44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 8, 2022 10:00AM
- Feb/8/22 5:56:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to get up in the House for the first time this year to talk about my home province and the importance of this motion to the province of Saskatchewan and its people. To make my colleagues in the Liberal Party aware, I will not take the full 20 minutes, because, as one of the sayings I had in my previous life in sales goes, when everybody is saying yes, maybe we are better off just shutting up, getting on with it and getting it done. I know it is nice to hear that.
It has been interesting listening to the debate in the House. The member for Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam is from Asquith, Saskatchewan. My wife is from Asquith. The Summach family that used to work with Flexi-Coil is from Asquith too. I know that town very well. There are other members who have a relationship with Saskatchewan, and Saskatchewan has exported some wonderful people. It is nice to see them showing up in other parts of the country and coming here to the House of Commons and taking on that Saskatchewan spirit. I am sure they are all Riders fans too. Otherwise they could not have come from Saskatchewan.
I will point out that CP and CN are very important to our province. Saskatchewan is an exporting province. We grow more than we could ever consume, so we have to export it. We have to get it to port and they have been there. If it were not for them in the past and going forward into the future, we would not have the province we have today, a vibrant province, and the economy we see in Canada and Saskatchewan, with the growth we are having and the great people who come from there. They are very important to us.
However, in the same breath, $340 million goes a long way in a province. I know that money has been collected and the Province has spent some of it, but do members know what it was spent on? It was spent on hospitals, road crossings, schools and highways. These are the key basics that we need in our province or anywhere else across Canada for the economy to thrive and grow. These are things that give us a better standard of living, a higher quality of living. Furthermore, the people who utilize these facilities are CN and CP employees, so everybody gets the benefit. When we pay taxes, it is not always a bad thing. In fact, on the farm, we used to kind of joke that if we were paying taxes, we had a good year. It is a good sign and means that we are doing well.
In this situation, there was preferential treatment that had run its course. CP had said that it no longer deserved it, and the Province of Saskatchewan unanimously agreed that it had run its course. For CP to come back now and say that it does not want to pay taxes is kind of rich since all the benefits it has received from our province far exceed the $340 million it is asking for. If we think about how much that rail line pulled out of the Province of Saskatchewan, it was billions of dollars over the years and it established the company. A good reason the company is here today is the grain shipments and forestry shipments coming out of western Canada and Saskatchewan in particular. I look at this as righting things and making sure that everything is done properly. It is about making sure that things are fair. That is what we are doing here today.
I always like to see parties come together and agree. We have seen that here today and I have enjoyed it. Even the member for Winnipeg North was agreeing with us today. Now, he had some comments, but he is from Winnipeg North. Having said that, this goes back to my original point: We see agreement.
I talked to the Minister of Justice, and he was on board with this. His only concern with the unanimous consent motion was that we needed to have a day to talk about it, and I agree with him on that. When he explained this to me, it made a lot of sense. This is a constitutional change. This is a big deal, and we do not do this lightly.
I want to thank the member for Regina—Lewvan for bringing forward this opposition day motion so we could talk about it, think it through as a group of colleagues and ask if there are any downsides or upsides. That we actually came to the same conclusion just shows us that the House can work together. I wish more people in Canada could see the House on a day like today when it is functioning properly. I wish more people in Canada could see committees when they function like this, because this happens a lot. Of course, they never see that, and it is unfortunate.
I want to thank all the parties for being good partners with us folks in Saskatchewan, for helping us get this done and for doing something that is important for the people of Saskatchewan. If it is important for the people of Saskatchewan, it is important to the people of Canada.
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- Feb/8/22 6:01:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, will someone pinch me? He agreed with me twice.
I want to thank the member for showing that goodwill, and I want to bite my lip, because we always want to come back in the House of Commons with some sort of jab. I just want to thank him. I appreciate the goodwill that his party is showing toward the people of Saskatchewan. The $330 million staying in the people of Saskatchewan's pockets has been spent wisely and will continue to be spent wisely as they are taxed into the future.
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- Feb/8/22 6:03:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with the member on the point that when companies are cheating, they are cheating, and we have to go after them. If they are breaking the law, stealing or taking money out of our pockets and hiding it in Panama or somewhere else, then we need to do everything we can within the rule of law to get those funds back, because they belong to the people of Canada.
I also think we have to be very cautious when we start talking about general taxation on all corporations, because a lot of corporations pay a lot of taxes. A lot of corporations hire a lot of people. A lot of corporations are the blood, sweat, tears and backbone of our economy here in Canada, so let us make sure everything is done properly and fairly. I would not stress that all corporations are crooked and that all corporations need to pay more taxes. Let us make sure they pay a fair level of taxes and that they are in a situation that allows them to compete globally and provide jobs for people here in Canada.
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- Feb/8/22 6:05:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Regina—Lewvan for his tenacity in making sure he continued on to get this done and pushed it through. I appreciate that.
STARS is a really good example, and again it is another example people do not know about where parties worked together in the background to make something succeed. I remember when STARS's Rod Gantefoer, a retired MLA, approached the Saskatchewan caucus and said they needed new helicopters in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I remember the former member for Malpeque and finance chair Wayne Easter asking if there was any way we could get these guys in front of the finance committee as they did the pre-budget consultations. He moved some mountains and he made it happen, because he knew it was the right thing to do. He got it in front of the finance minister and we got some funding for some helicopters.
That is the type of thing Canadians do not hear about, and that is the type of thing they want to hear about. Those are things that are important to Canadians, when parties work together and have the emotional intelligence to put the partisan differences aside and actually get things done for the people of Canada.
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- Feb/8/22 6:07:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party has been open to ideas from Quebec in the past. I think of the example of a nation within a nation. That is an example of the Harper government actually agreeing to see that go forward on behalf of some of the people from Quebec who wanted to see that. There are examples in the past of Conservatives working with people from Quebec, and we will continue to work with people from Quebec. As long as it is in Canada's interests and Quebec's interests, why would we not?
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- Feb/8/22 6:08:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is right. Again, as a farmer, I have a love-hate relationship with railways. When it is 40 below and they do not run, I am really mad.
I will use the example of CP right now. There are cattle producers in southern Alberta who are low on feedstock. CP has stepped up to the plate and I believe has allocated four or five trains of corn to make sure they have enough cattle feed to get their livestock through the winter. CP does do things in the background. I think of Hay West, when we had droughts previously, and CP and CN stepped up and moved bales from Ontario and eastern Canada into western Canada and did not charge anybody a dime.
They have been good corporate citizens in the past and they have been part of building our country. There is no question about that. There will be times when we will be mad at CP and CN, which is the nature of railways, but they are a big and important part of who we are. If they were not there, I do not know what this country would look like.
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