SoVote

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.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

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.

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Context: House Hansard - 260 - Dec/1/23

Mr. Kelly McCauley

Dec/1/23 12:41:40 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, as a current member of the public accounts committee and a Public Accounts geek, I have read all three volumes, page after page, and none of what the colleague across the way has talked about has anything to do with Public Accounts volumes I, II or III.

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