44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 23, 2022 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her eloquent speech and articulate thoughts in the House this morning. She is exactly right.
The government is proposing to be the solution, but it is actually the problem. The problem can never be the solution. We are witnessing, coming out of COVID, the massive inflation-induced problems that Canadians are facing, making their paycheques shorter. There is more month now left than there is money on those paycheques. Canadians are struggling.
I am not talking about Canadians who have always or have typically struggled. I am talking about Canadians who just a few short years ago did not need the government to do anything at all for them. They were business owners. They were working in the private sector. They had the ability to earn a living and make their paycheques cover their cost of living, pay for their homes, pay for their energy, pay for their food, raise their children, put them through school and even save enough for their retirements.
These are Canadians who just want their government to provide them with the services only it can provide and get out of their way. This is the mentality of the people I represent in the constituency of Red Deer—Lacombe. This is why Alberta, my home province, is one of the lowest-taxed jurisdictions and one of the provinces in this Confederation that creates wealth in abundance, or at least it used to create wealth in abundance, for everybody to share in.
The problem is the philosophy of the current government. In its rush to make everybody equal, it is making everybody equally miserable. This is the problem with the philosophy of the socialist-bent NDP-Liberal coalition. It does not work. History has shown us throughout time that this kind of thinking only leads to everybody being worse off.
This bill specifically talks about rent and the dental program. The reason the government believes it needs to bring these things forward at this time is that my constituents who used to be able to pay for these things on their own, who used to have jobs where their employer made those payments or had a dental care plan, no longer find themselves in that calibre of employment anymore. That is because of the ideology of the current government across the way and its ideological attack on energy.
I want Canadians at home to realize that, if they take a look around their home, everything they have was either made from, brought to them by or manufactured with energy. When we attack that energy with things like a carbon tax, it underpins everything we do in our economy. The government's hell-bent position from the very first press release it issued was to rework the northern gateway and energy east pipelines and basically cancel those projects. The short-sightedness for cheap political gain of critical energy supplies, not only within Canada but around the world, is showing itself today.
The Chancellor of Germany was just here and our government was too dim-witted to even know that he came here asking for help in the way he could without embarrassing himself in front of his own people. What did our government say in response to our friend, our NATO ally and our economic trading partner? It basically gave him the bum's rush out of town and said we would have some renewables for him in three to five years. Meanwhile, the good people, our friends, our western liberal democracy philosophical allies are going to be left in the dark by the current government, which cannot see past the end of its nose in its ideological crusade against oil and natural gas. I think 14 to 18 LNG proposals were cancelled, shelved or tabled because of the current government. That is the legacy we have.
I want to get back to how that is relevant to the citizens of my province and the citizens I represent in the constituency of Red Deer—Lacombe. Central Alberta is a hub of the service industry of the oil and gas sector in Alberta. We have numerous pipeline companies, service rig companies, drilling rig companies. We even have, hopefully, a formerly Russian oligarch-owned steel pipe company that was providing services to the oil and gas sector. These were good-paying jobs.
I have good friends who have had multi-million dollar businesses. The way to get rid of a $10-million trucking company in Alberta is to vote Liberal and just wait a couple years. There is nothing left at the end of it. That is exactly the story, sadly, of some good friends of mine back in central Alberta. That is the misery that has been inflicted on the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Albertans who are victims of this policy.
Now the good people of Germany and the rest of the free world are being held hostage by dictator energy in places like Germany, Ukraine and Poland. These are our friends, and they are being held hostage by the ruinous imperialism of Vladimir Putin right now. They are being held economically hostage. Putin has used energy as a weapon.
We could be energy independent. We do not need to import a single drop of gas or oil into this country. As a matter of fact, we have the third-largest proven reserves of oil in the world, and we have trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under every province and territory in this country. We could be supplying our friends, neighbours, allies and like-minded citizens in liberal democracies. That is small-l liberal democracies, because today's Liberals are not liberals. We could be providing that energy, relief and security to our friends.
