- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 63%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $105,420.55
- Government Page
- Apr/18/24 6:39:18 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the Canadians in the frugal riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
Recently I asked the NDP-Liberal coalition if they would adopt a dollar-for-dollar rule for this week's budget. It is a common-sense rule where a government finds a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending. It would allow government to focus resources where they are most needed without stoking inflation. The response from the President of the Treasury Board was embarrassing. More than embarrassing, it was sad and pathetic.
Her response was the parliamentary equivalent of the classic schoolyard taunt, “I know you are, but what am I?”
There is something about this so-called feminist Prime Minister's government that takes smart, accomplished, professional women from the private sector and turns them into shallow, glib bobble-head dolls in Parliament. If they are lucky, like Jane and Jody, they get out before the Prime Minister demands they shred their integrity. If they are unlucky, they work hard in a given portfolio, only to be demoted when they start getting better press than the Prime Minister.
I imagine that is why the President of the Treasury Board decided to ignore a policy question and reply with a lazy partisan attack. She needs to get back into the good graces of the inner circle. Any display of independent thought by any minister in the government risks bringing down the wrath of Katie, but falling in line and following orders is something the minister is especially skilled at. How else could we explain that someone could serve as defence minister, receive a first-hand look at the dire state of military readiness, then go on to cut billions from the defence budget?
That is right, the President of the Treasury Board is leading a program review. They are cutting spending from national security priorities so they can increase spending on Liberal re-election priorities. It is not quite a dollar-for-dollar policy. It is more of a “borrow $10 for a dollar” policy or, more accurately, a “borrow a trillion dollars” policy. They have borrowed so much money that the cost to finance their mountain of debt is more than what we spend on health care. The interest payments are more than all the tax collected through the GST. Incredibly, as if to fulfill the prophecy of Oedipus Rex, the Prime Minister has done in nine years what it took his father 16 years to accomplish.
Pierre Trudeau left Canada in such an economic hole, it took another 16 years to dig us out. Because of the government's historic levels of secrecy, utter lack of transparency and deceptive bookkeeping, Canadians do not know how deep this hole is. That is because, more and more, it appears as if this socialist coalition has adopted a kamikaze strategy.
They know Canadians want a change. They know Canadians are tired of the corrupt, arrogant, preachy, self righteous Prime Minister. They know no amount of new spending is going to improve their poll numbers. They know this, yet their strategy is damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. The socialist coalition started us on a slow run to insolvency, but now they are in a full sprint. This reckless spending is not achieving positive results. The more they spend, the less Canadians can afford.
Before the parliamentary secretary rises to read Katie Telford's latest talking points, I just want to remind them that the question I asked was not a partisan question, but a straightforward policy one. All the experts Liberals love to quote said that more spending fuels inflation, so I ask this again: Will the government cap spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down inflation?
641 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/12/24 7:06:08 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing to see the parliamentary secretary continue to deny Canadians the truth.
The carbon tax is not a price on carbon. It is a tax on individuals. It is a tax on energy. It is a tax on everything that uses energy. It is no more a price on carbon than income taxes are a price on earnings.
The truth is the government does not know what the price on carbon is. They even admit it on their website. They are trying to get farmers to make costly investments to reduce methane emissions by promising to give out carbon credits. Yet, the one question every farmer asked was, “How much is the credit worth?”
The government cannot say. It cannot say because it does not know. When it comes to a price on a carbon offset, the government admits that the price of something is determined by the supply and demand for that thing. Only a proud socialist could believe that government could set a price by decree.
It did not work for Pierre Trudeau and it will not work for the Prime Minister either. That fact is just undeniable.
196 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/1/24 3:40:00 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, common-sense Conservatives have a real plan to turn that hurt into hope. It starts with axing the carbon tax, which is pushing up the cost of everything. Canadians understand that, when a government has an official policy to increase the cost of energy, it increases the cost of everything that requires energy, which is everything. However, the socialist coalition members think Canadians are stupid. They think all they need to do is slap a new label on their carbon tax and Canadians will just forgive them for increasing the cost of living.
Unfortunately, the Liberals are not the only ones who think Canadians can be fooled. The far left media allies are already hard at work, rebranding the carbon tax. It is no longer called a tax. Now they call it a “carbon price”. How long will it be before the CBC starts to rebrand income tax as a “price on earnings”? They can rebrand GST as a “price on shopping”. They can call it whatever they want, but Canadians know that a tax is a tax.
