SoVote

Mr. Fraser Tolmie (Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, CPC)

Apr/4/22 1:26:13 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Madam Speaker, I had no problem with my colleague continuing on. I appreciate my colleague from Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner. It is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-8, the economic and fiscal update implementation act, 2021. I would like to thank the people of Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan for their overwhelming confidence in sending me to Ottawa to serve them as their member of Parliament. In my maiden speech, I recognized the sacrifices of my family. I would be remiss today if I did not recognize the team of volunteers who door knocked, canvassed, made phone calls and contributed to help get me here today so that true Saskatchewan values have a voice in this House and so that people from Saskatchewan can participate in Confederation and bring a voice of reason to this House. I want to focus today on something that affects everyone daily but that the government seems to have forgotten about: the skyrocketing costs of living. Last Friday, Canadians got a rude April Fool's joke played on them in the form of a 25% hike to the carbon tax. This means that when I drove to the airport last night, the price of gas in my riding had gone up to $1.68 per litre. This came at a time when inflation had already hit a 30-year high of 5.7%. The Liberals, when challenged on this issue, always compare us to other countries. I have just witnessed that. We are not here to compare ourselves to others. We are here to fight for the interests of our constituents. Just because inflation here is not as bad as it is in another country does not mean that it is good. The Liberals must address this and take responsibility for it. Inflation is increasing the cost of everything, including groceries, housing and everyday essentials that Canadians rely on. How did the Liberals decide to try to help Canadians who are already struggling? It was by hiking their taxes yet again. The problem with raising the carbon tax is that it does not just target the cost of gas; it hits everything that is transported or harvested with gas. Essentially, everything we buy is affected. Raising the carbon tax even increases inflation. The Bank of Canada told us recently that the tax accounted for 0.4% of the latest inflation numbers. A few weeks ago we, the Conservatives, offered a solution to these high gas prices. We proposed a motion to pause the GST on gas. Unsurprisingly, the Liberals voted this down. We are saying, and I have been saying since my maiden speech, that policy needs to be there and exist to help people, not punish them, and hiking the carbon tax during the current inflationary crisis is hurting Canadians. The least the government could do is postpone this tax grab. The largest contributor to the global economy is the consumer. Those consumers in this case are citizens and taxpayers. Reducing their buying power actually slows down the global economy. This has created a bureaucratic cycle implemented by this Liberal government. How does this happen? The Liberal government taxes someone with one hand and then, with the other hand, gives the money back to them. That bureaucratic cycle costs the taxpayer their hard-earned dollars, because someone has to administer and oversee the tax. This lost money should be used by consumers to purchase goods and services to support their own households. We see this in every policy that the Liberal government comes up with. It is like going to the carnival and seeing the giant pea and shell game. It is just moving money around. Everyone knows that this is a bureaucratic mess. Leading up to the federal budget, we are hearing more and more about the number of big-spending promises that the Liberals have made to buy the support of their coalition partner, the NDP, such as national dental care and national pharmacare. On top of these pet NDP causes, we have the Russian invasion of Ukraine that is forcing the government to finally rethink defence spending. I am glad to see that the government is finally buying the F-35s that Stephen Harper, the former prime minister, agreed to buy nearly a decade ago, but it is coming at a higher cost and at a time when Canada will struggle to afford it. As someone who has served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, increasing Canada's defence spending is something that I wholeheartedly agree with. However, times like this are why we need a prime minister who thinks about monetary policy. A leader who spent any time thinking about it would know that all of these big-spending promises cost Canadians. The Canadian debt is skyrocketing under the Liberal government. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the national debt is now over $1 trillion. It is growing by $16 million per hour, and each Canadian's share of it is over $31,000 at this point in time. My youngest daughter is six years old. We are spending money that her children will be paying back, and probably her grandchildren, too. We expect the government to set an example and be reflective of who we are as a society. We do not remortgage our homes to buy something for ourselves. We mortgage our homes to have a place to raise our families and to leave something to our children when we have paid it off: to leave a legacy. What legacy are we going to be leaving behind at this point? I talked about this theme in my maiden speech. It is our shared responsibility to leave something to our children and to future generations. Leaving them a trillion-dollar national debt is not what I had mind. Last week, we debated another Conservative motion calling on the government to exercise any semblance of fiscal restraint in the upcoming budget. We voted on that and, unsurprisingly, the NDP-Liberal coalition voted against it. Let us not fool ourselves. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a member of the CCF: It was the precursor to the NDP, prior to 1965. Now, this coalition is coming full circle and showing the current Prime Minister's true colours. It took this country decades to dig our way out of the debt that Pierre Trudeau left us. How many decades will we be cleaning up his son's mess for? I would like to spend a bit of time talking about Canadian veterans. I sit on the veterans affairs committee, which has been studying the rising backlog of cases under the current government. The average wait times are bad enough, but they get even worse if people are francophone or female. Heaven forbid if someone is a female francophone. I expect we will see some mention of this in this week's budget; however, I know that it will not be enough to fix the lingering issues. The fact that we are planning to spend nearly a billion dollars on electric infrastructure just shows how out of touch we are, and that we are not focusing on veterans: that number is a sizable chunk of the entire budget for Veterans Affairs Canada that could be used. I am concerned about the future of our country.

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Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22

Mr. Fraser Tolmie

Apr/4/22 1:37:01 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague bringing that comment forward. I think that there are obviously two components. Let us focus on them. Veterans in my riding are being challenged. They are suffering. Their pensions and buying power are being lost. Another component has to do with green initiatives. I have said that policy should not be there to punish us. It should be there to help us. We have not seen that. We have just seen money going from one hand to the next hand. Someone, being the taxpayer, has to pay for that process. We are losing buying power because of bad policies.

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Context: House Hansard - 52 - Apr/4/22

Mr. Fraser Tolmie

Apr/4/22 1:39:22 p.m.
Watch
Re: Bill C-8

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments concerning Veterans Affairs and the challenges that francophone veterans are facing with the backlog. I find that unacceptable. If people have served in our forces, it does not matter if they are men or women, or English or French. They have served this country. They deserve and are entitled to fair treatment and fair service. I want people to please know that when we sit at committee, we will be fighting against that poor service and backlog. I am very disappointed that that is a challenge we are facing. With regard to municipal taxation, I am a former mayor of the city of Moose Jaw. What happens is that the municipality gets 8% of tax revenue. That same taxpayer is paying 92% to the federal and provincial governments. Municipalities deal with cleaning garbage, paving roads, providing parks and all those essential things, as well as infrastructure required so that Canadians can get to their workplaces and have a healthy lifestyle. There is overreach. We continually see an overreach by the Liberal government in everything, whether it has been the municipality tax or the Emergencies Act. It is always overreaching and always overstepping the mark.

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