44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 26, 2024 11:00AM
- Feb/26/24 12:49:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, common-sense Conservatives are focused on axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime, while the Liberal Prime Minister proves day in and day out that he is not worth the cost or the corruption.
What we are seeing today is a perfect example of how the government is focused on the wrong things. While the Conservatives are putting forward tangible and practical measures that will lower costs, bring interest rates down, get homes built around the country and put dangerous criminals behind bars, the Liberal government is focused on the Standing Orders of the House of Commons.
Canadians are going to food banks in record numbers. People have moved away from home and have found jobs. They are now finding themselves having to renew their mortgages and are being forced to move back with their parents. Communities once safe and secure, where people would go to bed at night without locking their doors, are now investing in security cameras and other measures because their neighbourhoods have become so dangerous. All of this is going on in Canada, while the Prime Minister continues to break so many aspects of Canadian society. While the Liberals come in with a programming motion, using a valuable day of House time debating how bills are going to be debated and how many hours the House will sit, the Conservatives will continue to raise the important issues that Canadians face. The Liberals want to debate and delay, have a day-or-two-long debate arguing about how the process should be handled in the House of Commons.
We are not going to let them off the hook. Let us go through these points one by one.
The government is saying that it has to do this to get its agenda through. We in the official opposition would happily help advance an agenda that would actually accomplish these priority items. If the Liberals were to bring in a bill to cancel the carbon tax or at least cancel the increase that they have scheduled for April 1, we would support that. If they brought in tangible measures that would actually get homes built, we would support that.
We found out just a couple of weeks ago that the current housing minister launched a brutal and devastating personal attack on the previous immigration minister, who, by the way, are the same people. The former immigration minister is now the current housing minister. The current housing minister attacked the former immigration minister, blaming himself for mismanaging the immigration system in our country, which has caused terrible consequences on the housing side of things. After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canada builds fewer homes than the number of new Canadians added every year.
The minister admitted at committee that all of the Liberals' billions of dollars, their fancy photo-ops and their repackaged announcements did not build specific homes. The vaunted and much-celebrated, in Liberal circles, housing accelerator fund sounds active. It is one of those buzzwords. I wonder how many consultants they had to hire to come up with a name like the housing accelerator fund. That sounds exciting. It sounds like it will really pick up the pace of home building. We asked him a simple question. How many homes had this housing accelerator actually built? He said that it did not actually build any homes. Pardon the official opposition members if we come to this place to defend taxpayer dollars and if we oppose billions of dollars of spending that does not build new homes.
One of my Conservative colleagues, and I believe it was my colleague, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, asked a very simple question of the government when it came to the carbon tax. He asked whether the government could tell Canadians how many greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by the carbon tax. We would think that if the signature economic policy of the government is the carbon tax that it might measure that, that it might actually count how many greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by its signature policy. However, the answer that came back was that it did not keep track of it. It does not know; it does not measure that.
The Liberals have imposed this carbon tax on Canadians and have hiked it year after year, after promising not to, by the way. Remember that promise going into the 2019 election when former Liberal environment minister, Catherine McKenna, promised that they were never going to raise the carbon tax? The Liberals attacked me for telling Canadians not to believe the Liberals, that once the election was over, when the Prime Minister did not need the votes of Canadians but still needed their money, he would absolutely raise the carbon tax.
Catherine McKenna's other famous comment was that if we repeated a lie louder and over and over again, eventually people would believe us. That certainly bears out how Liberals have communicated about the carbon tax. They promised not to raise it and now they are forcing a hike on everyone year after year.
In the fiscal update in the fall of 2022, the Liberals promised that they would stop pouring inflationary fuel on the fire. The current Liberal finance minister said that in order to fight inflation, they had to get a grip on government spending, and there was that glimmer of hope. After telling Canadians that the Prime Minister did not think about monetary policy, in the few days after the fall economic update in 2022, there was that brief moment of hope when Conservatives thought that maybe he finally got it, that maybe someone finally read that part of macroeconomics textbooks to the Prime Minister and explained to him how, when governments go deep into deficits and force central banks to create brand new money out of thin air to bankroll government spending, that caused inflation. We thought maybe he finally got that and that the Liberals would work toward getting back to balanced budgets.