It does not matter how much carbon the Liberals burn to keep their gaslights burning bright; the truth outshines it all. The truth is this: Their carbon tax is going up in April. Therefore, as long as these proud socialists hold on to power, it will go up year after year. It will keep going up until they have redistributed every last dollar from hard-working Canadians in small towns without transit to the wealthy urban elite, such as the finance minister, who brags about how easy it is for her to get around without a car. Of course, most Canadians would find it a lot easier with a personal chauffeur, a six-figure salary and a taxpayer-funded luxury SUV.
What about Canadians like Edmund? Edmund lives on a fixed income. His after-tax income is $20,000. He just received his climate bribe for this fiscal quarter. He also received his natural gas bill for December. The carbon tax on that bill was $72.36. That means he paid $9.41 in HST on the carbon tax. That is for just one month of winter. One month eats up half the quarterly rebate, and that is before Edmund has driven a single kilometre.
I would seek unanimous consent to table his tax statement and gas bills, but I already know the Liberals are too cowardly to face the truth. They would prefer to stay in their nostalgia-infused fever dream, where everything is awesome. They desperately want to take Canada back to the 1960s, when the CBC was popular, the UN was relevant and Canadians loved a prime minister named Trudeau. They really believe they can control the weather with a tax. They just wave their Liberal wand and say “zap, you are frozen”. Only a Liberal could summon the level of arrogance required to believe that, if they just tax Canadians hard enough, it will stop flooding.
The carbon tax is about punishing the types of Canadians these Liberals call “unacceptable” and rewarding the ones who vote for them. It is a tax plan, not an environmental plan. The fact is that it is generous to even call it a plan. The Liberals' agenda is little more than a string of slogans, such as “30 by 30” or “net zero”. Now, they have gone all-in on expensive, dirty electric batteries, just as the oil and gas industry is discovering vast reserves of clean hydrogen. That is why the Liberals are adopting Soviet-style car sales mandates. The only way their battery subsidies will not bankrupt us is if they force people to buy cars that do not work in the cold weather. Before any of my colleagues jump up and shout about what all those electric cars in Norway are doing, I would remind them that the average temperature in January in Ottawa is three times colder than that in Oslo.
Even the Liberals' net-zero promise is a fantasy. The only way to reach net zero is with direct carbon capture. Carbon dioxide molecules make up only .04% of the atmosphere. It takes a lot of energy to remove carbon dioxide molecules, but these proud socialists oppose cheap electricity. Many of these radical environmentalists even oppose carbon capture. They claim it is a way of keeping on using oil and gas, but if all the emissions are captured, why would they still oppose it? Maybe this was never about reducing emissions in the most economically sensible way but about reducing capitalism and increasing the size and the scope of the state.
Last month, I reached out to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister of Environment. I asked if they could provide technical experts to explain the government's proposed protocol to reduce enteric emissions from beef cattle to farmers in my riding. After watching this train wreck of a government mishandle the communications about reducing nitrogen emissions on farms, I wanted to make sure my constituents knew exactly what the government was proposing.
I naively thought the government would jump at the chance to prevent misinformation or promote its protocol. Instead, both offices took a pass on the offer. Considering the massive farm protests in Europe, a competent government would have jumped at the chance to engage with farmers. Therefore, it was up to me to explain to farmers what this socialist coalition government was proposing.
Reducing enteric emissions is bureaucratic language for reducing cow burps. The proposal is that farmers could undertake measures to reduce methane emitted from belching beef cattle. In return, they would receive offset credits for every tonne of methane they reduce from a set baseline. Several farmers in my riding are pioneers in the field of capturing emissions. I wanted to ensure they would earn the credits for the innovations they are already undertaking. They are farmers like the Klaesi brothers, who built Canada's first biodigester to turn manure into electricity that they could sell back into the grid, and farmers like Don Russell, whose patented technology eliminates methane from manure.
As the member of Parliament for these leading-edge farmers, I wanted to make sure they knew what was coming. While they had many questions, everything always circled back to the bottom line: How much will it cost? How much will they earn? They are basic questions everyone operating a business will ask. Unfortunately, the government does not have those answers, and not just because members could not be bothered to drive out to the Ottawa Valley. The government does not have the answer because it does not know.
It even admitted it on its website. Here is what the government says about the price of the carbon offset credit: “The price of offset credits is primarily influenced by supply and demand. If there are many offset credits available with little demand, prices will be low. If there are few offset credits available and a large demand, prices will be higher.” There it is, in digital black and white. The offset credit is the real carbon price, a price that emerges from the intersection of supply and demand. A tax is set by government decree. The carbon tax is not a price on pollution. It is a tax on energy. It is a tax on mobility. It is a tax on life.