The reason my constituents do not have the buying power they used to have, the reason my constituents are now in the same boat that many other Canadians find themselves in is that they do not have the security of that job they used to have, that well-paying energy sector job, a job with a company that actually could provide a benefits plan for them. I watched it happen. It has been absolutely disastrous and absolutely ruinous.
The problem I go back to is the philosophical bent of the government, which cannot see past the end of its nose. We can look at the pipeline policies and the unfair application of these things. For example, the upstream and downstream emissions on oil and gas that is produced in Canada are not applied to oil that is imported into Canada. Why the double standard?
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Mr. Speaker, I commend our hon. colleague for reading that speech.
It is not a plan; it is a stimulus cheque. It will help Canadians for one month. That is great, but what do they do for the other 11 months? What do they do for each and every day? Canadians are paying more in taxes than they do for the necessities of life, and the government is now planning to tax their paycheques further.
What that Conservatives are saying is to come up with a real plan and help Canadians each and every day, rather than just give a stimulus cheque. What is the plan to really put Canadians ahead and get off Canadians' backs?
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- Sep/23/22 11:12:58 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the new Conservative leader will put people first: their retirements, their paycheques, their homes and their country.
This summer, a nurse went public at Kelowna General Hospital to say that she has never seen morale and conditions at KGH as bad as they are now. Hospitals have been at overcapacity for years. People do not have a family doctor. One in four new Canadians have named their international education not being recognized as the top barrier to employment.
Conservatives will bring hope to those who are blocked from working in their professions for no reason other than that they come from another country. We will team up with provinces to guarantee that, within 60 days, immigrants applying to work in their profession will get a yes or no based on their tested abilities and get help should they need additional training. We will back up 30,000 small study loans for those needing time off work to study up to the Canadian standard.
Canadians deserve better. Our health care workers need help. Enough talking. Remove the gatekeepers to get more doctors, nurses and engineers, and more inflation-proof paycheques for our brilliant and valuable immigrants.
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- Sep/23/22 11:22:42 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with Canadians now spending more on taxes than on food, clothing and shelter combined, and with this coinciding with 40-year highs in inflation and 40-year highs in food price increases, with reports of students in Toronto forced to live in homeless shelters, the government's plan is to raise taxes on paycheques, gas, heat and other essentials. In fact, it wants to triple the carbon tax.
Now is not the time for a tax hike. Will the government cancel these planned tax increases?
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- Sep/23/22 11:25:00 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the riding I represent stretches from the St. Lawrence River to the American border. A very large part of it is rural.
With the high cost of gas, it is very expensive for my constituents who have to drive to work, do errands or access health care.
To help these people, the Prime Minister needs to do just one thing: Cancel the planned tax hike on gas and paycheques. Does he have the guts to do that?
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- Sep/23/22 11:33:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, rising home prices and rising interest rates mean that the income necessary to qualify to buy a tiny, entry-level apartment in Calgary has nearly doubled in the past year. Young Canadians across Canada are giving up on home ownership and they cannot afford ever-increasing rents.
The last thing these cash-strapped Canadians need is another bite taken out of their paycheques. Will the government cancel its planned tax increases on paycheques?
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- Sep/23/22 11:34:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, with the government, the price of taxes has become 43% of all Canadians pay for. That has happened under the Liberal government.
The price of everything is going up, and the government is making things worse by raising the carbon tax on top of increasing the payroll tax. All these tax increases make life less affordable for Canadians who cannot afford higher costs with smaller paycheques.
At the very least, will the government commit today to stop making things worse and cancel these planned tax increases?
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- Sep/23/22 11:40:28 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the cost of the government continues to drive up the cost of living for my constituents. Canadians living in rural and remote communities are already disproportionately impacted by higher gas prices and higher food prices. Now the government is hitting them again with a tax increase on their paycheques. From Vanderhoof to Prince George and Quesnel to Williams Lake, my constituents have told me loud and clear that they cannot afford any new taxes.
Will the Liberal government show some compassion, listen to our new Conservative leader and cancel the planned tax increase on Canadians' paycheques?
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