Of course, that hope was very short-lived. Just a few weeks after that, they went right back to their Liberal ways, borrowing and spending, plunging the country deeper into deficit. Immediately afterward, inflation started going up again. That is why so many Canadians cringe every time interest rates go up, because the Bank of Canada has to raise interest rates to fight the inflation that it caused in the first place by bankrolling the government deficit spending.
The Conservatives want to stop the crime. After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canadians are less safe. In fact, many areas in Canada are experiencing a dramatic spike in violent crime, which we have not seen in decades, hitting all-time highs in many areas and for many different types of crime.
Crime, like inflation, does not just happen. It is not like the weather. It is not like we can read the Farmers' Almanac one year and say that we will probably have an early frost or that inflation might hit 3.5%. Inflation and crime are directly linked to the government's policy decisions.
The previous Conservative government brought in tougher penalties for dangerous and repeat offenders. We are not talking about young people making a mistake for the first time in their lives. We are talking about hardened criminals, people who use dangerous weapons to commit their crimes, people who commit the same crime over and over again or people who cause grave bodily harm or even death in the commission of their crimes. We toughened those penalties. What did the Liberal Prime Minister do early on in his mandate? He started repealing those common-sense Conservative tough-on-crime bills and made bail much easier to get.
It used to be that if people had prior convictions, had proven to society and the courts that they were dangerous offenders and were accused of committing new crimes, it would be harder to get bail. In other words, it would be harder for them to be released before their trials. The Prime Minister's ideological obsession with putting the rights of criminals ahead of the rights of law-abiding Canadians decided to make bail easier to get. He actually mandated judges to err on the side of granting bail, even for dangerous and repeat offenders.
Again, we are not talking about a young offender being picked up for the first time for shoplifting or someone who has lost their temper for the first time and maybe lashed out at someone in a restaurant or a park. We are talking about people who commit the same crime over and over again. The government decided to put them back on the streets as early as possible. It is no surprise that crime started ticking up. Now we are in the midst of a crime wave that we have not seen in over a generation, and it is all directly linked to the government's agenda.
The Conservatives offer practical solutions. We offer many different ways of providing Canadians tax relief when it comes to the carbon tax. Obviously, we would like the government to acknowledge the failure of its signature economic policy. It does nothing to reduce emissions. The government does not even count how many emissions are affected by the carbon tax. It increases the cost of literally everything. Everything that needs to be produced, shipped, refrigerated, heated or sold in a store that has to have lights or any type of refrigerator or freezer has to pay the carbon tax, and that is built into the price that consumers pay.
We are going to hear Liberals saying throughout the day, and we hear it all the time, that Canadians are better off with it, because of the rebate they cooked up. What they do not tell Canadians is that the budget watchdog, the person the government appointed to scour through all the data and to go into a room, read all the reports and measure everything, account for everything and model everything, the non-partisan independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, has concluded that the vast majority of Canadians pay far more in the carbon tax than they hope to get back in any rebate.
The reason for that is that when the Liberals designed it, they deliberately excluded the knock-on effects of the carbon tax. Therefore, the only thing the rebate even contemplates, when it is being calculated, is the actual line item we might see on our bill when we fuel up or when we pay our utility. What we do not see, and what the calculation does not take into account, are all the price increases that go from farm to plate and from forest to Home Depot. All the aspects of the supply chain where costs are added on, the carbon tax applies every single step of the way and increases that price.
We offered a common-sense plan to scrap the tax, and it was rejected. Then we proposed to at the very least stop raising the carbon tax in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. When we are in a hole, we stop digging. Homer Simpson has the idea that when we are in a hole, we can try to dig up, but that does not work, and it certainly does not work to keep digging, to add on those costs.
The government is hiking the carbon tax. It is due to go up again on April 1 by 23%. Media reports say that the rebate is only going to go up 17%. Even with the fact that the rebate does not cover all the costs, as the government hikes the carbon tax, the rebate does not keep up with it. Canadians are falling further and further behind.
We proposed to at the very least stop hiking the tax, and that was rejected. Then we talked about grocery prices going up. There is that heart-breaking scene that so many of us see when we go to the grocery stores in our communities. We see well-dressed men and women, often with children, going through the grocery aisle. They pick up a package of beef and they stare at it for sometimes a full minute or maybe even a minute and a half. Maybe they pick up something else to compare with it. Then they put both of them back because they cannot afford them. Grocery prices have gone up so quickly and so dramatically because of the inflation and the carbon tax.