The government knows what the tax on carbon is, and Canadians know the tax on carbon is going up on April 1. That is why Conservatives are calling on the government to cancel the tax hike. Canadians know we are going to axe the tax, just like Canadians know that we will build more homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. The longer the tired, flailing NDP-Liberal socialist coalition ignores the will of Canadians, the bigger the reckoning will be.
To increase the tax when everyone knows it is not long for this world is to rub salt in the wounds of high inflation. No amount of rebranding, gaslighting or fearmongering will work. It is time for the Liberals to listen to Canadians struggling with the cost of living fuelled by reckless Liberal spending. It is time for them to stop punishing Canadians for heating their homes. It is time for common sense.
1409 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of constituents in the democracy-loving riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke to speak to the Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement.
I stand proudly alongside my Conservative colleagues in our unified support for both Ukraine and Israel's right to defend their democracies from attack. That is why I would like to take this opportunity to speak to Canadians about the importance of Canada's unwavering support for a free and democratic Ukraine.
First, I want to speak to Canadians who are skeptical about the dominant narrative surrounding Ukraine, Putin and NATO. I became involved in politics under Preston Manning's Reform Party because it was standing up for people, and it was doing it against two old parties dominated by the interests of the elite. I was first elected as a member of the Canadian Alliance in a seat that had been held by Liberals for 80 years. The previous MP had put the interests of his party above his constituents. That is why I have always put the interests of my constituents first. It is why I have always stood up against the globalists.
My constituents do not support enlarging unaccountable, international bureaucracy at the expense of national and individual sovereignty. I was speaking out against agenda 2030, while con artists like Maxime Bernier were sipping champagne in Davos. I voted against the Paris Agreement while Max was hiding behind these curtains. I opposed the dangerous amendments to the international health regulations, which seek to strip out language protecting individual freedom and human rights.
For over 20 years, I have stood up for common Canadians against the systemic elitism practised by groups such as the World Economic Forum. I know what it means to oppose the dominant narrative being pushed by the elites. The CBC ombudsman recently reported on how CBC had accused me of being part of a vast right-wing international conspiracy to destroy democracy using cricket memes. When I told a group of young Conservatives that Liberals supported making dangerous drugs legal, the Liberal member for Pickering—Uxbridge accused me of spreading an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
If people question the dominant narrative, the Liberals accuse them of being a conspiracy theorist. The Liberals will call them racist. The Liberals will refuse to listen to anything they say, simply screaming “misinformation” over and over again. I have been subjected to this progressive propaganda for 20 years, but I am still here. I am speaking up for what I believe to be the truth.
If people begin questioning the dominant narrative about COVID, climate or anything else on the Liberal agenda, I want them to know that I hear them. However, let me be clear. NATO is not the United Nations. NATO is not the World Economic Forum. NATO is not a threat to Russia. NATO is the greatest defence alliance in history. As the longest-serving member of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association, and a former chair, I have seen first-hand how Putin treats his neighbours.
I have heard directly from elected officials in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. I have heard their hopes and their dreams for their countries, dreams which could only be fulfilled through peace and security, yet their security is under constant threat from Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs who control Russia. They are under constant threats for the same reason Taiwan is under threat from the Communists who control China, for the same reason Israel is under threat from the ayatollahs who control Iran and the Hamas terrorists who occupy Gaza.
Every free and democratic country is a shining beacon of hope, exposing the corruption and the cruelty that is autocracy. Democracy is an existential threat to tyranny. Individual liberty is an existential threat to authoritarian socialism. It does not matter if it is the national, ethnic socialism of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, or the religious socialism of Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as free and democratic countries exist, we undermine the power of tyrants. Canadians, Ukrainians, Taiwanese and Israelis, along with most people, in most of the world, just want to live a simple life. The same is true for the common people of Russia, China, Iran and Gaza.
As long as those people can look abroad and see what it is like to live freely, what it is like to vote out tired and corrupt leaders, then the survival of the tyrants is threatened. That is why they censor foreign news, culture and entertainment. That is why they lash out and attack their neighbours.
Since the people of Ukraine threw off the Communist tyrants, they have struggled to build a free and democratic country. Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, former KGB goon Vladimir Putin has meddled, interfered and invaded Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Is it any wonder they seek to join NATO?
The people of Russia have nothing to fear from an expanded NATO. NATO is a defence alliance. The reason NATO exists is not to provoke war or threaten the people of Russia. NATO is not an aggressor. It exists to deter aggression.
Unfortunately, since Pierre Trudeau began to demilitarize Canada, the Liberal Party has forgotten the logic of deterrence. The reason we should be spending at least 2% of GDP on defence is so that we do not have to spend 20% on defence. Right now, 21% of Ukraine’s entire gross national product is being spent to defend its free and democratic country. Either we spend enough to deter the tyrants from attacking, or else we will spend 10 times as much fending off attacks.
