SoVote

Mr. Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:07:57 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 12th report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, also known as the mighty OGGO, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (B), 2023-24”.

38 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:08:45 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I move that the 14th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, be concurred in. It is always a pleasure to be here, and I will say, if I am allowed to make this observation to the Chair, that question period was well run. It kept people on time. Today I am going to talk about something incredibly important to the people of Northumberland—Peterborough South and those across Canada. We are talking about protecting Canada's food system. This report was concurred in when I was on the fabulous public accounts committee. Unfortunately, I have moved on to the finance committee, but I very much enjoyed my time on public accounts. We are talking about something near and dear to my heart, which is food security. Of course, food security is always an issue, but it was highlighted during the great pandemic years, when Canadians were reliant on food and we saw, unfortunately, shortages in our grocery stores. It was not too long ago, even though in some ways it seems like a lifetime ago, that grocery stores were short on food. It is incredibly important that we have food security in our country. One of the issues that will drive that is, of course, the carbon tax. The carbon tax is raising the cost of food. It is also driving food production offshore. There are those in the House who may have been here back in 2019 when I was elected. I found out early on in my time as an MP, in 2019, that I had won the lottery. I remember a staffer coming to me and saying, “Mr. Lawrence, you won the lottery.” Of course, I had no idea what that meant at the time, but it meant that I had won the PMB lottery. I actually got number six. We then had a very difficult decision to make, as there were lots of things that needed to be changed in 2019, and even more now in 2023, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, which is certainly not worth the cost. Our team did a search of various issues. Of course, a large portion of the Northumberland—Peterborough South economy is agriculture, so our farmers came to us and said the carbon tax was killing them. They presented me with bills for tens of thousands of dollars in carbon tax. That was back when the carbon tax was a lot lower than it is now, when it was only $20 a tonne. Now it is headed up to $80 a tonne next year. To everyone at home, that is quadruple what the current carbon tax is. We then said to farmers that they were right and we needed to provide relief. We would have loved to just axe the tax in a private member's bill, but that is not permissible because of the limited scope of a private member's bill. I was told I have to split my time. I was hoping to have a lot more time to speak here, because food security is important and critical. My mentor from Winnipeg North has taught me the incredible importance of brevity in this House, but I will be splitting my time with the wonderful member for Calgary Shepard. Farmers came to us and said the carbon tax was killing them, because not only is it potentially making them globally uncompetitive, but there are many markets where they simply cannot pass that cost on. The challenge is that it is making their farms unprofitable. In the system of capitalism we have, if their farms or businesses are not profitable, they simply cannot continue them.

624 words

Hon. Kamal Khera (Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities, Lib.)

Dec/1/23 12:12:58 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I give notice that, with respect to consideration of Government Business No. 31, at the next sitting of the House a minister of the Crown shall move, pursuant to Standing Order 57, that debate be not further adjourned.

40 words

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Gabriel Ste-Marie)

Dec/1/23 12:13:15 p.m.
Watch

The hon. member for Northumberland—Peterborough South may continue with his speech. I would remind him that under the rules of the House, members may not name members, including themselves. The hon. member.

