SoVote

Mar/28/22 1:08:54 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I think that members need to be somewhat careful. In terms of what is appropriate to say and what is not appropriate to say, what it says in Beauchesne's, sixth edition, is that it depends on the context in which something is said. For example, what is happening in Ukraine today is horrific. Describing President Putin as a dictator and then classifying the Prime Minister of Canada in the same line as a dictator might be stretching it. I would like to emphasize that maybe some members might want to be a little more cautious in making statements in the House that may be highly inappropriate.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/28/22 1:09:43 p.m.
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I will take the information under advisement and look that up. I think this is more a point of debate, but I will certainly do a bit of a follow-up and come back to the House if need be. The hon. member for Saskatoon West.

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Mar/28/22 1:09:55 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, ironically, the very next line in my speech is that “the government really knows how to waste time”. I think that was just a great example of it right there. I want to assure colleagues that I am not going to waste the time of my constituents in Saskatoon West. I am going to dive into this piece of legislation and speak about why I am voting against it. Then I am going to talk about what matters to the economy of Saskatoon West, which is agriculture and energy, and why this fall economic legislation should have focused on those drivers of our economy. I need to tell my constituents why I oppose this legislation. I invite all Canadians to go to page 36 of the fall economic update to understand how damaging this legislation is for our country. The government’s own figures show that once this legislation passes an additional $28 billion in debt will be added in the fiscal year ending this week. For the next fiscal year, which starts on Friday, this legislation will increase the debt by another $13 billion. The government thinks this is a non-event with nothing to see here, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has a debt clock that shows our debt. Did colleagues know that the Liberals broke that clock? It did not have enough digits. The clock shows our debt is increasing at $4,500 per second. That means in the minute and a half that I have been speaking, our debt has increased by $400,000. Every 10-minute speech by the Prime Minister adds $2.7 million to our debt. Last year’s deficit added well over $300 billion. This year’s deficit will add another $150 billion and next year is half of that again. How do governments come up with this extra money? They issue bonds and print money. All economic theory will tell you that printing money increases inflation. History teaches us this same lesson. It could be the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany or the stagflation of 1970s America. Twenty years ago it was the Asian flu, and 10 years ago we had South American governments that were defaulting and becoming bankrupt. Time and time again, when governments print money it results in inflation. Inflation hurts Canadians, especially seniors and those on fixed incomes. Another effect of money printing is rising house prices. Property prices skyrocket, requiring larger and larger mortgages and putting homeowners under financial stress. That is exactly what caused the 2008 housing crash and the Great Recession. I think most Canadians understand that government spending causes inflation. I think that Canadians also understand that only the Conservative Party can fix the mess caused by the Liberal government. We will fix this one. We will reign in government spending. We will unleash the power of our entrepreneurs and risk-takers. We will multiply the advantage of our resource sector. We will restore confidence in Canada again. In Saskatchewan, agricultural policy is economic policy, and Bill C-8 does not mention this. Even though I represent a fully urban riding, I know the importance of agriculture to the economy of Saskatoon West. Plus, we all need food and most of us enjoy it too. There are two main growing areas on this planet. The first is the great plains of North America, which stretch from northern Saskatchewan all the way down to Texas. The second are those in eastern Europe. Putin’s unprovoked invasion and war in Ukraine is destroying the second-largest wheat growing area in the world. We have not seen a disruption of eastern European food supplies on this scale since the Holodomor under Stalin, when that brutal dictator stole the crops of the people and starved millions of Ukrainians to death. Now that we are counting on Saskatchewan and the great plains to feed the entire planet, our farmers will step up to the plate. There is no doubt that Canadian farmers have the capacity to make up the shortfall, but there are problems that our farmers face. I sat at the environment committee, and I focused on farmers' issues and the harm that the NDP-Liberal government's policies were doing to our farmers. First and foremost is the carbon tax. This tax is adding massive input costs. Fertilizer and fuel for planting machinery is adding significantly to each bushel of wheat. Output costs are going up as well. Fuel for harvesting machinery and transport costs by trucks and train are adding even more dollars of cost per bushel of wheat. To help mitigate this for our farmers, I asked the environment minister at committee if he would recognize Saskatchewan’s carbon capture system as equivalent to the federal system. His answer was, “That's certainly