44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 27, 2024 11:00AM
- May/27/24 7:17:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the budget impacts people, as do the decisions being made here by the Liberals and the NDP. They impact everyone in this nation, and it is not for the great, at all. The Governor of the Bank of Canada, who was appointed by the Liberals, said that this is “the worst budget since...1982”. Why would he say that?
I can tell members that the people I am talking to on the streets, in their homes and at their businesses are having a tough time. I think of Tyler. He bought a place and was paying $1,600 a month for his mortgage. Now that he has had to renew, it is costing him $4,000. He has no choice but to sell his home.
I think of Candice, who told me that she cannot afford to buy new clothes for her kids. Even signing up for sports is a challenge. That is just because of how much more difficult things have become financially for millions of Canadians.
I think of Shafi, who showed me on his app what his payments are now. He is a worker at Seaspan in North Vancouver. He told me that his mortgage has gone up astronomically. It is now $7,528. He says he has no freedom. He is working seven days a week, 10 hours a day and cannot give his body a rest, or he will lose his home. He said that it is not a fancy home, about 30 or 40 years old. However, the consequences of the Liberals' out-of-control spending is being felt.
It was not that long ago that the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance asked what the problem was with borrowing money as it is pretty much free. The interest rate was at 0.25%. Now it has gone up to 5% or 6%, and the Bank of Canada rates are being passed on to the people who are renewing their mortgages. Those who were first affected, immediately affected, were those who had variable rates, but those who now have to renew their mortgage are having to make really tough decisions as to what to do.
I know in British Columbia, 37,000 people moved to Alberta because of the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of gas and the cost of everything. They are finding it very hard. That has a lot to do with the Liberals, supported by the federal NDP, and the decisions of the B.C. NDP government under David Eby. It is tough. People only have so much disposable income and only so many hours of the day to be able to work.
I talked to one lady, who has a business, at an event with the Rotary last week. She said that she has never seen it so bad. Her clientele is shrinking, and it is much worse now than it was even under COVID, as people do not have that income.
Conservatives have brought forward a motion to axe the tax and give Canadians a break over the summertime. The NDP and the Liberals have voted that down. In B.C., gas is hovering about or just below $2 a litre. That is money that is a very scarce commodity at this point with the cost of housing and everything else.
Let us not forget the tremendous increases we have seen over the past few years with inflation in the cost of food. As well, people are not going to restaurants like they used to. A restaurant near where I live here in Ottawa just closed. It has been there for many years and it just does not have the clientele anymore. It is because people do not have the disposable income that they used to have.
I have gone on a number of visits to work sites throughout British Columbia where the leader of the Conservative Party has spoken. There are blue-collar workers there. The response from them is that they are very attentive because of the Conservative plan. Our leader is aware of and is speaking to the issues they are facing.
I was on Vancouver Island, and I was talking to a gentleman. He actually was a cabinet minister under a previous B.C. NDP government. He now has a Conservative membership, and not only does he have a Conservative membership, but he is also on the board. He said that the NDP has totally left the working-class people. It has become so woke on issues, and it is not talking about the bread-and-butter issues Canadians are facing.
Ahmed Yousef was the Liberal candidate I ran against in the last election. He recently told me he will be voting for me in this election. He says the Liberals have just lost it. They have gone so far in their mismanagement, in their spending and in the decisions they are making, that the candidate I just ran against will be voting for me.
A previous president in my riding told me a few days ago that he will be writing a cheque for the riding association. Why is that? He says this is not the Liberal Party of Chrétien or of Martin. This is a Liberal government that has gone right off the rails. It has gone right off the rails economically and right off the rails considering where Canadians are at.
The Canadian standard of living is going down. If we look at the numbers for past years, our per capita income is going down as opposed to going up. We are now at, I believe, two-thirds of what the per capita income is in the United States. Why is this? A lot of this is because of the bad decisions made by Liberal and NDP members, and poor priorities. One example is waste. They have been a tremendous basket case for waste.
I think of the TransCanada pipeline. This was a pipeline going from Alberta to the coast, and it was under the private sector. It was not going to cost taxpayers anything. However, through delays and everything else, Kinder Morgan was going to be paying about $7 billion to have it done. It sold its share, and the Liberals have now spent approaching $35 billion to $40 billion of taxpayers' money to get a pipeline through. It should have cost taxpayers nothing. All of that is taxpayers' money.
This sort of thing impacts us. We are spending as much in interest on servicing the debt as we are on health care. We are spending more than we are on national defence. That waste and that overspending has led to increased deficits and debt, which means we have less money to put toward things that are important to Canadians, and we have to service the debt.
One thing is for sure. Conservatives will be voting against the fall economic statement as well as the budget, and I hope the other parties will as well.
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- May/27/24 7:28:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what the Liberals are about is increases, such as increases to the food banks, where in one month we saw two million visits, and now we have more than 1 million people going to the food banks. Why is that? It is because they are not only incompetent in their fiscal management, but also destroying our economy with their anti-resource drive. There has been a loss of jobs and a loss of investment happening across the nation.
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- May/27/24 7:30:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, certainly the residents in my community, and across British Columbia and Canada, are saying they have had enough of this carbon tax, and they want to axe the tax. I cannot say how many people are phoning my office or meeting me and saying that they were voting for the NDP, or were voting for the Liberals, and they are not doing it again because of their poor management. The carbon tax is a case in point. If one looks at the facts and they realize that things are not working, they change their way of going.
