44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 7, 2024 10:00AM
- May/7/24 4:32:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for starters, we call them “Conservatives”. They have the same colour of blue, and they use the same name, but I would argue that this is actually the Reform Party. I think that it is entirely appropriate to question whether or not they are even Conservatives because, quite frankly, although she is no longer with us, I am sure that Flora MacDonald, who was from Kingston and the Islands, would look at the Conservative Party and would say that it really is not what she represented when she was in this place.
However, the member brought up the Conservatives' position on pharmacare. I was here to listen to that debate on pharmacare. Do members know how many Conservatives got up and said that only one in five Canadians want this? It is as though one in five Canadians needing something does not qualify us to actually do something about it.
To answer the member's question about the motivation of the Conservatives, they know that those one in five Canadians are not who they are banking on to vote for them. They know that those one in five Canadians are some of the most vulnerable in our communities who actually really need access to pharmacare, and they are willing to brush them aside because they know that they are not contained within the four out of five who they actually do rely on for their votes.
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Madam Speaker, holy smokes, four out of five are voting in Kingston and the Islands.
Division 38 of Bill C-69 is where the Liberals have put in some amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act with respect to sending detained immigrants to federal penitentiaries. Not only are jails the most expensive way to house a person in this country, but human rights groups like Amnesty International have been sounding the alarm about this. At a time when all 10 provinces have already committed to ending their immigration detention agreements, instead of following the provinces' lead and working to end immigration detention, why is the federal government planning to use federal prisons for immigration detention?
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- May/7/24 4:34:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will admit to the member that I do not have the exact details on his question, but I will say this. If human rights activists and others are pushing because they do not believe that charter rights are being upheld, I can guarantee one thing: This Liberal government will not use the notwithstanding clause to impose its rules upon them.
This is exactly the rhetoric we are hearing from the Conservative leader. He is basically saying that if he does not like the way the courts want to treat his policies or laws because they are unconstitutional, he will just use the notwithstanding clause and will still get his law.
I can guarantee the member that I would never sit in a political party that uses the notwithstanding clause in such a way as to be so precarious about how and when to use it just to impose the supreme leader's decisions, that being the leader of the Conservative Party.
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- May/7/24 4:35:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the last year, during the formulation of the budget, we saw the Prime Minister come to Winnipeg three times: once to talk at Stanley Knowles School about child care; then to have meetings with the premier of the province to talk about health care; and then, more recently, to talk about housing. These are really important issues.
The leader of the Conservative Party, on the other hand, goes out and talks to groups such as Diagolon. When the member makes reference to the extreme right and the Reform Party seated across the way, I wonder if he could provide his thoughts as to who the Conservatives are actually listening to.
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- May/7/24 4:35:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister and our cabinet are willing to work directly with municipalities to do the important work they need to do. The Prime Minister is engaged in communicating with premiers, even those with whom he quite often does not see eye to eye politically.
On the other hand, we have the Leader of the Opposition, who is literally going out and insulting mayors of major cities in this country, hanging out with Diagolon and far-right extremists who support some radical views.
That is the reality of what we are dealing with here. We are set up to have a choice, just like the United States, between a far-right person like Donald Trump and Joe Biden. We are going to have the exact same thing here, and people can make their choice.
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- May/7/24 4:36:54 p.m.
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Order. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Peace River—Westlock, Carbon Pricing; the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Public Services and Procurement; the hon. member for Calgary Centre, Carbon Pricing.
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- May/7/24 4:37:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague, the member for Barrie-Innisfil.
After nine years, the Prime Minister still does not get it. There are many things he does not understood. He does not understand that budgets do not balance themselves. He does not understand that Canadians cannot live on their credit cards forever. He does not understand that leading a country means much more than just smiling for the cameras.
After nine years, he clearly does not understand that Canadians are tired of paying for his and his government's incompetence. I say incompetence because, after nine years, too many families have seen their quality of life go down as a result of his inflationary policies. Everything costs more, including food, rent, gas, taxes, mortgage payments, everything people have to buy on credit, restaurant meals and recreational activities. The list goes on. Absolutely everything costs more.
The Liberal Prime Minister has made the public service so big it is literally bursting at the seams, which leads me to say that the government, too, costs a lot more after nine years of this Prime Minister.