the intent.” True to form, he then reneged and imposed his own separate system of federal costs on Saskatchewan farmers. The result is more inflation on the price of food. We will certainly grumble over the massive inflation price increases, but we are a rich country. The people who will suffer the most are in Africa and Asia, the most vulnerable people on the planet. I guess, in the minds of the small cabal of NDP-Liberal politicians that have a power lock on this House, mass starvation is a low price to pay for a carbon tax. Let us look at the NDP food policy. As I have said, Canada is a global agricultural superpower, but the NDP do not recognize this. Indeed, the NDP's policy statement says the opposite. It says, “We’ll work to connect Canadians to farmers with initiatives like local food hubs, community supported agriculture, and networks to increase the amount of food that is sold, processed and consumed in local and regional markets.” We might ask what is wrong with that. A Saskatchewan farmer produces tens of thousands of bushels of wheat, and he is not going to sell that at a farmers’ market. How many Canadians do members know who mill their own wheat into flour and then transform that into bread and pasta? If it were up to the NDP, all we would have are community gardens in urban settings that grow food like a few carrots and cabbages. There is nothing wrong with community gardens, but they only feed a small group of Starbucks-sipping people, whereas the Conservative Party has a long history of unlocking Saskatchewan agriculture. It was under Prime Minister Harper that we eliminated the Canadian Wheat Board, allowing farmers to finally market their own crops. We also gave plant breeders the right to give our farmers access to the most modern crop technology available. All these measures were opposed by the NDP-Liberals. The people in my riding of Saskatoon West need to ask themselves whether the NDP really has an agriculture policy that benefits our province and them. In Saskatchewan our energy and mining sectors are the two other drivers of economic activity that are not really addressed in this legislation. Last month, I spoke to the importance of these sectors to our province. Energy is 26% of the economic activity in Saskatchewan. In my riding alone, 40 businesses are directly involved in primary energy extraction. Our province produces an average of 500,000 barrels of oil per day, or one-fifth of all the oil consumed in Canada every day, and additionally we have 1.2 billion barrels of oil in reserve. How is this oil transported? Some of it goes through pipelines, but much of it travels on railways. The NDP-Liberal government has done everything in its power to kill pipeline projects that would safely move oil and natural gas to refineries or tidewater. Conservatives, on the other hand, understand the need for pipelines and the need for Canadian energy. Right now there is massive global demand for Canadian oil and natural gas due to the war in Ukraine. The price of oil is as high as it has ever been. Russian liquefied natural gas has been cut off from Europe. Our allies in the U.S. and Europe need our energy. President Biden has instead turned to the dictators and despots of Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia for this energy. Why? It is because the NDP-Liberal government is keeping its ideological blinders on and not seizing on this opportunity to move our energy to market. The people of Saskatoon West have faced a host of issues these past years, while suffering under the yoke of the current Liberal-NDP government in Ottawa. This current legislation promises to add to the crisis of Justinflation. The Bank of Canada admitted earlier this month that the carbon tax is directly contributing to this inflation, which has raised the cost of groceries an average of $1,000 a year. For many people that is simply out of reach, especially as they make trade-offs as the prices of gasoline, clothes, rent, mortgages and other necessities experience record high inflation as well. There is a strong contrast between NDP-Liberal policies that will pickpocket people and redistribute their money to special interest groups, and the Conservatives, who will allow people to keep their money and let them decide how they want to spend it. Do we want our taxes to rise, or do we want tax cuts to help Canadians struggling to get by? Do we want income splitting? Do we want unrestricted access to EI and CPP payroll taxes to make up government policy shortfalls, or do we want to have rates that keep politics out of those funds? Do we want to pay tax when we sell our houses? Do we want tax rates that are set by G20 bureaucrats or by people in Canada? I could go on, but my constituents get the point. NDP-Liberals will tax and spend and drive inflation through the roof. Conservatives will always be there to make life simpler for Canadians.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Mar/28/22 1:18:58 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, there must be some very interesting discussions that take place in the Conservative caucus, from the extreme right to the more moderates. I can tell members I am totally amazed by the degree to which the member will talk about why the government needs to cut back, and it seems to be at all expense. Surely the member would recognize we have gone through a pandemic and that there was a need to spend billions of dollars to support small businesses, individual Canadians, seniors, people with disabilities, students and many different volunteer organizations. Does he believe that money was well spent, or if it were up to him, would he have made significant cuts in those areas? Did the government go wrong in spending money in those areas?