There is a carbon tax, and we are against that because it is not working. It is not a climate plan; it is a tax plan.
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Mr. Speaker, it is good to be here this time of the night, and I do want to congratulate Lin Paddock, who won the Baie Verte—Green Bay by-election in Newfoundland. Kudos to him, a progressive Conservative, as he won with an almost 80% victory. Actually, two years ago, in a by-election, he had 48%. The Liberals went from 52% to 24%. So that is Newfoundland, the Maritimes, but there has been a plethora of polls the past year that have the Liberals trailing. I know that we do not count our chickens before they hatch, but this one did hatch this evening. I think that the Liberals and the NDP should get this message that they are out of touch with Newfoundlanders, Maritimers, British Columbians and everyone in between. What is the problem? Is it just because people like the change of colour? No, the issue is that the Liberals' policies are hurting Newfoundlanders, Maritimers and all Canadians. They are putting a squeeze on Canadians.
Now, the member for Kingston and the Islands just finished talking about bringing down inflation. Well, he fails to recognize that all those past number of years when inflation was extremely high have not gone away, and Canadians are struggling to pay for the increases that have been happening because of the out-of-control spending.
I have been in Newfoundland. I was in Labrador once in Goose Bay in 2016. I was very impressed. I went to St. John's, rented a car, went down the Avalon Peninsula, and I was surprised at the wealth. I saw a lot of construction, a lot of nice houses and it is a beautiful part of the country. It has been transformed from a have-not to a have province. However, that was in 2016, and already there were starting to be some problems. With the anti-energy policies of the Liberals, the Newfoundlanders and the Maritimers had a lot of flights going directly to Fort McMurray, but their policies squeezed that and those direct flights and that income were cut off, which has hurt. So, a tip for the government is that it should listen to the Conservatives, which might help it a little bit, because we are listening to the people of Canada.
However, the problem that we have with Bill C-49 is that it is essentially just going to be adding more regulations and more red tape to an already cumbersome, if not impossible, process. Yes, it is pretty much impossible to get projects approved in Canada, and that is very unfortunate.
I think the comments from the member from Nova Scotia a little earlier bear repeating, about the tidal project in the Bay of Fundy that was ready to roll. It was tested, they were bringing electricity into Nova Scotia, and then it got cut off. It got cancelled by the Liberal Department of Fisheries.
This is a prime, and incredible, example of a potential project that could have been a reality with green energy, yet the Liberals cancelled it. It is just contrary. Looking at this bill, the Liberals are saying that it is pro-renewable energy. They had something right in their hands that could have gone forward and would have supplied hundreds of megawatts, and it was just cancelled. This is what the Liberals will also be doing with these other projects.
I am from British Columbia. We saw similar things happen for energy that is clean, for example, the LNG. The presidents of Germany and Japan wanted LNG and wanted production because of the invasion of Ukraine and their source of energy from Russia being cut off. They said that they needed it.
The Prime Minister's response was to see if there was a business case. That was basically flipping the bird. Then they went to Qatar, which is a sponsor of many terrorist organizations. This is something that we could have gotten. These are jobs. The biggest private project in history is happening right now in Prince Rupert, the LNG. That was approved under the Harper Conservative government. It reduces global emissions worldwide.
However, the Liberals have blocked everything else from happening. They talk about consultation with indigenous people. The northern gateway project was supported by all the different first nations along the route. The Liberals thought about it and asked what they were going to do there. The first nations wanted it, but what were they going to do? They decided to find a few elders who were not even part of the leadership and put everything upon them.
Then the Liberals cancelled the project because those elders were against it, even though the first nations, the Wet'suwet'en First Nations and everyone else, wanted it. The Liberals blocked it. This is just a sham, as far as what the Liberals say toward the first nations, that they really want to consult and work with them. This is just a way to block and not allow first nations and Métis people to really benefit.
As far as the energy projects, it seems what the Liberals are really just building more regulations, more red tape and more bureaucracy. The commissioner of the environment and sustainable development worked with the Auditor General to do a study on the net-zero accelerator initiative, a $7.4-billion project. Their conclusion was that there was no due diligence happening. They could not even determine if emissions would go down. The contracts were not clear. It is just a mess.
It is the same thing with the $1-billion green slush fund. The Liberals appointed Liberals to a board, and those Liberals directed hundreds of millions of dollars to their own personal companies. This is the type of mess that we are facing here in Canada. It is all about what is in it for me, or what is in it for the Liberals. We saw that with the WE Charity, where the Prime Minister's family got significant money for contracts. We saw that with former Liberal MP Frank Baylis with the COVID contracts. We see it all the way through.
We just have to question if that is the Liberal objective, to build bureaucracy and build more opportunities to give money to their friends and family.
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- May/27/24 11:14:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have actually addressed this to the member a number of times. Members can see the light and have a change when they understand that this has been going on for a number of years, this carbon tax, and it does not work. Even former premier Christy Clark has come out against it. I am an example of something that can happen on that side if they would come to the truth and would just accept it. There could be change there, but I do not have high hopes.
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- May/27/24 11:16:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his correction as far as Kitimat, but Prince Rupert will benefit also. That entire riding will benefit, and it will also benefit from a new government, hopefully sooner rather than later.
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