34 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence (Northumberland—Peterborough South, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:13:32 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I continue to try to speak French. In the future, I hope to do an entire speech in French. For today I will continue in English. In 2019, we started a journey to remove the carbon tax on farmers. Our farmers said that it did not make sense to them that diesel and dirtier fuels were exempt for farmers but natural gas and propane were not. Propane's carbon footprint is considerably less, fully 50% less, than that of diesel. Here was my naïveté coming into 2019, which was not far from 2015, when we were hearing things like “sunny ways” and “open by default”. I thought the Liberals probably made a mistake, that it was probably a drafting error. I was positive that once I brought it to their attention, they would say, “We do not want our farmers to be suffering. We have that one farmer in Milton, so we need to take care of this.” I thought, in my naïveté, that when I would bring this to their attention, they would say we would not even need to pass legislation; they would fix it in their next budget. However, somehow that did not happen. We therefore brought it forward, and members will not believe this, but we got the support of the Green Party. We got the support of the NDP. We got the support of environmental activists; they were on our side. They realized that propane is cleaner than diesel, so why would we give an exemption to diesel but not propane? The Liberal logic world is a very muddled place, because we then found out that they doubled down. Instead of providing an exemption on home heating with natural gas, which is way cleaner than oil, they gave an exemption to oil. It boggles the mind. The logic behind the carbon tax is to put a cost on fuels with a higher carbon intensity to reduce their usage. If that is true, they should be making it go up eight or 10 times on fuel, but they know it is not true. The logic behind Bill C-234, which is in the Senate right now, is that if we give farmers an exemption and give them control of their resources, they will make the right decisions. They will invest in the technologies that will clean our planet. This ham-fisted stick-before-carrot approach of the carbon tax has been proven to not only increase costs but also increase global emissions, because it drives production, whether it be in a factory or on a farm, off clean Canadian energy and into coal-producing jurisdictions around the world. This is the ultimate in greenwashing. There is no bigger greenwashing tool than the carbon tax, because it moves farms and factories to Guangdong province, where, instead of being powered by clean Canadian hydro power in Quebec or Winnipeg or by natural gas in Alberta, they are powered by coal. We are raising worldwide emissions because of the carbon tax. Instead of energy being produced here in Canada in a clean, sustainable way, we are exporting it. Worst of all, we are impoverishing ourselves to do it. Instead of having paycheques going to workers in our clean Canadian energy sector, those paycheques are going to Dubai. What is going on in Dubai? I believe they are in an air-conditioned dome in the middle of the desert. Can we get any more ironic than that? The fossil fuels they are burning will somehow reduce the amount of fossil fuels. The hypocrisy has no end with the Liberals. Bill C-234 needs to be passed. Even if someone is a wholehearted believer in the carbon tax, Bill C-234 gives equity to our farmers. It does not matter if members are in the Green Party or the NDP. We all agree, except for the Liberals, that farmers deserve a break.

665 words

Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.)

Dec/1/23 12:19:13 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, only one thing is happening here, and Canadians should take note. This morning, on the Order Paper, we were scheduled to debate once again the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement, and once again, Conservatives have used a procedural tactic to slow down the process. The member should be absolutely ashamed for what he and all Conservatives are doing right now. He needs to come clean and tell Canadians why he does not support Ukraine and why his leader does not support Ukraine. They need to stop slowing the process down and start doing the responsible thing: stand up for Ukraine and stop telling Ukraine what it needs. I think Ukraine has heard enough of what Conservatives have to say about what it needs. It is time for Conservatives to start listening to Ukraine, to listen to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and to do the right thing: allow us to debate the free trade agreement and get to a vote.

161 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:20:11 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, unlike in Putin's Russia, this is not a dictatorship. We still get to vote and to have the ability to work in Parliament. Liberals do not get to decide everything. Conservatives support Ukraine. That is why we are going to send them arms and not a carbon tax.

51 words

Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)

Dec/1/23 12:20:46 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the motion we are debating was moved by the Conservatives. It is very obvious and unfortunate that it is an attempt to block a debate on the free trade agreement with Ukraine that is supposed to be taking place, an agreement New Democrats support. There is a terrible situation going on in Europe, and I would hope we could get to a point in the chamber where partisanship can take a back seat to the realities facing our planet. This is a serious issue. There are warmongers on the loose, attacking countries like Ukraine, an ally of ours. Simultaneous to that, the member, whom I respect deeply, knows exactly what is taking place here and what his party is doing, which is blocking the debate. I sincerely ask the member to sympathize with Ukrainians for a moment and realize how important the bill truly is to them. Can the member please speak to Ukrainians about why Conservatives are doing this?

162 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:21:47 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we absolutely understand. That is why we want to send fuel, energy and arms, not the carbon tax, to Ukraine. The carbon tax and food insecurity are important in my riding. There are people lining up at food banks because the cost of food is so high, so I resent the member's saying that it is not important. Food insecurity is important. If he does not believe it, he should come to Cobourg and see the food bank.