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Mar/28/22 1:19:54 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, there are so many ways to answer that question, but I think I am going to focus on this: Did we need to spend money during the pandemic? We did. Was that money well spent, as the member asked? I would say in many cases it was not. I have seen many examples of organizations that received more money than they needed and businesses that received more money than they needed. We have lots of examples of people who were not even in Canada, inmates and all kinds of things. There was a tremendous amount of money that was not spent correctly. At the end of the day we have to be very careful with Canadians' money, because this is the fundamental thing: It is not our, us in this room's, money. This is Canadians' money. This is money they earn and spend, and we have to be extremely careful and prudent in how we spend that money. When we put ourselves into debt, we are putting Canadians into debt, and we have to be extremely careful on that as well.

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Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, NDP)

Mar/28/22 1:20:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I listened with care to the member for Saskatoon West's speech and a couple of things seem to be missing. One was any concern about the impact of growing inequality in Canada. Yes, we have a rising cost of living, but it impacts some much harder than others. Does the member share his interim leader's opinion that things like dental care are not needed or wanted by Canadians?

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Mar/28/22 1:21:09 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, on the issue of dental care, a lot of Canadians have that coverage. Certainly there are some groups that would benefit from that, and that is why we believe that a targeted approach to those who need it is much more prudent. However, we have to be very careful about how we spend money. We have to use extreme caution in committing to programs that are going to put debt onto our children and our grandchildren that we are going to be paying for and the costs of which are going to be growing and growing over time. We have to be extremely careful. We have to be wise in how we spend our money.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

Mar/28/22 1:21:48 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I am concerned that the member for Saskatoon West suggested in his speech, and he is not the first member in his party to suggest, that Ukraine, or the United States or the EU, has asked Canada to build pipelines. That is not the case. Building pipelines takes many years in this country even if they had the green lights, which they do not. What they have asked for is an increase in supply in the short term and the International Energy Agency has asked for an aggressive plan for reducing demand through such things as cutting the speed limits by 10 kilometres per hour across industrialized countries around the world, improving access to public transit and maybe even making it free. Would the member comment on the timelines involved to urgently help Ukraine and not put forward the fallacious argument that we need to build more pipelines?

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Mr. Brad Redekopp

Mar/28/22 1:22:45 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, this really highlights how some MPs lack the ability to understand how the world works and how business works. We do not have to mandate things. We do not have to tell companies or countries to do things. We have an opportunity. We know there is an opportunity to supply oil and natural gas to the world. The world is asking us for this. We need to supply that. If we allow the market to work as it is supposed to, we would have pipelines that are supplying that oil and supplying that natural gas, taking the opportunity that is there in front of us and creating jobs, creating wealth and creating tax revenues for this country. Because some of us in the room do not understand how the real world works, we get confused and we try to impose things and all of a sudden things fall apart and we are lacking and missing out on opportunities that we could have for the residents of Canada.

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Mrs. Rachael Thomas (Lethbridge, CPC)