While Canada must support and defend all our free and democratic allies, when it comes to Ukraine Canada has a special interest. It should be among the highest goals of any Canadian foreign policy to prevent a powerful, nuclear-armed country from dominating its smaller neighbours. We must be steadfast in shoring up international support for Ukraine.
Canada's sense of security is buttressed by three oceans and a reliable ally to the south, but just across those oceans are powerful states hungry for the resources we have in abundance. That is why it has always been our policy to fight our enemies on their ground instead of ours.
Ukraine is at the front line of the 21st century’s battle for freedom and democracy. It is our highest national interest to prevent the powerful from dominating the weak. It is our highest moral interest to prevent a fledging democracy from failing and falling to tyranny.
I ask those who may remain skeptical of Canada’s support for Ukraine to listen carefully to how Putin lies. Putin says he is fighting far right Nazis in Ukraine, Hamas says it is fighting far right Nazis in Israel, and the Prime Minister funds left-wing groups that labelled a podcast fan club as far right Nazis.
Putin accused the Jewish President of Ukraine of standing with Nazis, and the Prime Minister accused the member for Thornhill of standing with Nazis. I am not suggesting the Prime Minister is the same as Vladimir Putin. I just want Canadians who have been unfairly labelled by the Prime Minister as racist or sexist to ask themselves if it is possible Putin is doing the same thing to Ukrainians.
My colleagues across the aisle need to ask themselves if calling everyone they disagree with a far right conspiracy theorist is the most effective way to counter Russian propaganda. The most effective propaganda takes a true fact and wraps it in deceptions, which is why calling everything the government disagrees with misinformation and disinformation is so corrosive.
Free and democratic countries do not resort to censorship. We should never seek to silence dissent or freeze the bank accounts of people we disagree with. The best defence against foreign propaganda is openness and transparency, and Canada must strive to be an example to fledgling democracies such as Ukraine.
Keeping ministers in cabinet who give contracts to their friends is not the kind of example Canada should be setting. Obstructing RCMP investigations is not the kind of example Canada should be setting. Regulating foreign cultural content on the Internet is not the kind of example Canada should be setting.
It is time for Canada to return to the values of individual liberty and democracy that guided Canada through two world wars. It is time for Canada to be an example to our NATO allies and to those aspiring to join. It is time we exceeded our commitments and increased defence spending. It is time to equip Ukraine with the best resources we can build or buy.
The enemies of democracy see our very existence as a threat to their power, and they can only defeat us with weapons, but we can destroy them with words. Free trade and free markets give us the wealth we need to defend against any threat, while corruption and socialism under tyranny weakens them.
Today, the front lines in the war to preserve democracy are in Ukraine and Israel. Tomorrow it could be Taiwan. Canada must stand ready. We must fight tyranny overseas so we can bring home peace and security.
1547 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/21/23 8:43:25 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the fiscally responsible constituents of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
The Ottawa Valley is as diverse as it is beautiful. The average day of a soldier in Petawawa is very different from a farmer's day. A nuclear scientist in Deep River has challenges very different from those of a logger in Wilno. Despite their different backgrounds and different daily routines, every single one of them understands what it means to be fiscally responsible.
Listening to the Liberals and my colleagues, it seems as though the government has a different understanding. For most Canadians, to be responsible with money is to live within their means. Our finance minister's understanding of fiscal responsibility seems to be torn from the pages of a Disney fairy tale. Like a naive, entitled Disney princess, the finance minister has advice to Canadians struggling with inflation: “Let them eat Netflix.” Canadians should set aside the minister's advice on how to save on streaming costs.
As with every other policy priority, the Liberals' goal is to make life unaffordable. This costly coalition's online streaming tax will only increase the cost of enjoying a movie. This costly coalition's carbon tax will triple the costs of anything that requires energy, which is everything. This costly coalition's clean fuel regulations will make gasoline more expensive, while simultaneously ruining two-stroke engines as a result of the added ethanol. This costly coalition's latest budget will only spur more inflation. Every extra dollar the out-of-control socialist coalition borrows and spends puts pressure on the Bank of Canada to increase interest rates. Every rate hike means more money going to wealthy bondholders and less money for critical services and national security. Canadians are drowning in a sea of rising inflation, and the Liberal plan is to throw water bottles at them.
During his recent speech on the budget, the Conservative leader quoted from Ecclesiastes:
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
When it comes to the government, that quote hits hard. Canadians are learning that there is nothing new under the son of Pierre Trudeau. Just like his father, he swept to power with a mania that seemed to capture the spirit of the times. Within four years, that spirit was dead, and disillusioned Canadians returned a minority government.
