister back in 2021 tasked her with converting the Canada caregiver credit to a refundable tax-free benefit that would put money back in the pockets of unpaid caregivers. The current health care crisis puts growing pressure on families to care for their loved ones, and those caregivers are incurring extra costs, yet those costs cannot be recouped with the current non-refundable benefit if one is not earning enough income or does not owe taxes. This is gender discrimination. The important job of caring for aging parents, grandparents and children is most often done by women, and that work is unpaid. The government can support caregivers by immediately making the Canada caregiver credit a refundable tax benefit to put money back into people's pockets. In addition to that, the House of Commons finance committee included this measure in its list of recommendations to the government ahead of the current budget, yet still no action has been taken. I ask again: Why is the government delaying this benefit for those who care for our loved ones?

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

Apr/28/23 12:12:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, first and foremost, I want to recognize the very important role that caregivers have been providing, especially during the pandemic. There is a great reliance, and we recognize that, at the end of the day, whether it is seniors, individuals on sick leave or children, in many situations the caregivers provide an absolute necessary service for the betterment of the lives of those individuals they are providing care for. There are different ways in which the government can actually provide support. I appreciate what the member is asking. She referenced a mandate letter. I am not too sure about the election promise, but maybe she could expand on that particular aspect in her follow-up question. However, what I do know is that the government has been spending a great deal of money over the last number of years in the whole area of supports for seniors, supports for health care and looking at ways in which we can enhance wages. In fact, this is a little off topic, but today, in the province of Manitoba, through national initiatives of supporting child care, there is going to be an increase for child care workers, who are predominantly women. I believe it is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6%, which is going to be taking effect, I believe, on July 1. Recognizing that there are many areas in which government can invest in or should be looking at investing in, I would suggest the member look at how we can support caregivers. The Department of Health, with the money transfers that we have made, has also made it very clear in terms of provincial and territorial governments needing to come to the table and be more supportive of our providers. The interest is there. We are almost halfway through a mandate where we can likely revisit this issue. The member made reference to the mandate letters, and I suspect it is one of those issues in which we hope to be able to make some progress in. As I said, how can one not recognize the valuable contributions that caregivers provide to individuals, and through that, to our communities as a whole? In looking at ways in which we can provide that support in a timely fashion, there are all sorts of considerations that have to be taken into account. I wish I could provide more specific details to the member at this point, but that is the best I can come up with right now.

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Ms. Bonita Zarrillo

Apr/28/23 12:16:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think that the response tonight and even the fact that there was not a representative from the minister's office dealing with it just magnifies the gender discrimination that comes along with anything that has to do with care, the very gendered reality of care in this country that really underpins the entire economy. I would just say back to the member that we know that people died in long-term care homes because their family members and that unpaid work could not bring them water. This is a serious issue that deserves serious attention. Unpaid caregivers are saving this country $25 billion a year.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/28/23 12:17:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the federal government is very much aware of the critical role that unpaid caregivers have provided. I would not want the member to give a false impression that the government is not looking into all different options. At the end of the day, we talked about looking at long-term standard policies and how the federal government is going to be able to improve upon some of the things that we had seen during the pandemic. For those who were providing care, in particular to loved ones, or those who had been volunteering, it is important that we recognize them. I think that we have. I am sure the member would like to see more immediate action taken. Unfortunately, at times, we have to work within what we have been provided. I am hoping that we will be able to move forward on this issue. I assure the member that we are genuinely concerned about ensuring that our loved ones are getting the care they need. We recognize there are many care providers who need to be looked at, in terms of how it is we can support them.

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, CPC)

Apr/28/23 12:18:51 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as the member of Parliament for the Ontario riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I begin my comments by recognizing Canadians struggling with high food, fuel and tax bills from a broken federal government. During question period in the House, I made a direct request to the Prime Minister and his socialist coalition: give Canadians a tax break. Cancel the carbon taxes. The carbon tax is not an environmental policy, regardless of what the NDP-Liberal coalition falsely claims. The carbon tax is a tax policy. As a tax policy, the carbon tax is making life unaffordable for Canadians. While the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is not prepared to be honest with Canadians about the fact that the carbon tax is making life unaffordable for average Canadians, moments later during the same question period came this astonishing admission of failure from the Minister of Agriculture. She said and I quote, from the March 30 Hansard, “Canada's...official food policy...is designed to...support the creation of more food banks.” She even bragged that this was Canada's first official food policy. Food banks are policy failures. It is an admission of failure. The need for food banks, thanks to rising Liberal carbon taxes, is not something to be proud of. No Canadian in a country as rich and blessed in natural resources as we are should have to rely on food banks to meet their daily nutritional requirements. Food insecurity in Canada is a direct result of carbon tax policy, a bad tax policy that is intended to change the behaviour of residents who have no alternative when it comes to how they heat their homes or how they get to work. The Parliamentary Budget Officer shows that the carbon tax will cost the average family between $400 and $847 in 2023, even after the rebates, but to justify the carbon tax, the Prime Minister falsely claims that carbon tax opponents do not care about the environment. This is a bit rich coming from someone who bills working Canadians $6,000 a night to stay in fancy European hotels. Just how out of touch is this Prime Minister with the struggles of ordinary Canadians? Canadian taxpayers paid $160,000 just for security and staff for his most recent Caribbean vacation with billionaire and family friend Peter Green. Green has also made a large donation to the now discredited Pierre Elliott Trudeau family foundation that is mixed up in the Communist China election interference scandal, but $160,000 is cheap compared to the $247,000 taxpayers were forced to shell out for an earlier Caribbean vacation at the Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas. This Prime Minister is out of touch with just how destructive his policies are to average Canadians. When the Liberal Party in general and the Prime Minister in particular talk about the environment, or man-made global warming, the Prime Minister uses a propaganda technique called paltering. Paltering is the use of truthful facts to deceive. It might not feel like lying but it is. An example of paltering is, well, we know that climate is changing. That is fact. That is then followed up with some form of deception like climate alarmism. Climate alarmism, which is used by some climate extremists to justify carbon tax policy, omits the fact that climate science is still developing. Climate models are being made to say what they do not say: truth and deception. Using climate alarmism to deceive is the default excuse for every government failure, including the need for food banks as a substitute for real food security for Canadians. This is all being done to justify higher and higher carbon taxes. Paltering is being used by the government to try to sell rightfully skeptical Canadians not only on the policy for carbon taxes but a need for carbon taxes to keep increasing at a higher and higher rate.

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