What is the government's answer? It is to keep hiking it. We proposed to at least take the carbon tax off groceries and farmers, to remove the carbon tax off farm production so that we do not tax the farmer who grows the food and we do not tax the trucker who trucks the food or the retailer who sells the food. That was rejected too. The government does not want the carbon tax to be lifted off our agricultural producers. That is a tangible practical way we could bring costs down. The government rejected that.
We have proposed a common-sense approach to tackle car thefts. Our leader announced a signature policy to deal with this scourge that is now plaguing Canadians from coast to coast. Stolen cars are becoming one of Canada's fastest-growing exports after the Liberal government weakened penalties and made it easier to get bail. It also diverted much-needed resources from frontline border service agents, who have the responsibility to inspect and track things leaving the country, and it spent those resources on the arrive scam.
An app that should have cost $80,000 ballooned to over $60 million because of phony invoices, work that was never done and all kinds of corruption that we are uncovering. The government paid billions to consultants instead of investing in the frontline resources that would actually bring that crime down.
We offered to fast-track that bill too. We could have easily had those types of things passed. Instead, the government is doubling down on its failed agenda and using the coalition it has with the NDP to ram through more of the same agenda, the very same policies, the very same ideology that caused the cost of living crisis, the inflation, the massive interest rate hikes, the crime wave plaguing our cities and the housing shortage that has driven the dream of home ownership out of the reach of so many Canadians. The government wants to double, triple and quadruple down on that and ram its agenda through. While Canadians are going through this cost of living crisis, as they have to pay more because of the Liberal Prime Minister, he has decided to put everything on pause and to use this valuable House time to effectively try to make changes to the Standing Orders.
If one went door knocking in their constituency and hit 100 doors this evening, how many Canadians does one think would say they are really concerned about how the House of Commons manages its time and to please go back to Ottawa to sort that out? The government is wasting the valuable time of the House and of members of Parliament because the government cannot admit its failures. The Liberals cannot put their egos aside. The Liberal Prime Minister cannot put his ego aside and admit he is the reason so many Canadians are suffering right now.
The Liberals also have a coalition partner in the NDP. It used to be that the NDP and the Conservatives could agree on a few things. We disagreed on many policies. I live in Saskatchewan, and we know what NDP economic policies can do to a province over time. NDP members promised in the last election that they would not enter into a coalition with the government. They broke that promise. Canadians believed them when they said they would not enter into a coalition. As soon as the election was over, they started hatching their scheme.
One thing Liberals and Conservatives used to agree on is transparency and accountability. The NDP members have decided to protect the Prime Minister personally against political embarrassment and to help him cover up his corruption. Time and time again at committee, we see the NDP vote against Conservative motions to investigate corruption and scandals, vote against our attempts to summon witnesses and vote, in essence, to protect the Prime Minister from his corruption being exposed. Their policy agenda is not working. That is why Conservatives are holding them to account.
I will make one final point about how Liberals are handling the proposed changes to the way the House operates. These are substantive changes that would fundamentally alter the timeline for bills to be debated and moved through the House. It would give the government incredible new powers that are not in the Standing Orders and that have not been contemplated by any of our procedural books. Normally, those types of major changes require all-party support and go through the proper process of procedure and House affairs examining the proposal, studying it and allowing all recognized parties to have some kind of say in it.
The government is establishing a precedent today by using this type of motion. I want to point out to the government that it is now doing, through government motions, what used to be done through consensus and through all-party support. If its members want to talk about protecting democracy, one of the most fundamental ways to protect a democracy is to ensure that even when there is a working majority, because of the NDP support, they still hold that tradition of not making major changes without all-party support. That would mean any party could work with the government, in a minority parliament, and could ram through massive changes to the Standing Orders over the objections of other recognized parties. That has consequences.
However, they are choosing to do it this way, and they are establishing a precedent for future governments. They cannot come to this place and start talking about the rights of members of Parliament and the ability of opposition parties to hold the government to account if they are going outside the normal process to make major changes in the House.
That being said, we are going to continue to oppose their agenda because it has failed. Their economic agenda continues to drive up inflation and interest rates. Their housing agenda continues to drive up home prices by rewarding local gatekeepers and by preventing new homes from entering the market. Their crime and justice agenda continues to let dangerous and repeat offenders back out into the streets where they terrorize law-abiding Canadians. For those reasons, we are going to oppose this motion, and we are going to oppose the rest of the government's agenda.