81 words

Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Dec/1/23 12:22:17 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my colleague's speech. There is something about agriculture that fascinates me. Why are we not focusing on local distribution channels? Obviously, my Conservative colleague will say that, if we focus on local distribution channels, we will be spending less money on transportation and using less oil, and that is not good for that industry. I think that, when it comes to agriculture, the solution is to promote local production, local distribution channels and buying local through investments near farms and investments in agricultural cities and towns, so that we can process food, especially in slaughterhouses. That would cut down on the cost of fuel to ship these agri-food products to the five continents. How can we focus on that? Does my colleague have a recommendation on local distribution?

136 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:23:12 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree. We do need to focus on local farming. In my riding, there are some great farmers' markets in Port Hope and Cobourg. People driving from Toronto to Ottawa, or maybe people from Quebec who want to go to Toronto, though Quebec is beautiful and I do not know why anybody would want to leave Quebec, should come to my riding and stop at the Port Hope market or the Cobourg market from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock on Saturday mornings.

87 words

Mr. Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:23:48 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful to see someone from the Bloc in the position of representing all of Canada and our main democracy. I know that the member supports that above everything else. In this year's public accounts, there is $3.5 billion in losses by the Bank of Canada, and this year it is projecting $3.9 billion in losses. I wonder whether my colleague could tell us some of the things we could help Canadians with instead of Bank of Canada losses.

85 words

Mr. Philip Lawrence

Dec/1/23 12:24:19 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we have billions of dollars going to the Bank of Canada, by the way. Only the Canadian government could lose money selling drugs and running a bank. That is money that could go to health care, to education and to helping the most vulnerable.

46 words

Mr. Tom Kmiec (Calgary Shepard, CPC)

Dec/1/23 12:24:37 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise on behalf of the constituents of Calgary Shepard. This is the 14th report of the Public Accounts committee, a committee I got to chair briefly. I know that there are other members here who have had the honour of chairing that committee as well. It is one of the most interesting committees to be on because it is one that deals very closely with the Auditor General and with their reports. For constituents back home, the 14th report is an audit of several government programs, and I see five of them, that account for hundreds of millions of dollars, and of how the money is spent. All of these programs deal with input costs and how the government is trying to offset the high cost of certain grocery products available in the aisles. The report accounts for how, in this particular case, the programs try to provide reasonably, affordably priced groceries for people who are trying to purchase them. For weeks now, we have been talking about Bill C-234, which is now stuck in the Senate because Liberal-appointed senators will not lead it to a vote so it can be passed after the House has already spoken. I have always been taken by the argument, made by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, that Bill C-234 is a spending bill. The House has Standing Orders, and there is a long constitutional tradition that, when we pass spending bills in the House of Commons, the Senate of Canada, the other place, does not have the right to continuously block it; it has to pass those types of bills. In a private member's bill, we cannot pass new taxation but we can do a carve-out, and Bill C-234 would do a carve out. There is already a carve-out that was, by the Liberal government's own admission, created by the government for individuals with heating oil—

333 words

Audit

Hon. Marie-Claude Bibeau

Dec/1/23 12:26:36 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am tabling the government's responses to Questions Nos. 1814 to 1823.