The Liberal government hired no less than an additional 100,000 public servants. With so many new government employees, one would expect services to improve, at least proportionately. One might think that waiting for a passport was a thing of the past, that immigrants who are waiting for a family member are now all very happy with the family reunification and immigration processes, and that it is now easy to talk to a CRA or an EI agent. One hundred thousand more public servants means 200,000 more hands to work on finding solutions to people's problems. That would make sense, but no. That is not what happened, despite the additional billions of dollars that this government spent on expanding the public service.
The Prime Minister and this government's ministers created so much chaos that even 100,000 more public servants have been unable to correct nine years of complacency. Take, for example, passports, the people who are waiting for EI payments and the thousands of Canadians who have to pay back billions of dollars to the government because the Liberals' pandemic measures were a failure.
Let us talk about immigration and the former immigration minister, who not only created the worst management crisis ever at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, but also lost track of one million people. That minister is now in charge of fixing the country's housing crisis. I wonder what that minister has to say to Cédric Dussault, the spokesperson for the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec, a renters' rights group, who said, “We hear from tenants who intend to commit suicide. This is more than just despair. They do not see a way out, and they want it to be over. That is what it has come to”. That is what it has come to in Canada after nine years of this Prime Minister.
This is just a glimpse of Liberal incompetence. In addition to hiring tens of thousands of public servants, this Liberal government has literally doubled the cost of hiring outside consultants. Many of those expenses were unjustified. Here is just one example: ArriveCAN. The government spent $60 million of taxpayers' money on an app developed in a basement by two people with no computer skills. That app was supposed to cost $80,000. Let us do the math. The cost ballooned from $80,000 to $60 million. That is how this government manages public finances.
As I said earlier, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost of his government, which has skyrocketed over the past nine years. Let us look back at 2015, when this same Prime Minister promised Canadians that he would run small deficits of $10 billion and balance the budget in four years. Since then, he has not only failed to keep his promise, but he has also become the spendiest prime minister in Canadian history. He single-handedly put Canada further into debt than all previous prime ministers.
I am not talking about him spending more than any previous prime minister. I am talking about the debts of all prime ministers combined. This Prime Minister has managed to spend more than all the previous prime ministers combined. He has increased Canadians' debt from $700 billion to $1.3 trillion in just nine years. I never thought I would use the word “trillion” in the House, but that just shows how out of control this government's spending is.
That means that today, just to pay the interest on this massive debt, Canadians have to fork over more than $57 billion a year. How much is $57 billion? People wonder, because it is impossible to grasp the scale of a number that big. It is more than what the federal government transfers to the provinces for health care every year. It is the equivalent of all the goods and services tax, or GST, that is collected when people buy goods and services. In other words, every time we pay GST somewhere, it does not go toward improving the environment, national defence or social housing; it goes to pay the interest on this Prime Minister's debt.
This Prime Minister has inflated the debt to the point that he no longer sees what effect this spending is having on Canadians. It is contributing to inflation, driving up the price of everything and forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. That is what nine budgets from this Prime Minister has done. This ninth budget is no exception. Time and again, we see new spending, stagnating services, rising prices and daily revelations of corruption. This is the perfect example of an incompetent Prime Minister who is not worth the cost.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to talk about something that has been a concern of mine for the 25 years that I have been in politics. This theme has only reinforced my decision to be a Conservative in Quebec over the years. I want to talk about the mindset that, no matter what the Liberals do, no matter what the left proposes, whether it is the NDP, the Bloc Québécois or the Liberal Party, just one group suffers as a result of all their good ideas. That group is average Canadians. It is the Quebecker who works hard to support his family. It is the Quebecker who struggles to pay rent, to give her children a decent education, to be a good citizen by volunteering to help those in need. That is a fact. I talk to people in their homes. The only people paying for all this spending are not the Prime Minister, nor his ministers, nor the Liberal government, but the hard-working people at home.
Who pays more for gas when someone decides one day that it would be a good idea for gas to be more expensive so that people will use less? Who pays more for electricity because it is bad to waste electricity and because, if the price is raised, people will realize that it is too expensive and then use less? If they need it, they will have to pay either way. The Prime Minister said so himself when he was invited to comment on the rising price of gas before the carbon tax even came into effect. He said that that was exactly what they wanted, for Canadians to pay more. Worse yet, left-wing parties like the Bloc Québécois are not shy about saying that it is not enough. The Bloc says that the carbon tax — they probably also want to talk about the carbon pricing that applies in Quebec — should be radically increased. It is the public that pays every time these people say that they have a good idea.