Like father, like son: Both cut expensive deals with the NDP. Both of them repudiated the fiscal policies of their Liberal predecessors. If someone told me when I was first elected that I would feel pity for the legacy of Paul Martin, I would have suggested they seek professional help, and here we stand in the wreckage and ruins of Canada's consensus that budgets should be balanced.
After eight years of Pierre Trudeau, Canadians found themselves living with stagflation. After 16 years of Pierre Trudeau, Canada was on the brink of bankruptcy. Pierre Trudeau was in power for 16 years, and it took another 16 years just to get back to balance. After eight years of the current Prime Minister, the situation might be even worse than it was in 1984.
As much as the Prime Minister would like to live in a fantasy world where budgets balance themselves, Conservatives believe in reality-based policy. The hard truth some Canadians will need to relearn is that progressive socialism always fails everywhere it is tried, because eventually they run out of other people's money. Unfortunately, progressive socialists never admit that they are economically illiterate and historically blind.
When they have taxed away all of Canadians' income, they will come for their savings next. When progressive socialists turn government into a gravy train, we should not be surprised that groups of people begin to fight for the best seats on board, but it does not have to be this way, and it is not too late for the government to change course. That is why Conservatives are calling on the government to come back with a plan to balance the budget.
Canadians should remember that the Liberals claimed that they did have a plan. Originally, the plan was to run itsy-bitsy deficits of $10 billion for two years.
719 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/28/23 12:18:51 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, as the member of Parliament for the Ontario riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I begin my comments by recognizing Canadians struggling with high food, fuel and tax bills from a broken federal government.
During question period in the House, I made a direct request to the Prime Minister and his socialist coalition: give Canadians a tax break. Cancel the carbon taxes. The carbon tax is not an environmental policy, regardless of what the NDP-Liberal coalition falsely claims. The carbon tax is a tax policy. As a tax policy, the carbon tax is making life unaffordable for Canadians. While the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is not prepared to be honest with Canadians about the fact that the carbon tax is making life unaffordable for average Canadians, moments later during the same question period came this astonishing admission of failure from the Minister of Agriculture.
She said and I quote, from the March 30 Hansard, “Canada's...official food policy...is designed to...support the creation of more food banks.” She even bragged that this was Canada's first official food policy. Food banks are policy failures. It is an admission of failure.
The need for food banks, thanks to rising Liberal carbon taxes, is not something to be proud of. No Canadian in a country as rich and blessed in natural resources as we are should have to rely on food banks to meet their daily nutritional requirements.
Food insecurity in Canada is a direct result of carbon tax policy, a bad tax policy that is intended to change the behaviour of residents who have no alternative when it comes to how they heat their homes or how they get to work. The Parliamentary Budget Officer shows that the carbon tax will cost the average family between $400 and $847 in 2023, even after the rebates, but to justify the carbon tax, the Prime Minister falsely claims that carbon tax opponents do not care about the environment. This is a bit rich coming from someone who bills working Canadians $6,000 a night to stay in fancy European hotels.
Just how out of touch is this Prime Minister with the struggles of ordinary Canadians?
Canadian taxpayers paid $160,000 just for security and staff for his most recent Caribbean vacation with billionaire and family friend Peter Green. Green has also made a large donation to the now discredited Pierre Elliott Trudeau family foundation that is mixed up in the Communist China election interference scandal, but $160,000 is cheap compared to the $247,000 taxpayers were forced to shell out for an earlier Caribbean vacation at the Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas.
This Prime Minister is out of touch with just how destructive his policies are to average Canadians. When the Liberal Party in general and the Prime Minister in particular talk about the environment, or man-made global warming, the Prime Minister uses a propaganda technique called paltering.
Paltering is the use of truthful facts to deceive. It might not feel like lying but it is. An example of paltering is, well, we know that climate is changing. That is fact. That is then followed up with some form of deception like climate alarmism. Climate alarmism, which is used by some climate extremists to justify carbon tax policy, omits the fact that climate science is still developing. Climate models are being made to say what they do not say: truth and deception. Using climate alarmism to deceive is the default excuse for every government failure, including the need for food banks as a substitute for real food security for Canadians.
This is all being done to justify higher and higher carbon taxes. Paltering is being used by the government to try to sell rightfully skeptical Canadians not only on the policy for carbon taxes but a need for carbon taxes to keep increasing at a higher and higher rate.
662 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/21/23 7:07:55 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary opened up with a whataboutism. He deflected, saying that foreign interference is not anything new.