22 words

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Dec/1/23 12:26:48 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that answers to questions have been tabled in the House. The government has now created one carve-out for heating oil. It did it for electoral reasons. One of the Liberal cabinet ministers said exactly that, that if westerners, prairie Canadians like myself, expected to get a carve-out for natural gas, which is the primary fuel used to heat our homes in the winter, then we should have elected more Liberals. It is very much political. The Supreme Court decision on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act confirmed that a carbon tax was possible in Canada. The Supreme Court specifically said that if applied all across the board, then there was a defensible nature to it. Carve-outs undermine that legal argument. Bill C-234 demonstrates the willingness of the House to try to make groceries and food affordable again. After eight years of the Liberal government, we do not have that. Consistently, the number one issue I get emails about from the people in my riding is the sticker shock they get when they go to the aisles for fresh produce, cereals or meat. Everything is more expensive. A lot of the government programs in place on which the Auditor General did an audit are trying to achieve affordable food, but we are not talking about more than $1 billion. Bill C-234 would give our farmers a billion-dollar tax break on the carbon tax by providing them with a carve-out. During question period today, members raised individual cases of farmers who are paying thousands of dollars a month on their farms for things like grain drying. These thousands of dollars then have to be passed on to consumers. In my riding, I think the closest connection we have to farms is our grocery stores. I say that because a lot of farmers and ranchers retire to my riding; a lot of multi-generational farmers and ranchers choose to retire in the city. There is a very large hospital in my riding, and retirees want closeness to services. They retire to the city, but their kids continue the farm operations. They continue the long-standing family tradition of owning and operating a family farm. They are all facing tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs that they must pass on to consumers. That is what happens every time there is an increase that the government imposes. This is not a market mechanism; this is an imposition. It is going up $15 every single year. It does not care what the market says; it is just a government-imposed tax. It is simply driving up the costs of everything we buy in the grocery store. As the Auditor General did an audit on these programs, I want to make sure people back home understand that the Senate continues to block Bill C-234 and not leave it to a vote because the Liberal senators do not want to see the vote. Liberal-appointed senators do not want to see a break for farmers of $1 billion. That billion dollars would be huge in my riding and would make a huge difference to the price we pay for groceries. I always have a Yiddish proverb when I rise in the House. I think I may have forgotten once. The member for Edmonton West said “finally”, because he was waiting for this: “Truth never dies, but lives a [wretched] life.” That is a truth I want to share with the House today, because when we have heard from the government side, the Liberals' talking points are that they do not know how the Senate works. We do know how the Senate works. We have Conservative senators whom we caucus with. They explain to us what is going on on the floor of the Senate, what discussions are going on and which individual Liberal-appointed senators are leading the charge, making amendments and trying to stall at committees. We have a bicameral system, two Houses in our Parliament. I am an Albertan, and I would like to see more elected senators. I hold firm to that position. A triple-E Senate is a long-standing Alberta position. Albertans have been demanding an elected Senate for generations now. We do have Senate elections. I want to pay homage to the fact that we do have them and that the Prime Minister should be appointing from our senatorial election list: Pam Davidson, Erica Barootes and Mykhailo Martyniouk, who is a proud Ukrainian Canadian. The government refuses to appoint them. The Prime Minister refuses to appoint a Ukrainian Canadian senator from Edmonton who earned the right to sit in the Senate by running in an election. I just checked, and he has received more votes, over 220,000 votes in the senatorial election, than any member of the House, including myself. I came near, as close as probably any other member, with over 44,000 votes in my riding. It was close, but not close enough to what Mykhailo got. Some of our elected senators have received over 300,000 votes. They have earned the right, by universal suffrage in Alberta, to sit in the Senate and represent people and they have a right to do that. Leading back to this audit and leading back to the Yiddish proverb that I shared, every single time the government rises in the House and tries to make a claim that we do not know how the Senate works, that senators are doing their jobs and that these are independent senators, I have not seen a single Conservative senator appointed by the government. I have not seen a single senator appointed by the government side that does not— Mr. Charlie Angus: Larry Smith, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy. Mr. Tom Kmiec: Mr. Speaker, I hear a member heckling again. It is the same voice I hear all the time, from the member for Timmins—James Bay. He spends more time heckling and talking about Toronto subways than he does about the people from Timmins—James Bay. I want to wish him good luck in a future life when he perhaps will try to go and get a pundit job with maybe the CBC; sorry, not the CBC because we are going to defund that once we earn the right to govern. Maybe he will have a good time at his condo in Toronto and will have a long time in retirement there when he keeps fighting for those subway systems that his constituents do not use. His constituents are also paying. They are seeing the sticker shock in their grocery stores, like my constituents are. Farmers are paying a carbon tax that they get no relief from. This was not audited in the Auditor General's public accounts report here, but I am speaking of a $1-billion tax relief for our farmers, and they deserve it. They work hard. I see this in those who retired to my riding who are ranchers and farmers who spent 40 or 50 years doing back-breaking labour producing the food that we eat that is in our grocery stores. The government imposes new taxes and raises the personal income tax and in fact went after farmers when it went after professional corporations. It jacked up taxes. I watched an orchard farmer from Atlantic Canada break down and cry at the finance committee because he was facing the destruction of his business, pre-2019, when the government was changing the small-business tax rate. He wanted to be able to pass the orchard on to his daughters. That is the current government. This is what it does every single time. Therefore, as we are standing here drawing the attention of Canadians, of the House of Commons and of members of Parliament and senators who are watching, we want the senators to pass Bill C-234 before Christmas and the faster the better, so that Canadians can put a good healthy meal on the table and have a merry Christmas this winter, which they deserve and they work hard for.