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- Feb/26/24 1:15:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, he was talking about the point of axing the tax. The Province of Saskatchewan, starting in January, told the Crown corporations to no longer collect the tax. The inflation in Saskatchewan has actually dropped almost a full point in the month of January. I am just wondering what his thoughts on that are.
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- Feb/26/24 1:16:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes another great point, again, about how the carbon tax adds to inflation. We heard the Bank of Canada governor come to committee and explain that the carbon tax was responsible for about a third of the extra inflation that Canadians are suffering under.
In Saskatchewan, we saw our premier, Scott Moe, have some compassion for the people of Saskatchewan. He saw the unfairness about how this Liberal government gave a carve-out to one particular region in Canada and ignored the concerns of people in the Prairies, in British Columbia and in Ontario. Our premier decided that he is not going to do the Prime Minister's dirty work. He is not going to collect the carbon tax. As a result, when the Government of Saskatchewan stopped collecting the carbon tax on behalf of the Liberal Prime Minister, guess what happened? Inflation went down in Saskatchewan.
Not only the Bank of Canada admitted that it helps cause inflation in the first place, but also we now know, with empirical evidence, that when one removes the carbon tax, one lowers inflation.
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- Feb/26/24 2:31:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Liberal-NDP Prime Minister is not worth the crime, the corruption or the cost.
Common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax because the NDP-Liberal carbon tax coalition has failed. It has not hit a single emissions target.
Do members know who has succeeded? Farmers. According to the Global Institute for Food Security, the carbon footprint for wheat grown in Saskatchewan is 67% lower than the rest of the world.
Why is the Prime Minister punishing Canadian farmers for this incredible accomplishment? Instead of blaming farmers for his carbon tax failures, will he not axe his plan to increase the tax on April 1?
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- Feb/26/24 3:09:07 p.m.
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Order. I would ask the member for Ajax and the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan to please take their conversation outside of the chamber or ask questions and receive responses.
The hon. member for Laval—Les Îles.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to speak to Bill C-58 regarding labour issues in Canada. In both my former professional role as a teacher and my volunteer role as a hospital board member, I have dealt with labour strife over those years.
The issue of replacement workers was always uppermost in the minds of both my colleagues in teaching and our community health care workers. One of my fellow hospital board members was Tony Silbernagel. He sadly passed away just a few months ago, but as an astute businessman and community volunteer, Tony taught me so much about compassion within our community.
There have been a number of dear friends over the past couple of months who have also passed away. Erhard Poggemiller was the former mayor of Kerrobert, Saskatchewan. Once he moved to Alberta, he was a councillor in Didsbury up until the last election. His sudden passing was a shock to us all, but I know how committed he too was to health care in Saskatchewan.
Two other dear friends, who served as Red Deer city councillors, passed away during the Christmas holidays. My childhood friend, Michael Dawe, was a treasured member of the city of Red Deer. As a historian and archivist, there was no one better. His former colleague, Frank Wong, also passed away during this time. Another icon of our community and former Red Deer alderman was Jack Donald. His philanthropy and care for our community were something that will be remembered forever.
Communities have many leaders. Friends like Dave Brown, Winnie MacFayden and Jean Klepper did so much for our central Alberta communities. Whether in sports or agriculture, they were also leaders. Sadly, within my family, we just dealt with the passing of my wife's brother, Charles Moore. Charlie was one of the founders of then-premier Lougheed's dream of rural gasification throughout Alberta. He received lifetime achievement awards from the Federation of Alberta Gas Co-ops and the Alberta Association of Agricultural Societies for his unwavering commitment to community. He was also the recipient of at least five community, provincial and national medals and citations. It was all for the community, for each and every one of these dear friends who have recently passed away.
My experiences with labour disruptions started in the late sixties, when I chose to remain at home while my family enjoyed a trip to California so that I could look after the farm and complete a correspondence course over the summer. I had just received all of my lessons when a postal strike started. It was more than three weeks later that I was finally able to send any lessons up to Edmonton to get marked. I received the input from the instructors only a couple of days before I had to write the final exams. Postal strikes take their toll.