David Johnston was one of Canada's best governor generals, and incredibly, the Prime Minister made David look even better in retrospect when compared to his predecessor. If one looks up eminent Canadian in the dictionary, one will see a picture of David Johnston, which is why it is all the more disappointing that he would take this position, given the real perception of conflicts of interest from his time with the Trudeau Foundation and his role leading the controversial Leaders' Debates Commission.
Should David Johnston return anything less than a recommendation for an open and transparent public independent inquiry led by someone agreed to by all parties, it will be completely reasonable for Canadians to ask if the fix was in. That would be an unfortunate eulogy for a distinguished career in public service. Canadians deserve better.
158 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/14/23 1:29:20 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' coalition of spending wants to talk about former prime ministers. The longer they delay, the bigger the bill.
Pierre Trudeau's reckless spending led to the GST and to massive cuts to health care. Canadians pay more but get less. It is another shining example of the Liberals being unproductive. Like father, like son. Just like his father, he centralized power in the Prime Minister's Office. To hear former finance minister Bill Morneau tell it, the Prime Minister has adopted many of his father's worst instincts: imperious, aloof and dictatorial.
96 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/14/23 1:17:51 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight elections, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the residents of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke who continue to vote for me to be their parliamentary valentine.
As dean of the Conservative caucus, it is my role to provide institutional memory and a bit of history. After nearly eight months under the leadership of the member for Carleton, our party is more united than ever. After eight years of the Liberal government, Canadians need our party to be more united than ever, because after eight years of reckless inflation-fuelled spending Canada is broken. After eight years of the Prime Minister, he cannot protect our citizens. The paid-off media claims our military is short 10,000 soldiers. In truth, it would be hard pressed to muster 10,000 soldiers if they were needed.
We have foreign incursions into our Arctic waters with no way to monitor traffic below the surface. Within weeks of the 2015 election, the Liberal Prime Minister was dismantling our national defence, starting with our navy. As one of his very first acts, he tried to deep-six the project to build a naval supply ship, when our country had none.
We have four submarines, which were catastrophically flawed from the time they were purchased used, and we are lucky to have one in service at any given point in time. We have one submarine operational. Four in total are needed due to the maintenance schedules. A submarine takes 10 years to build, even if it is off the shelf from an ally. Instead of taking action to replace them now to ensure we have underwater capability a decade from now, the Liberal Prime Minister is throwing good money after bad on retrofits.
After eight years, Canada cannot protect our airspace. Thanks to the U.S. media, Canadians saw for themselves how the absence of an early warning system left us vulnerable to penetration by air.
With the Internet three decades old, Canada does not have a cyber-defence force stood up yet. Sure, the Liberal Prime Minister has plans to censor the Internet, just so his warped, woke doctrine can be propagated. However, after eight wasted years, we cannot protect our electrical grids, our water systems or our transportation systems from cyber-attacks.
After eight years of the Liberal government, we cannot afford four more. Not again. I say not again because it really feels like we have been here before. In 1972, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau lost his majority, so he cut a deal with the NDP. Spending went up, debt went up and inflation took off. By 1984, the deficit had reached 8% of GDP.
Canadians were tired of Pierre Trudeau and his irresponsible policies, so they turned to Brian Mulroney, and he won the largest majority government in history. I do not want to raise expectations for the member for Carleton. I just think my colleagues across the way should mentally prepare themselves. If they continue to ignore recent Canadian history and to spend without concern for the future, there will be a reckoning.
After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canada is broken. Canadians can feel it. After eight years of the progressive Prime Minister, public spending is up. There are more public servants and more consultants, but basic services are falling apart. Nearly a year ago, I wrote to the minister responsible for passports and warned them that service performance was plummeting. It was not until June that they announced a task force to look into the problem. Recently, the minister was claiming mission accomplished. Congratulations. The government is now processing fewer passports with more personnel.
Famously, the government has a productivity problem, which is not a surprise from a government that brags about doing less with more. It is not just passports. How many members across the aisle tried to renew their possession and acquisition licence? I will go out on a limb and guess zero. How many members heard from constituents who cannot even reach someone on the phone? After eight years of the Prime Minister, the Canadian firearms centre is broken. If Canadians are starting to feel as if everything is broken, it might be because it is.
The Financial Consumer Agency has been conducting a regular monthly survey since the start of the pandemic. At the height of the lockdowns, with business closures and mass layoffs, 26% of Canadians had to borrow to make ends meet. Now, with no lockdowns and a labour shortage, 38% of Canadians have had to borrow just to make it through the month.
The number of people using payday loans has risen from 1.4% to 4.5%, but percentages really do not tell the story. In 2020, there were as many people living in London, Ontario, as there were using payday loans. After less than three years, it is now as many as the number of people living in Calgary.