Who pays for these taxes, these bags, these services, these user fees, this big government that is supposed to solve all the problems? It is Canadians. It was Canadians before, it is Canadians now, and it will be Canadians as long as we have a Liberal government. That is why the Conservatives have a common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. The “Liberal Bloc” does not want us to keep saying it, but it is a common-sense plan that will ensure that we can give Canadians back a little pride, so that Canadians realize that things were not like this before the Liberals took office and that it will certainly not be like this once they are no longer in power.
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- May/7/24 4:47:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have heard Conservative or Reform members, or however one might want to address members opposite, say that the federal government does not have a role to play in health care. We heard them say that they do not support a pharmacare program, yet a vast majority of Canadians want a Canada health system that reflects the Canada Health Act and see the value of a pharmacare program.
Can the member clearly indicate why he and the Reform Party or the Conservative Party do not believe that the federal government has a role to play when it comes to a national health care system?
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- May/7/24 4:48:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is the leftist party or, pardon me, the Liberal Party of Canada.
I will take no lessons from the Liberal Party. Why? It is because every day when we pick up the newspapers and turn on the television, we see moving accounts of mothers who cannot find housing for July 1. In Quebec, July 1 is an extremely important date. Those mothers will have to find a place to live and are resigned to the idea of having to live in their minivans.
Business owners are going bankrupt because the cost of paying down their debt and input costs is now more than they can afford. Quebec has seen a 130% increase in small business bankruptcies over the past three years. That is unacceptable.
I always wonder why the Liberals avoid talking about these issues that affect Canadians and Quebeckers every day.
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- May/7/24 4:49:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like my colleague to know that Quebeckers are suffering because of with the costly Conservative-Liberal coalition that panders to the Canadian oil monarchy.
Some $47 million is being spent on the Governor General every year. What do the Conservatives do? They sing God Save the King. By 2035, it is going to cost us a collective $83 billion to prop up the greedy oil industry. That cost is $18 billion for 2023 alone. In the last four years, $65 billion has gone to rich oil and gas tycoons. The Conservatives are being taken for fools. They applaud. They want more.
It is pretty simple: What is costing the people of Quebec so dearly is voting Conservative.
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- May/7/24 4:50:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, hypocrisy abounds. It was the Bloc Québécois that voted for this government's $500 billion in additional spending. As a result, everything costs more now. It was the Bloc Québécois that voted for additional funding to build a pipeline. They are not about to shout it from the rooftops, but they voted in favour of additional funds to build the pipeline. The Bloc Québécois members are the ones telling Canadians and Quebeckers who use their cars to get around every day that they still do not pay enough taxes. The Bloc Québécois would like to see gasoline taxes radically increased in order to encourage people to use less gas, since it costs more. Once again, they are making citizens pay for ideologies.
That is what I call the hypocrisy of the Bloc Québécois.
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- May/7/24 4:51:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing that I admit I have concerns about in the budget is the lack of funding for first nations languages. We have heard clearly from the First Peoples' Cultural Council that this is a significant concern. For me, I think about the many communities that are working with North Island College in my region to set up classes to teach language. I think about ‘Namgis, which has a facility where they nest young people to learn the language, and Tla'amin, which is doing something very similar. Does the member share my concern around first nations languages in the budget?
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- May/7/24 4:51:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I share my colleague's concerns regarding the first nations. Even though my riding does not have all that many first nations representatives, I am very proud to see that Chief Billy Morin has just joined the Conservative Party. He will be a candidate for us in the next election. We are very proud to have people of that calibre working with us to improve everyday life for first nations across Canada.
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- May/7/24 4:52:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to stand up on behalf of the people of Barrie—Innisfil in the House of Commons and, in this case, in particular, to discuss the budget implementation act.
If one listens to the Liberals, and I have been in the House for most of today, one would almost get the sense that Canadians have never had it so good as what they have right now.
The member for Ajax stood up before, and I recall asking him a question about Canada's productivity. We are seeing declines in productivity, investment and capital investment, other than government investment; it is at a point where our productivity is heading into developing nation status right now.