Coming from an agricultural community and having seen the effects of workplace actions, either at the ports or with the railroad, I am well aware of the costs that exist when Canada's supply chain is disrupted. This legislation looks at some of these issues, but there must be true certainty, especially now, as we look for solutions to get our country's economy back on track. It is with those thoughts in mind that I would like to address some of the key points of this legislation. With all of it, though, there is the underpinning of the responsibility of a federal government to ensure that everything in this country runs smoothly.
The buck stops at the cabinet table. We may look at a labour minister as being the one with the responsibility to make these tough decisions, but if it does not have strong input from the ministers of other critical infrastructure, such as agriculture and natural resources, and from other regional ministers, the government never gets the true picture of the pain that these labour disruptions actually cause to the country. That is also why it is important for us, as legislators, to be able to deal with these issues. I wonder if it should be a common goal for all of us to ensure that cabinet can quickly deal with these issues, especially when back-to-work legislation can be interrupted by something as simple as the House not sitting.
I have been on both sides of the table when it comes to negotiations. It is never easy, but having done so, I am well aware of the strategies that are involved with labour issues. The reality is, either as a teacher and a member of the Alberta Teachers Association at the time, or as a hospital board representative, the real decision-makers were beyond my reach. Negotiators do what they feel is in the best interest of negotiations, not necessarily the best interest of members. This is a harsh reality, but it is in fact true.
However, that does not mean workers, companies and businesses cannot find common ground. If one looks at the results of many negotiations, once the threat of back-to-work legislation becomes evident, it is amazing how quickly two sides can get together. Unions would argue, and perhaps they are right, that is for us to see, that this type of legislation helps on the other side as well.
When they do, of course, there is a sense of pride and accomplishment if it is managed to be done without government intervention. That is the way it should be. As government, we should find ways to ensure that is the rule and not the exception. A fair and logical approach for replacement workers, one hopes, would make negotiations more meaningful.
This bill was tabled in November 2021, and we are now here, in February 2024, debating it. The Liberal-NDP coalition sure likes to take its time with the legislation it tables for debate. Nevertheless, moving on, Bill C-58 would do two major things. First, it would ban replacement workers in federally regulated industries, such as banking, airports and telecommunications, but it does not ban them in the federal public service.
Second, Bill C-58 would amend the maintenance of the activities process to encourage not only quicker agreements between employers and trade unions on what activities should be maintained in the case of a strike or lockout, but also faster decision-making by the Canada Industrial Relations Board in this connection. The provision of Bill C-58 would only apply to federally regulated workers. If enacted, the provision of Bill C-58 would enter into force 18 months after royal assent has been received.
One of the concerns with rail and port disruptions in agriculture is that any delays for a producer getting their product to market has a serious impact on their cash flow. In fact, it can be days or weeks of obstruction for farmers, and that ripple effect could last the entire season. When it comes to the movement of goods, it is not just the issue of the days workers do not show up. All the way down the supply chain, affected businesses need to adjust their schedules. It can sometimes be weeks to get the system running smoothly again.
Everyone deserves to have a safe workplace, a beneficial relationship with their employer that is built on a foundation of trust and goodwill. Just the same, businesses need to be able to operate and meet their clients' demands in a manner that allows them to continue to operate.
My concerns with this bill, Bill C-58, have nothing to do with workers' rights to organize or to engage in collective bargaining, because Canadian workers undoubtedly have those rights. However, labour legislation is always controversial in Canada. I want to be clear. There is a big difference between the boots on the ground and the suits in the union offices. The agendas are not always aligned. Conservatives believe that the government should work with unions and employers in areas of federal jurisdiction to develop dispute settlement mechanisms and to encourage their use to avoid or to minimize disruptions to services in Canada.
Of course, the Liberal government, ironically, has put a lot of money into contract workers and replacement workers. It is basically the same type of thing. GC Strategies, a two-person IT company that does no actual IT work, was paid nearly $20 million for ArriveCAN. That money could have been spent much more wisely.
In conclusion, I have concerns about the impact and the reach of this legislation. I have concerns about whether this bill draws the right balance between employer and employee. There are mixed signals from the Liberal government. On one hand, it speaks glowingly about banning the use of replacement workers but on the other hand, it is investing heavily in consultants.
As Canada rebuilds from the pandemic, from the imposed mandates and the economic consequences of undisciplined spending, it is vital that we rebuild our economy and workforce with sound labour policies.
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