How many of my colleagues across the aisle got into politics to triple the customer base for payday loans? That is part of their legacy now, and that might be a hard truth to swallow. After eight reckless years of deficits, the medicine cannot be sugar-coated. One cannot borrow forever.
The government tried to convince itself that as long as the debt-to-GDP ratio was not increasing, it could borrow until kingdom come. Unfortunately, for the gang who cannot spend straight, reality has a fiscal bias. At first, the Liberals tried to deny that inflation was even happening. We saw prices skyrocket.
It turns out that when one gives high school students CERB, they use it to buy NFTs. When one keeps interest rates artificially low, people with houses buy more houses. When one forces everyone to work from home, many opt to buy a better home. When one increases the carbon tax, the cost of everything goes up.
Once inflation could no longer be denied, the Liberals and their media allies instantly pivoted from denying the reality of inflation to denying the cause of inflation. First, it was magical supply chains causing inflation. The problem for inflation deniers is that we do not import hairdressers.
Many of the critical bottlenecks in shipping cleared well before the consumer price index started to rise. Prices were already increasing before Putin's invasion. Countries around the world, which had all followed similar expansionary, fiscal and monetary policies, began experiencing inflation.
The new line was that inflation is a global problem, which was a pretty convenient excuse for a Prime Minister who brags about his intellectual disinterest in monetary policy. However, a fly just flew into the Liberals' delusional ointment.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada said, “inflation in Canada increasingly reflects what's happening in Canada.” First, they denied inflation. Then they denied the cause. Finally, the finance minister tabled her fiscal update.
In her speech, it sounded like she got it. The words fiscal responsibility poured from her mouth like a mountain spring, but the numbers on the page told a different story, or rather the same old story. Taxes are up, spending is up and they are borrowing more. After eight years, Canadians are tired of this broken record.
Many Canadians might not remember, but after the massive deficits of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, Canada hit a fiscal wall. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were forced to balance a budget. They slashed spending and laid off tens of thousands of people. They devastated health care in Canada. The crisis in health care today is that eventually, with socialism, one runs out of other people's money.
The Liberals thought they could laugh in the face of history. They thought they could deny economic reality, but the world has a way of catching up. As they prepare for their next budget, they should pay some mind to the lessons history can teach. The most important lesson is the bill always comes due.
1334 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise on behalf of the fiscally responsible citizens of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
This costly coalition is out of control. The fall economic statement spells out in black and white just how bad the government's addiction to spending has gotten. None of this is a surprise. It is déjà vu all over again.
In 1972, after just one term under Pierre Trudeau, Canadians clipped his wings and handed him a minority government. Pierre Trudeau struck a deal with the NDP to stay in power. Does that sound familiar? The NDP made expensive demands and the Liberals spent and spent. They timed their spending for maximum pain as the rest of the decade was dominated by stagflation, which is high inflation and low growth fuelled by government spending. Does it sound familiar?
By the end of Pierre Trudeau's reign of error, the deficit was the largest in prepandemic Canadian history. The situation was so bad that Canadians had to elect a Progressive Conservative government to raise taxes and a Liberal government to cut spending. It took 15 years to clean up Pierre Trudeau's overspending addiction. How long will Canadians have to wait this time?
This fall economic statement is either the height of delusion or the peak of cynicism. Canadians face a stark choice: Either the government is delusional and believes spending even more than what it had budgeted for six months ago is fiscally responsible, or Canadians have a government that is so cynical of democracy it thinks it can just repeat the claim of fiscal responsibility enough that people believe it. The government knows it is addicted to spending without a plan. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says there is $14 billion unaccounted for, just another little slush fund to pay off whichever interest group is most in favour tomorrow.
Recently, headlines said the Bank of Canada lost money for the first time in history. That is because it had to pay interest to the banks for the bonds they swapped to keep the current government afloat. That is great for Bay Street, but it is bad for the taxpayers. We can add that to the interest we are all paying on the debt. It is now more than what we spend on national defence and soon it will be more than we spend on health. It did not have to be this way.
Once upon a time, we had a national consensus that deficits outside of economic downturns were to be avoided. The economy roared back after the government lockdowns nearly cratered it. Had the government demonstrated even a modicum of self-restraint, we could be arguing about how to spend a surplus.
Many Canadians believe that our country is becoming more polarized. We should ask ourselves if deficits contribute to the increasing polarization. Running deficits is a bit like musical chairs. Everyone knows that eventually the song will end and there will not be enough chairs for every person, so people get their elbows up and eventually the bonds stop selling and the money runs out. Rather than people scrambling for chairs, it will be social factions fighting for funding. When the money runs out, do they close the school or the hospital?