Mar/28/22 1:23:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, anyone who has shopped at a grocery store, filled up a car, eaten at a restaurant or paid a home heating bill, as I am sure many of us have, is well aware that the cost of living in Canada is in fact going up. It is more expensive than ever. For many Canadians, the burden is overwhelming. That is what I am hearing from the constituents of Lethbridge. They are feeling the pinch in a big way, but what is disheartening is that it did not need to be this way. We have a problem in this country. We have a really big problem. That problem used to have one name, but now it is meshed together with a hyphen: the NDP-Liberal government. Its policies and the utilization of those policies have an effect on every single Canadian every single day. From coast to coast, Canadians are speaking out about the concerns they have with regard to the expense of living. Today we are discussing the main estimates, which is a document that outlines a whole lot of spending. The new coalition government has brought this bill forward to seek authorization from Parliament to spend more than $190 billion. Wow. It is easy to speak in abstractions and generalizations, but we have to hone in and talk about the very people who are represented by this piece of legislation. When we do that, we see that the people have a voice that is largely being ignored by current policies. The NDP-Liberals love to talk about how much they stand for all Canadians. Well, it is not the Canadians who disagree with them and have a different opinion or a different mindset. They are not valuable. They treat Canadians as victims in need of a big government. They do not look at Canadians as capable, hard-working, innovative and creative problem-solvers who are able to achieve success. Instead, the government struggles with a saviour complex. It needs to be needed. It wants to keep the people beholden to it; otherwise, it feels powerless. Numerous policies and handing out massive amounts of free cash keep the Canadian people enchained to the government. It is a form of slavery. It is cruel. Today's government spending becomes tomorrow's taxes, but tomorrow has arrived. It is called inflation. It is here. The Prime Minister promised to grow the middle class, but in reality his policies are making it more difficult for Canadians to get ahead and make ends meet. Many have come into my office with their heating bill in hand, some even with tears in their eyes because they are overwhelmed by the cost of heating their homes. Charlie and Emma are two who come to mind. They are seniors with a fixed income. Single moms have come in and talked to me about the costs incurred by filling up their vehicle with gasoline in order to go to work or take their kids to soccer practice or dance. Joe recently came in and had a conversation with me about paying school tuition. He wanted to know if there was anything I could do to help because he actually does not have the money to afford his tuition and eat this month. He has to make a choice. Families are having to weigh whether or not they can afford nutritious food for their families or whether or not they can drive 200 kilometres to see an ailing loved one. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the reality. It is not figurative. It is not theory. This is the reality. Child poverty is increasing. Hundreds of kids in my riding go to sleep every night with empty stomachs. They wake up in the morning and go to school hungry. My region is one of the most severe in the country. These are not made up stories; this is real life. These are people being impacted by government policy. To add insult to injury, the government will now move ahead with its punitive tax hike. The carbon tax will rise by 25% on April 1. It is no joke. It is confounding to think that when we face some of the highest costs of living, the government wants to impose yet another tax increase. The Prime Minister has claimed that it is all done for the sake of modifying people's behaviour, as if Canadians have a choice as to whether or not they are going to heat their homes or rural Canadians can choose whether or not they are going to drive to work. Wake up. Let us talk about farmers for a moment. God bless them. Seriously, God bless them, because we are entering into a time in history when we need them more than ever. Instead of celebrating them and their incredible contributions to this country, the government is choosing to punish them. We are talking about men and women who actually contribute to environmental care through carbon sequestration, science and innovation, yet the government is going to be punitive. It is going to punish these individuals for feeding the world, for taking care of the environment and for stewarding the soil, the land, the air and the water. It is ludicrous. If the carbon tax really is about changing behaviour and about making the environment a better place, then farmers should be rewarded, not punished. Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Mar/28/22 1:29:41 p.m.
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Order. I know that hon. members are anxious to take part in the debate and to ask questions and give comments. However, I would ask members on both sides of the House who have been participating while this member has had the floor to please hold on to their thoughts and comments so they can give them at the appropriate time. The hon. member for Lethbridge.

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Mrs. Rachael Thomas

Mar/28/22 1:30:04 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, when my Conservative colleagues and I raise concerns about how expensive life is getting, the government responds by saying, yes, but it has spent so much money and has cut so many cheques. It says, “You get some money. You get some money. You get some money. You all get some money.” It is as if spending money is the measure of success. Since when? Show me the metrics. Show me how government cheques are making life better than a paycheque. They cannot because there is no evidence. It is to the contrary. When the Prime Minister took office, a typical home cost $435,000 in this country. Do members want to know what it costs now? It is $810,000. That is 85% inflation in just six years. Thirty-year-olds are stuck living in their parents' basement without a lot of hope for their future. Home ownership is out the window. Seniors cannot afford groceries. Workers cannot afford to put fuel in their car. Natural gas for home heating is up by 19%. I know it might be uncomfortable for the NDP–Liberal government to face this, but these really are the numbers. We do not live in an idealistic world. We are beyond the realm of theory, folks. Since the start of the pandemic, the government has brought in $176 billion in new spending that is unrelated to COVID. The Liberals try to claim that all their spending is somehow making our lives better because COVID made them bad, but $176 billion was spent just for political reasons, folks. What is the solution? How do we move forward? Well, it is with less government and more Canada. One of the primary responsibilities of government is to facilitate an environment of economic prosperity. This does not mean running our country into the ground through debt and taxation. No, it means putting policies in place that empower the people. Canadians want to be able to provide for themselves by earning a paycheque. However, instead of allowing them to have autonomy over their finances and their livelihoods, the government is butting in by taking money, putting it through bureaucracy, scraping a little off the top and pushing it out the other side. It does not make sense. Instead of promoting prosperity apart from government, the Prime Minister seems keen on ensuring that the only way Canadians can support themselves is with a government cheque. It is wrong. The NDP–Liberals often accuse this side of the House, which is the true opposition, of being too political when we question this type of stuff, but we are not the only ones doing so. The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently reported, “It appears to me that the rationale for the additional spending initially set aside as ‘stimulus’ no longer exists.” It no longer exists, folks, which means stop the spending, stop printing money, stop pushing this country further and further into debt and stop punishing Canadians. It is not a leader, a political party or the government that is going to restore economic prosperity and future success for this country. It is the Canadian people. This country needs individual Canadians to rise up and strive to reach their greatest potential. For this to happen on a mass scale, we need the government to get out of the way. The Canadian people are the problem-solvers, solution-makers and wealth generators this country needs. When each of us chooses to pick up our load and carry our responsibility forward, the entire nation advances. Let us empower the people.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