It is obvious that the ability of Canadians to have some sort of lifestyle or provide for a quality of life for themselves is clearly diminishing after nine years of the current NDP-Liberal government. There is not one day that I am in my Barrie—Innisfil office, not one phone call and not one email that is telling me that their life is better after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government. In fact, I would say that we spend most of our time, and my staff's time, in my Barrie—Innisfil office walking people in off the ledge, because they are so concerned about their economic future.
I recall that, a couple of months ago, I had a senior come into my office. Fortunately, he had a mortgage, but he had to renew it. With the new interest rates, mortgage renewal rates, the way they are, he was only going to be left with $600 at the end of the month to pay his property taxes, to pay his heat, to pay his hydro and to buy groceries. That is an indictment of nine years of failed economic policy, and it is having a severe impact on Canadians right across the country.
The budget does nothing to address that. In fact, I will subscribe to the idea that it actually makes things worse for Canadians, especially in the younger generation. In 2015, younger Canadians voted for the Prime Minister; he was talking about providing them with hope over fear and all the other things he was talking about. He said that things were going to be better for the next generation; in fact, things have gotten worse.
Young people right now do not just feel as though they have been lied to and let down. Rather, they feel as though they have been left behind after nine years of the Liberal-NDP government.
I will go one step further. Any young person whom I talk to right now does not just feel that. Young people are despondent right now, because they do not feel as though they are going to have the same opportunities as their parents had.
They have done everything right. They have gone to university. They have gotten educated. In some cases, some of them are working three or four jobs just to get by. However, because of the economic policies of the government, they still cannot afford to come up with the down payment to buy a home.
Those who have bought a home are now facing a mortgage renewal crisis that this country has not seen in generations. Moms are being kept up at night, trying to figure out how they are going to pay for their mortgages, because mortgage rates have tripled as a result of the failed economic policies of the Liberal government.
When one listens to the Liberal government, it is almost as though Liberals do not realize that they have been in government for nine years and that they have created the mess we are in right now through failed economic policies. When one injects as much liquidity into the system and one creates as much debt and deficit as we are dealing with right now, what does one think is going to happen?
The Leader of the Opposition was predicting three or four years ago that we were going to see interest rates increase as a result. The only lever that the Bank of Canada has to curb inflation is to raise interest rates.
We have heard from former Liberal finance ministers and from former Bank of Canada governors, who keep saying the same thing: It is almost as if the Bank of Canada is pressing on the brakes while the Liberal government is pouring more fuel on the inflationary fires.
There is no greater example of that than what is within the budget: There is $40 billion in additional spending and $56.1 in interest costs, just to service the debt. The debt has been doubled by the Prime Minister; his insatiable appetite to spend is putting at risk the economic prosperity of millions of young Canadians, including my kids. That $56.1 billion is more than we spend in health care transfers to the provinces, and it is almost an equal amount to what we take in on the GST.
It was the former NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, who said just shortly after the budget that the GST is designed to pay for many of the services Canadians rely on. Every time somebody goes out and fills up their car with gas, goes out for dinner or buys a ticket to something, they pay the GST. They pay it knowing that it is designed to go towards providing for the social safety net that Canadians rely on in this country. However, right now, almost every single penny of the GST is going toward servicing the cost of the debt accumulated by the Prime Minister and the failed NDP-Liberal experiment.
As Tom Mulcair said, “It is no longer the GST. It is the DST, the debt service tax”. He could not have been more correct.
The government is hiding behind generational fairness, but the generational mess it has created for younger Canadians is not going to be fixed by the budget. It is going to be fixed by a government that lives within its means and that focuses on the revenue side of the ledger rather than solely the expense side. By that, I mean not attacking income-producing sectors of our economy that have historically created great wealth for our nation, such as our natural resource sector and agriculture sectors. Those sectors have contributed greatly to not just providing for that social safety net but also to being able to provide for Canadians.
In the natural resource sector, we have a big role to play in providing clean Canadian energy to the rest of the world, and there is no greater example of that than when the President of Germany came to Canada, begging for LNG. Energy security is the number one issue that Europe is facing right now. He came to Canada, and our Prime Minister shooed him away as though there was no business case for that. Two weeks later, the same German president signed a $27-billion deal with Qatar, which has fewer environmental, labour and human rights standards. That $27 billion could have come to Canada to be used to improve health care, education and the quality of life of not just the next generation but also future generations to come.