1364 words

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

Dec/1/23 12:34:32 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, once again, we see the Conservative Party playing a very unfortunate game. There is a substantial consequence to the games that the Conservatives play here. There is a great sense of disappointment that goes far beyond Ottawa, outside of Canada. We were supposed to be debating report stage of the Canada-Ukraine trade agreement today. The Conservatives are determined not to allow that to proceed or even to allow it to come to a vote at the very least; that would have been the honourable thing to do. The member's whole premise of his argument was based on the price of food and getting rid of the carbon tax. Ukraine has a price on pollution. It just seems to me that the Conservatives are being very reckless in their approach to dealing with the House. How does the member justify denying a vote on the Canada-Ukraine agreement?

151 words

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Dec/1/23 12:35:36 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I have respect for the member for Winnipeg North. He does the best he can for his Liberal side, rising consistently in the House and trying to do the best that he can with the miserable talking points that the Liberals receive. Let us go back to the record. There is RADARSAT satellite imagery of where Russian troops went across the border. The Stephen Harper government gave access to the Ukrainian government to use RADARSAT. The government took it away in 2016 and denied the ability of Ukraine to prepare itself for a possible Russian invasion. Former minister of foreign affairs, Stéphane Dion, at the foreign affairs committee used to claim that we must speak of Vladimir Putin and restore relations and talk to him wherever possible. The chair of that foreign affairs committee, Bob Nault, repeatedly said things that I would say were for the restoration of a pro-Russian line and speaking more to Russians. That same party keeps denying that we already have a free trade agreement. The Liberals keep expecting that we could do more free trade now, but we already have a free trade deal with Ukraine.

196 words

Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)

Dec/1/23 12:36:44 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, we could engage in long debates with our colleague from Calgary Shepard over whether the Senate is necessary or whether senators should be elected. We could have a great discussion on that. However, the Senate exists. It is there and it has to do its work of considering bills from the House of Commons. I felt the same frustration as my colleague when Bill C‑11 was before the Senate. At the time, Conservative senators were the ones slowing down the process. Nevertheless, we let the Senate get on with its business. Here is what happened: Conservative senators literally bullied women senators, including a Quebec senator who is a Paralympic athlete, the pride of Quebec and a wheelchair athlete admired by all Quebeckers. Until recently, tweets by the House leader of the official opposition were still being posted from the lobby showing two photos of these senators, including the one who was forced out of her home for security reasons. Does my colleague think that this is the best way to get the Senate to work faster?

180 words

Quebeckers

Mr. Tom Kmiec

Dec/1/23 12:37:49 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about Bill C-11, which was passed in the Senate. I think there is a big difference when we are talking about a bill that seeks to determine what people have the right to access online, the freedom of speech that they should have and what the government can control on YouTube, Facebook and the Internet in general. With regard to the cost of food, we know that more than two million people have visited food banks over the past few months. With Bill C-234, we see an opportunity to tell the Senate, as we have before, that we, in the House of Commons, are the ones who have the right to impose taxes and create tax credits. That is $1 million for our farmers. It is an opportunity to ensure that people can put food on the table this Christmas.

150 words

SoVote

House Hansard - 260