So V ote

May/9/24 12:58:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to rise and talk to a topic like this one, as so many young people are dying across our country. There has been a 166% increase in deaths since the Prime Minister took over in 2015 to 2024. That is what we are talking about. People's loved ones have died. The member politicized his speech and said that our leader was afraid to meet with mothers, when he has met with mothers across the country. That is actually beneath the member. I have a lot of respect for the member, but his speech was beneath him. An hon. member: Oh, oh! Mr. Warren Steinley: The House leader of the NDP can yell as much as he wants. Madam Speaker, Dr. Nickie Mathew met with the health committee members and said that there was a 22% increase in B.C. youth with hydromorphone in their system. That comes from the safe supply. In B.C., there is a 22% increase in hydromorphone in the bloodstream of deceased B.C. youth. How can the member possibly say that safe supply is not affecting and killing B.C. youth?

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May/9/24 1:45:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member should be happy; this is of substance. This has been tried before. Portland, Oregon, did safe supply decriminalization. B.C. tried it. Their overdoses skyrocketed. This is not a new phenomenon. I know the NDP members are very upset because the NDP policies are failing Canadians, and people are dying—

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May/9/24 1:46:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP members are getting very upset because they failed Canadians. This has been tried. It has failed. There are examples of this failing. Why are the Liberals fighting so hard to continue down a path where more Canadians are going to die from safe supply? Let us do something better for Canadians.

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May/9/24 5:41:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I am a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, we had questions for the member who brought this bill forward during committee. A lot of livelihoods would get destroyed if this bill passes, and a lot of them are indigenous businesses that raise these horses. It is one of their major forms of income in running their farms. We had witnesses come to the committee to talk about just that. It could cost a lot of money if this industry goes out of business and they have loans through Farm Credit Canada. I wonder if the member has received advice as to whether this private member's bill would cost the treasury money. If so, could it still be passed and would it still be in order?

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May/9/24 6:50:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very glad that the minister just mentioned the supposed delays that the Conservatives are causing on the bill. Technically, this government has had a majority for the last year and a half. It has a supply and confidence agreement with the NDP. It has a majority on committee and a majority in the House of Commons, which would allow the Liberals to pass any bill they want during government business. The fact that he lays out an argument that we are the problem is quite interesting. The minister sat here for the last 20 minutes bragging about how much money the Liberals are going to spend in the fall economic statement. I do not think there is a Canadian who disagrees that Liberals can spend money. I think they know the Liberals are not worth the cost anymore and that they are not getting the value for money that they deserve. My question to the minister is this: How can the Conservative opposition be delaying the bill before us, which is what the Liberals are telling Canadians, when they have a majority and they can bring this up any time they want. The bill has been tabled since November 30, so it is basically their incompetence that has not got the job done.

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May/9/24 6:56:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I request recorded division, please.

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May/9/24 7:54:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this fiscal economic statement has led to a budget where the debt servicing costs $54.1 billion, which is more than the federal government transfers to provinces for health care. We all know health care is very important. How did the member find his way to supporting a fiscal economic statement that led to a budget that spends more on debt each and every year than this whole country spends on health care transfers to provinces?