We have seen an increase in housing costs. We have seen rent and house prices double. We are seeing mortgage rates that, in some cases, have tripled. Hundreds of thousands of homes are now due for mortgage renewal, and these next couple of months and the budget would do nothing to allay the fears that moms have when they go to renew their mortgage, already facing an increasing affordability crisis and a housing attainability crisis.
The last thing I want to focus on is the fact that the government has raised the carbon tax again by 23%, and that is not the end of it. We are at $80 a tonne right now, and we are heading up to $170. After the 2019 election, the government said the price would never go up past $50 a tonne. We are already past that point, and it is expected to double, which is going to increase the cost of everything, such as the necessities of life, as well as housing costs, the cost of groceries and the cost of transporting goods. Everything will become more expensive in this country, and as our productivity continues to decline, so too will the quality of life of Canadians.
I am going to vote against the budget because it would do nothing to improve the quality of life for future generations or this generation today.
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- May/7/24 5:02:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us think of the improvement in the quality of life for the thousands of young people who are going to have the opportunity to gain employment through companies like the VW plant, Canada's largest manufacturing plant; 200 football fields could fit into it. That is not to mention the Honda plant. We are not alone. Not only does the Liberal government see that, but so does the Progressive Conservative Government of Ontario, because it is also supporting these two initiatives.
We are supporting industries, and, yes, it does cost money. Can the member from the Reform Party tell us why it is that they oppose this type of investment, when we see Progressive Conservatives getting behind it?
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- May/7/24 5:03:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thought I made a pretty substantive argument as to why, in some cases, the budget was not going to work for Canadians. If the hon. member wants to sit here and hurl insults, it is his prerogative to do so.
The fact is that we do not know. In the absence of seeing any of the contracts that have been signed, either through Stellantis or Volkswagen, the only thing we know is that there are billions of dollars' worth of government subsidies being applied to these plants, on the credit card, by the way, because, again, we are at $1.4 trillion in debt. Just last week, the finance minister announced that she wanted to increase that debt ceiling by another $295 billion to $2.1 trillion.
Why does the government not provide confidence for Canadians and show just where the work is going to come from? All we are hearing right now is that there are a lot of temporary foreign workers, non-Canadians, who are going to be working in the plants. Show us the proof; that is all we ask.
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- May/7/24 5:04:24 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there was a time when people who voted Conservative in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada could be sure that the autonomy of their government would be respected and that the interference would stop. However, the Conservative Party voted against our motion calling for an end to interference and for the right to opt out with compensation for the provinces that did not want to implement certain programs that they already manage. It is a matter of not duplicating bills.
Can my colleague explain this disconnect? In future, what will they do to avoid this?
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- May/7/24 5:05:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I fundamentally believe that here in Ottawa, the federal government has a role to play in assisting the provinces.
However, provincial jurisdiction must be respected. Our leader respects provincial jurisdiction and will work with the premiers of every province in order to ensure that we have a confederation that is functioning and united, not divided. The Prime Minister has a tendency to divide us along regional lines, race lines, faith lines, gender lines and the house status of our neighbour, and now, by creating a new class war, he has another reason to divide people.
I believe that if we are going to have a functioning confederacy, we need a prime minister who not only respects provincial jurisdiction but also works with the provinces and provincial leaders.
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- May/7/24 5:06:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the federal budget includes a commitment to start a procurement process to replace Via Rail's long-distance fleet, some of the oldest rolling stock used by passenger trains in the whole world, built in the 1960s and sorely in need of replacement.
I wonder what the Conservative Party's position is on replacing the long-distance passenger trains that are used by Via Rail.
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- May/7/24 5:06:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, clearly the country is in desperate need of infrastructure replacement, and not just from a rail standpoint.
The difficulty I have with the budget, frankly, is that it does not necessarily focus all of its attention on that. I see a lot of debt and a lot of deficit. I see problems for future generations that are going to be caught up in many of the issues that the budget faces, not the least of which is the ability for young people to have hope for their future. They are being weighed down in mountains of debt and deficit as well. We need to control spending.
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