44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 6, 2023 02:00PM
Mr. Speaker, last night, the Liberal-appointed senators gutted Bill C-234, which will cost our farmers nearly $1 billion in carbon tax by 2030.
Farmer Gord in Oxford paid $50,000 for the carbon tax just to run his farm. Thanks to the Liberals, it is now cheaper to buy Mexican asparagus shipped from 3,800 kilometres away than it is to buy asparagus grown in Oxford.
After eight years of this Prime Minister, Canadians are struggling to put food on their tables. We are facing a cost of living crisis like never seen before, with tent cities popping up across our communities and homelessness increasing. More and more hard-working Canadians are now relying on food banks, but instead of axing the carbon tax to lower food prices, this panicking Prime Minister spent the weekend begging his senators to kill this bill.
The Liberal government has ruined Christmas for our families and our farmers, but Conservatives will stand up, fight back against this radical Liberal agenda and axe the tax and make sure we have provided relief to our farmers, families and first nations.
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- Dec/6/23 2:24:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on this day in 1989, a man entered a quiet university library in Montreal and deliberately murdered 14 women because they were women.
Decades later, we are still holding vigils for women and girls murdered because of their gender. There were 184 femicides in Canada just last year. That is one woman or girl killed every 48 hours.
My city of Hamilton, like more than 40 other Canadian cities, has declared gender-based violence an epidemic and not just physical violence, but psychological abuse and economic coercion. These affect a woman's ability to provide for herself and care for her children, and they lead to more homelessness among women. Women's shelters in Canada are overfull.
Our government's national action plan to end gender-based violence directly supports frontline organizations. We are making housing more affordable, and we are addressing mental health. We are bringing men's voices into the solution, because gender-based violence is not a women's issue.
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- Dec/6/23 2:25:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today we honour the victims of the Polytechnique shooting and dedicate ourselves to ending violence against women.
Today, we are also thinking about those who will not have enough to eat this Christmas. There are reports of young people writing letters to Santa Claus not asking for presents, but for food. Some 25% of young Canadians and Quebeckers are telling pollsters that they cannot afford to eat.
Why did the Prime Minister force his senators to maintain a tax on Canadians' food?
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- Dec/6/23 2:26:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today we honour the memory of 14 young women who were murdered at École polytechnique de Montréal simply because they were women. We honour their memory by continuing to fight against inequality and gender-based violence. We all need to continue to pursue reforms against assault weapons, the implementation of red flag and yellow flag laws and the fight against femicide.
We must make sure that a tragedy like the one at Polytechnique never happens again.
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- Dec/6/23 2:27:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost of housing. He has doubled the cost of housing since he took office.
Yesterday in the Senate, a senator asked the president of the federal government's housing agency if there was a plan for building the 3.5 million homes needed to make housing affordable. The answer is no. That did not come from me. It came from the president of the federal housing agency.
When will the Prime Minister watch my brand new documentary to come up with a common sense plan and eliminate taxes and red tape so houses can be built?
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- Dec/6/23 2:27:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians are clearly not fooled by the Conservative Party's YouTube hashtag games.
This Conservative leader has never seen a social program that he did not want to cut. He did not support Canadians and small businesses during the pandemic. He will have no credible plan to build housing or stabilize grocery prices. He does not even recognize that climate change is real. Maybe he thinks Canadians are fools, but we know who he really is.
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- Dec/6/23 2:28:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what Canadians know is that the Prime Minister has doubled the housing costs, doubled the rent, doubled mortgage payments and doubled the needed down payment. After eight years, our housing costs have worsened at a greater rate than all but one OECD country.
Yesterday, a senator asked the head of the Prime Minister's own housing agency if there is a federal government plan to eliminate the 3.5 million home deficit that we have in Canada. The answer: No. It is not me saying that; it is his own housing agency. Given that he does not have a plan, why does he not watch the common-sense housing documentary I put forward so that he can see a common-sense plan to cut bureaucracy and build homes?
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- Dec/6/23 2:29:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is shameful that the Conservative leader is exploiting the very real anxieties and fears of Canadians for clicks and views. The leader continues to demean co-ops as “Soviet-style” housing. He called a Niagara family's home a “shack”, and he keeps using homeless people as props.
A responsible leader acts on the concerns of Canadians instead of exploiting them for political gain just so he can get his 15 minutes.
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- Dec/6/23 2:29:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is shameful is that this Prime Minister is causing homelessness in this country. He has caused the doubling of the number of people eating at a food bank in Toronto. One single mother in Sydney said, “Well, this month, I had to choose between eating and having heat. My kids are getting fed, but my house is freezing.” The Prime Minister's solution is to quadruple the carbon tax on that single mother and on seniors.
We have a common-sense Conservative bill to take the carbon tax off farmers and food. Why did the Prime Minister manipulate and intimidate Liberal senators into blocking that bill? Why does he want to tax food right before Christmas?