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May/9/24 8:29:29 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to take to my feet today to talk about the fall economic statement. First, if I have some latitude, I want to say that Canada just lost a national treasure not too long ago. It came out in the National Post that Rex Murphy passed away this evening, at the age of 77, after his battle with cancer. I hope that I will be able to read some of Rex's best quotes into the record. I am sure that we will recognize him later on, but I thought it would be fitting. He was, I think, an iconic writer in our country for years. I think he has the respect of all sides. He was a great, proud Maritimer as well. I googled some of his best quotes. I am going to read a couple here. Rex Murphy said, “Everything written, if it has anything in it, will offend someone, and if the mere taking of an offence were to amount to a license to kill the offender, well the world will be sadly underpopulated of novelists, columnists, bloggers and the writers of editorials.” He also said, “Not every article in every magazine [or] newspaper is meant to be a valentine card addressed to every reader's self-esteem.” This is a personal favourite of mine: “Stay away from philosophy kids. It'll ruin your mind.” He also said, “Hollywood is a narcotic, not a stimulant. It wants to sell you something. Literature wants to tell you something.” This is another personal favourite. I am a country music singer, so this is the last one. He said that Shania Twain has done more for country and western than heartbreak and whisky combined. To Rex Murphy, may he rest in peace. The fall economic statement was a disappointment from our point of view. It really did not address some of the major concerns and issues we had. It did not fix the budget, stop the crime, build the houses or axe the tax. We know that Canadians from coast to coast are continuing to find it harder and harder to put food on the table. That is something that sorely needs to be addressed in this country. As of last year, two million people used a food bank across this country. It is now expected, from food bank data, that three million people will do so in 2024. This is not the Canada that I want my children to grow up in, and I think most people would agree with that. I had a great opportunity this week to attend the Food, Fuel, and Fertilizer Global Summit, held in Regina, Saskatchewan. They had some of the most forward-looking thinkers in the industry when it comes to prudent agriculture, energy and resources. One of the speakers was Tim Gitzel from Cameco, a company located in northern Saskatchewan. They said an agreement was made among 24 nations, and in the next couple of decades, they want to triple the amount of nuclear energy to fight climate change. That is a big commitment from nations across this world. That means they can go from 400 to 1,200 nuclear reactors. That was not addressed in the fiscal update or even in the budget at all. Canada can be a world-leading nuclear power, but it is falling by the wayside because the government has an ideological philosophy that is not in favour of nuclear power. Another speaker at the summit was Bruce Bodine. He is the CEO for Mosaic, which has its head office in Regina, Saskatchewan. They are one of the leading producers and exporters of fertilizer in the world. That is so important; a speaker said at this summit that, in the next couple of decades, we are going to have to produce as much food to feed the world as we have in the past 10,000 years. That means we are going to have to grow our agriculture sector. In the fall economic statement, there is nothing that looks at growing our agriculture sector. In fact, the government has had policy after policy that continues to kneecap this sector. By 2030, the carbon tax will cost ag producers $1 billion a year; this will come out of the pockets of our agriculture producers across the country. Can one imagine the innovations that they could have if they kept that money themselves and put it into new technology and new machinery? I was able to go to Ag in Motion in Saskatoon. It is one of the leading agricultural shows in North America, where they actually have on-site demonstrations. I was able to go to a Yara plot. The person who took me from Yara said to scan some leaves. I had a little instrument. I scanned 20 leaves in a plot, and it gave, to the decimal point, how much fertilizer one is supposed to put on that plot. A lot of people in the chamber and in the ag community do not realize how advanced agriculture has become. While fertilizing in a field, that changes the amount of fertilizer one puts in real time. Lower spots have a bit more moisture, so one puts less fertilizer. Higher spots on the hill are drier, so one puts a little bit more. We do not need the government to tell agriculture producers how much fertilizer they need to use; they are already doing it. Another great technology that has come out of, not government but the private sector for agriculture, is GPS and field mapping. I remember 10, 15, 20 years ago, on our farm, we had a disker, and we would over-seed 10 feet all the time just to make sure we had enough seed. Now, with GPS and field mapping, there is no over-seeding; there is no going back and forth over a field. That is saving emissions when it comes to the machinery, which is not going back and forth over the field as much. However, we did not see anything in the fall economic statement to promote agriculture. In fact, we always hear the opposite from the NDP-Liberal coalition. We see that agriculture is a bit like a person the Liberals do not want to talk about. They like it because it brings in some money, but they do not promote it on the world stage. They always ask, “How can agriculture in Canada lower emissions?” However, according to the ECCC, they are not even tracking them. Actually, the environment commissioner just came out with a report on the agriculture strategy of the Government of Canada, and there is no strategic plan in the Department of Agriculture to lower emissions. That is straight from the environment commissioner's report. The Liberals have been in government for nine long years, and they talk about climate change every day, but there is no strategic plan to lower emissions. That is exactly what the non-partisan environment commissioner said in the report. It is actually a condemnation of how little the Liberals have planned. They will throw a bunch of programs at the wall, but none of them have stuck, because they actually do not have a plan to lower emissions. The carbon tax is not a plan. It is not an environment plan; it is a wealth distribution plan, and we see that time and time again. When we are talking about how the Prime Minister is not worth the cost, he is not worth the cost of food, because people now cannot afford to put food on the table. He is not worth the cost of housing, because, despite the fall economic plan and the budget, housing costs will continue to increase. They have doubled since the Liberals took government. The Liberals have doubled the cost of mortgages, and they have doubled the cost of home properties. The amazing part is that, 10 years ago, it took 25 years to pay off a mortgage in Canada. Now, under the NDP-Liberal government, it takes 25 years to save for a down payment to get a home. It is no wonder now that eight out of 10 young Canadians believe that they will never own a home. That has happened over the nine long years that the government has been in power. It is no wonder that the Liberals' polling is the worst it has ever been with younger Canadians. They have lost faith, because they do not believe this is the country where they can get ahead. I had the pleasure to serve with Premier Wall in the Saskatchewan government. On his last day, when he gave his final speech in the Legislative Assembly, he ended with this, and I'll end with this as well. This is about how a person should always be judged after they leave politics or when they are done: “Did you leave things better than you found them?” The unequivocal answer for the Liberal government is absolutely not. I know the Liberals are fans of slogans, so I will leave them with this: Instead of build back better, they should put it back the way they found it.