If the government truly wished to reduce polarization in society, it would be running surpluses. When they can run surpluses, everything becomes easier. It is like a game of musical chairs, except when the music stops they add extra seats. With surpluses, they could pay down debt, lower taxes and make sound investments in core areas of federal responsibility. All it requires is an element of patience. It requires the ability to say “not yet” to favourite interest groups. However, the government lacks discipline.
The government lives in denial. Every budget and every update, the Liberals make the same empty promise. They say that this time it will be different. It is as if Canadians are Charlie Brown and the Liberals are Lucy with a football of fiscal responsibility.
In 2019, the budget said the Liberals would be spending $421 billion by 2024. In the 2020 economic update, the minister claimed that spending in 2024 would be $429 billion. One year later, the Liberals needed to revise the numbers again. That time, they said the spending in 2024 would be $465 billion. That was just 12 months ago. Now, the gang who cannot spend responsibly claims that spending in 2024 will $505 billion. That is not sustainable.
There is no better illustration of the government's addiction to spending than its latest plans for the Canada growth fund. Here is what the fall economic statement says about the new Canada growth fund. The fund will make investments “that contribute to economic growth through direct investments, loans, loan guarantees and equity investments.” I apologize, that was the 2016 budget referring to the Canada Infrastructure Bank.
Here is the quote from this year: “It will invest using a broad suite of financial instruments including all forms of debt, equity, guarantees, and specialized contracts.” How will this growth fund operate? Here is what the government said: “The Canada Infrastructure Bank will be accountable to, and partner with, government, but will operate at greater arm’s length than a department”. I am sorry, that is the 2016 budget again.
This is what budget 2022 said, “The Canada Growth Fund will be a new public investment vehicle that will operate at arms-length from the federal government.” Now the growth fund is all about leveraging private capital. It states, “It will invest on a concessionary basis, with the goal that for every dollar invested by the fund, it will aim to attract at least three dollars of private capital.”
I will say that the government has gotten slightly more modest since 2016, when it said, “great opportunity for the government to leverage its investments in infrastructure, by bringing in private capital to the table to multiply the level of investment...there is a potential to multiply this level of investment 10 to 14 times”. While the Canada Infrastructure Bank was supposed to be at arm's length and focus on infrastructure, it quickly fell victim to the government's radical net-zero ideology. This so-called growth fund is just another example. The growth fund will be stuffed with well-connected executives friendly to the Liberal ideology. They will be paid bonuses whether they accomplish anything or not.
There will be billions and billions for green dreams, yet Canada does not have a national four-lane highway. Ontario's Ring of Fire is full of critical minerals and metals, yet it is nearly inaccessible by road. The government has mandated that 20% of cars sold in three years will be zero emission, yet it has not even studied the costs of electric vehicles. There is nowhere near the electrical capacity in our grid to switch one in five cars. No amount of government spending can change the physics of energy density. No amount of growth funds or infrastructure banks can change the economic realities of scarcity and opportunity costs.
With every dollar the government spends chasing its net-zero ideology, it is a dollar we do not spend on mitigation. Every dollar the government borrows to purchase prohibited firearms is a dollar plus interest it cannot spend stopping gang violence. Every bonus paid to executives at the Canada Infrastructure Bank or the growth fund comes at the expense of seniors, veterans and the disabled.
We know the Minister of Justice has some disgusting suggestions on how we can cut spending on vulnerable Canadians. The Liberal addiction to spending is terrible. Sadly, bad spending is not the only terrible thing in Bill C-32. Reminding Canadians this bunch of Liberals is more like a parody of government, this bill attacks the solicitor-client privilege by requiring lawyers to report the names of their clients to the Canada Revenue Agency. The same government invoking solicitor-client privilege to keep its legal opinion hidden is removing that same privilege from Canadians.
Canadians should know, without any doubts, that the government wants to go down in history for bringing the biggest tax hike on alcohol in Canadian history. It could have introduced a freeze on the excise tax hikes, which it tied to inflation with its automatic escalator tax, but Bill C-32 contains a number of changes to the excise tax. Of course, as with everything the government does, the changes are for the benefit of the government. It has no problem making it easier for the tax man to search our records, but making it easier for Canadians to enjoy beer on the weekend? We can forget it. All the government cares about are the wealthy and well connected, who get rich off the special deals cooked up by these so-called arm's-length funds.
Canadians need relief from inflation and all the government does is increase spending, which fuels inflation. Like an addict, the government will deny it has a problem. It will deny and deflect until the money runs out.
1539 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