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Mr. Speaker, after all of the intimidation and threats from the Conservatives towards parliamentarians concerning Bill C-234, it turns out that the only farming the Conservative Party cares about is rage farming, because all of this was just an attempt to fundraise off the backs of farmers.
Time and time again, the Conservative leader has shown that he wants to take Canadians back to the Stone Age instead of helping them get ahead. On this side of the House, the Liberal government will always be there to support farmers.
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- Dec/6/23 2:31:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister raises taxes on food, brings back malnutrition and brings in record-smashing food bank use, the best he can come up with is a bunch of scripted talking points from junior staffers in the PMO. That is outrageous. Canadians are going hungry as Christmas is just around the corner. A common-sense Conservative bill to take the tax off farmers and food could have helped solve the problem.
Why did the Prime Minister manipulate and intimidate senators to keep the tax on food and make our people go hungry right before Christmas?
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- Dec/6/23 2:32:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we have an opposition leader who is so ideologically opposed to protecting the planet that he is willing to take Parliament hostage and stop Parliament from supporting workers, stop Parliament from supporting families and stop Parliament from supporting Ukraine as well. The Leader of the Opposition has threatened to ruin the holidays if his ideological demands are not met.
Let us be clear. We will keep working for Canadians, while the Conservative leader is fuelled only by the sound of his own voice and has no real plan for this country. We will never back down from supporting Canadians.
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- Dec/6/23 2:33:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while there are people who see themselves as prime minister but then have the crazy idea of grinding Parliament to a halt, there is work to be done.
For example, the government appointed Catherine Tait as interim CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada. Her mandate is to fight against disinformation; fight against disinformation by cutting jobs in French in the regions.
Does the Prime Minister agree with me that Ms. Tait should come to Parliament to explain her decisions, which are shocking, to say the least?
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Mr. Speaker, as a government, we have always supported CBC/Radio-Canada and the services it provides to local communities across the country.
One of the first measures we took as government was to cancel the Harper government's cuts to our public broadcaster. Supporting local news and journalists during these difficult times for the industry is exactly why we introduced Bill C‑18.
While the Leader of the Opposition celebrates Canadian families being laid off, we will continue to support local journalists and local news in Canada. We are very open to working with the Bloc Québécois on this, as always.
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- Dec/6/23 2:34:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hope we are not supposed to think that Liberal cuts are better than Conservative cuts.
More people in Canada tune in to Radio-Canada than the CBC. Radio-Canada generates more advertising revenue in Canada than the CBC. In fact, French-language Radio-Canada subsidizes CBC's English-language services.
Nevertheless, Ms. Tait is calling on French-language Radio-Canada to absorb half the cuts she is demanding, at the expense of French and at the expense of the regions.
Should the Prime Minister not personally summon Ms. Tait to come and explain herself to francophone parliamentarians in the House of Commons?
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- Dec/6/23 2:35:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as the leader of the Bloc Québécois knows full well, we will always be here to stand up for Canada's two official languages. We are going to focus special attention on protecting French, including French in Quebec.
CBC/Radio-Canada has an important mandate in this area. We are concerned about the situation confronting all of our media outlets these days, what with digitization, web giants and the Conservatives' attacks on the media, especially on CBC/Radio-Canada. We will always be here to stand up for journalism as an essential pillar of our democracy.
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- Dec/6/23 2:36:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, three women in London have been killed by their male partners over the past year. Our women's shelters are doing everything they can, but they just cannot keep up. Anova's women's shelter had to turn people away 2,400 times this year. This is an epidemic, but what are the Liberals doing? They are cutting funding to women's shelters when they need them the most.
When will the Prime Minister reverse his $150-million cut to women's shelters?
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- Dec/6/23 2:36:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today and every day, we reinforce that everyone has the right to live free from violence. We have made historic investments, including precedented investments during the pandemic, to support shelters, and we are taking real action to end gender-based violence in our communities.
We are also working with provinces and territories to develop a national action plan to prevent gender-based violence and support survivors. We know there is an urgent need for more action, and we will not stop until gender-based violence comes to an end.
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- Dec/6/23 2:37:05 p.m.
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Uqaqtittiji, indigenous women and their children are forced to live in violent situations because of the lack of adequate housing. The Liberals are actively keeping indigenous people marginalized by delaying the release of housing investments promised. The NDP fought to secure $4 billion to help build homes indigenous people need, but the Liberals keep delaying these investments, keeping indigenous people out in the cold.
When will the government help indigenous communities get the homes they so desperately need?
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- Dec/6/23 2:37:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are taking action to address housing gaps in indigenous communities swiftly, effectively and in equal partnership. Budget 2023 included an additional investment of $4 billion in the indigenous housing strategy on top of the $6.7 billion since 2015. In fact, since 2016, we have supported the construction and renovation of over 30,000 homes in first nations communities, and we continue to work with first nations partners to co-develop a 10-year housing infrastructure strategy.
We will continue working with first nations, Inuit and Métis, along with all levels of government, to co-develop and implement community-based housing solutions because they are desperately needed.
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