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May/9/24 8:40:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that the member represents his constituents well also. I would say it is a scary point in Canadian history when the federal government, the NDP-Liberal coalition, is spending more money on debt servicing than on health care. My friend is right. The amount of GST the government is bringing in is equivalent to what it is paying in debt. There is so much more that we could be if we had our fiscal house in order. That is something we will deliver as a common-sense Conservative government, and we will make sure we give Canadians the government they deserve.

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Gst
Fiscal

May/9/24 8:41:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, a lot of people continuously talk about the inaction on climate, but that is not the point I was talking about. I was talking about all the innovations we have made in agriculture and in our energy sector to lower our emissions. We should be a guiding light for innovation and technology in those sectors. The last barrel of oil on earth should be drilled in Canada because we have environmental standards, labour standards and human rights standards that are better than those of other oil-producing countries. Canada produces 1.5% of the world's emissions, and of Canada's 1.5% of emissions, agriculture accounts for 10%. We are leading the world. There is a great study by the Global Institute for Food Security that I wish all of my colleagues would read because, compared to all other jurisdictions that produce what we do, we have the lowest emissions per bushel on earth.

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May/9/24 8:43:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am proud to talk about what we have contributed to the world. What the member fails to understand is that we also produce a lot that helps feed the world. We produce the wheat, barley, peas, lentils and other crops that feed millions of people around the world, and we have to export them around the world. The fact that the member cannot comprehend that we are an exporting economy and thus that our emissions would be a little higher is, quite frankly, not surprising. Second, we have the natural gas that could displace Russian gas for our partners so they would not continue to feed a war machine. That would also increase our emissions a bit, but it would lower global emissions. Third, if he wants to find out about our environmental plan, call an election and we will run on it. Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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May/9/24 9:12:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, there seems to be so little interest in the fall economic statement, that I do not think there is quorum.

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May/9/24 10:38:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a two-part question. The first part is that Ford just announced that, in its first quarter, its EV department lost $1.3 billion. It has delayed a bunch of its EV products. The second part, and we have not talked about this near enough when we talk about the economy, is that Mexico has surpassed Canada as the largest trading partner to the U.S.A. Could the member reflect on those two things?

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