Mar/28/22 1:34:09 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, prior to the member speaking, something absolutely remarkable happened in the House. A Conservative member of Parliament stood up in the House and referred to the Prime Minister as a dictator and then went on to talk, in the next sentence, about other dictators in this world, like Vladimir Putin. Not only is that an incredible disservice to the people of Canada, but think of what it means to the people of Ukraine to somehow suggest that the Prime Minister of this country is a dictator and to compare him to Putin and the incredibly audacious things he is doing to the people of Ukraine. I am wondering if the member can comment on whether she agrees that the Prime Minister of Canada is a dictator in a democratically elected Parliament. We had an election just six months ago. Does she agree with the rhetoric that came from the previous member?

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Mrs. Rachael Thomas

Mar/28/22 1:35:11 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I just did a quick review in the dictionary. According to the Oxford dictionary, a dictator is a “ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force”. There are many Canadians who would hold the view that this applies to the Prime Minister of Canada. It is up to the Canadian people to determine that, and they will be determining that in the next election. Here is the problem with Liberal logic. The Liberals like to make other people responsible for a problem that is not their own. I am not the one who made the statement in the House. Why am I being forced to answer for it? The Canadian people will answer for it in the next election. Bye.

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Mr. Mario Simard (Jonquière, BQ)

Mar/28/22 1:36:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

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The Deputy Speaker

Mar/28/22 1:36:29 p.m.
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Order.

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Mr. Mario Simard

Mar/28/22 1:36:35 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I will wait until my colleagues stop talking as there is quite a lot of chatter. I admire the member for Lethbridge. However, I find it difficult to follow her logic. In her speech, she stated that spending money is not a measure of success. I agree with her, especially when it comes to oil. I can tell her that the government bought a $21-billion pipeline, that another $30 billion in support was given to the oil industry during the pandemic and that, year after year, Export Development Canada gives about $15 billion to the oil and gas industry. We know that $78 billion was redirected to this industry in 2018 alone. Does my colleague agree that we are far from being successful and that this is a waste of taxpayers' money?

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Mrs. Rachael Thomas

Mar/28/22 1:37:43 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, there are those in the House who like to use these false talking points that the oil and gas industry is highly subsidized and is propagated by the government. It is the other way around. This industry is helping fund some incredible infrastructure within our country, such as hospitals, roads, bridges, recreational centres and high-paying jobs for moms and dads so they are able to take care of their families. Let us talk about another thing here, in addition to all of that. Let us talk about the fact that oil in this industry has the highest environmental standards in the world when it is developed here in Canada. Hold on. Let us talk about another thing. Let us talk about the fact that it is ethically produced. We have ethics in the country, folks. It is amazing. The same cannot be said for Saudi Arabia. The same cannot be said for Russia. While the government would prefer to prop up those true dictatorships, I certainly do not support that.

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Ms. Niki Ashton (Churchill—Keewatinook Aski, NDP)

Mar/28/22 1:38:54 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, while there are a number of issues that many of us would have with what we have just heard in the House, from misrepresenting the carbon footprint of Canada's oil and gas industry to the state of the pandemic, I want to focus on a talking point that the Conservatives love to use: their defence of working people. Every time they have the chance to actually act, we see the opposite. They voted against extending EI supports and sided with CEOs on keeping their stock options. The reality is that Canadian workers and communities are paying the price of crushing inequality. Canadians expect the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, yet the Conservatives are not on that page alongside them. Why do the Conservatives prefer to protect the rich instead of making them pay their fair share of taxes?

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Mrs. Rachael Thomas

Mar/28/22 1:39:59 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for her new role within the government. Regarding the rich, first let us define that. What does that mean? Is that an individual who makes $100,000 a year? Is that an individual who makes $300,000 a year? How about $1 million or $10 million a year? What is “the rich”? What exactly are we talking about here, folks? Here is the problem. Most often, the NDP-Liberal government, when it uses this term, is actually talking about those individuals who are incredibly creative, who are incredibly innovative and who have moved forward to take a risk, invest their capital and create jobs for Canadians. It is amazing. The Prime Minister would like to call these individuals fat cats and tax cheats, but I like to call these individuals entrepreneurs, job creators, wealth generators and Canadians worth celebrating.

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