44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 23, 2022 10:00AM
Before we proceed to the next speaker, I want to ask, on my behalf, anyone who knows somebody from Nova Scotia, because of the storm that is coming up in the next couple of days, to give them a call, see how they are doing and make sure everything is okay. Please do reach out to friends in Nova Scotia, P.E.I., New Brunswick, Newfoundland and a bit of Quebec who might be feeling the effects of Fiona over the next few days.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Whitby.
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Mr. Speaker, let me begin by taking this opportunity to share my concern for my constituents and all Atlantic Canadians who are preparing for Hurricane Fiona’s landfall this weekend. Reports are suggesting that Hurricane Fiona could be Canada’s strongest storm ever, and the peak winds and rain may arrive early Saturday morning at high tide.
The arrival of this generational storm at high tide poses a strong risk for coastal communities throughout my riding and the province. I encourage everyone to take the advice of public safety officials, stay indoors and wait out the storm. Please monitor emergency service websites and social media pages, along with traditional media, for the latest updates on the storm.
This historic storm has the potential to cause massive destruction, and I am in constant contact with local municipal, provincial and federal government officials to ensure that all the support that my constituents may need is in place.
Today, I rise to speak to Bill C-30 on behalf of my community. This bill provides a doubling of the GST rebate in the next payment cycle, and then the rebate will go back to its current levels. The one-time payment will vaporize with Liberal inflation, which will cost more than the benefit.
This bill is one that we should not even have to have a discussion on, and it should not even be before the House. The government is finally coming to grips with the fact that Canadians are struggling right now, but it is its endless spending and money printing that got us here. The half-trillion dollars of Liberal spending means all the money chasing limited goods pushes prices up.
This 40-year record inflation, not seen since Pierre Trudeau days, and for the same reasons, means life has become more expensive for Canadians trying to pay rent and buy food. Wages are not going up to match inflation, causing even more hardship, at least for now. We should not be in a place where one-time relief is needed.
The Liberals should never have caused this record-breaking inflation. While Liberal MPs enjoy their benefits and jet around the world having $3,000 meals on private jets, inflation is having real-world impacts on everyday Canadians. Surveys show that 24% of Canadians have reduced the groceries they buy, and food banks are reporting a 170% rise in customers.
Let us take Nancy, from the South Shore in my riding. She lives on disability and receives $895 a month. Due to the skyrocketing cost of home heating, her oil bill in the winter is $700 a month. If we add on the bare necessities, like food, Internet, phone, and gas for her car, it does not really leave anything at the end of the month, if she can even pay for those.
Nancy has to drive to Halifax from her home in rural Nova Scotia every three months for treatment because of her disability. However, ever since the price of gas shot up, it has become more difficult to afford to go into the city for her treatments.
Thanks to Liberal inflation, people like Nancy need to decide if they should be using the fuel in their car to pick up groceries or receive medical treatment. Nancy worked hard and faced an unfortunate setback. Like so many, she simply cannot keep up with inflation.
We can also talk about Cameron from my riding. His mother lives a mere 35 kilometres away, in rural Nova Scotia. Cameron needs to get to work, feed his family and put clothes on his kids’ backs. However, because of the high cost of fuel, Cameron cannot afford to visit his own mother, who is only 35 kilometres away.
It is stories like this that I and many of us in this place have heard over the past year. Regular, hard-working Canadians are facing impossible financial decisions simply due to government spending that has caused the price of everything to skyrocket.
The government’s proposals do little to solve the problem. The GST rebate will provide welcome relief that Conservatives support, but it will not address the real problem, which is that inflationary deficits and taxes are driving up costs at the fastest rate in 40 years.
Here is what Robert Kavcic, senior economist at the Bank of Montreal, had to say on this. He said:
We’re not going to deny that there are households seriously in need of help right now in this inflationary environment. But, from a policy perspective, we all know that sending out money as an inflation-support measure is inherently inflationary.
There we have it. As the Liberals continue to spend, Canadians will continue to suffer.
While Conservatives welcome this much-needed support, the one-time cheque of $467, for a family of four that is eligible for this benefit, covers less than 40% of the Liberal inflation at the grocery store and does not begin to cover the rising costs of heat, gasoline or rent. The average family of four is now spending over $1,200 more each year to put food on the table. Grocery prices are up almost 11%. More than 70% of families with children will not receive support. Liberal inflation is hitting these families hard while the Liberals ignore the issues.
The Conservatives have called for the Liberals to scour government spending to find savings to pay for these proposals to avoid adding to the costs. Let us start with axing the $25-million ArriveCAN app altogether, scrapping the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank and reducing the bloated bureaucracy. Departments like DFO have doubled their HR department in the last three years. There are more than 800 HR people in DFO alone now. I guess it needs this because the department has grown by 4,300 employees in only three years. While Canadians lost their jobs, DFO went on a job-hiring binge. That is why the new Conservative leader promises to introduce a pay-as-you-go law for the federal government. The plan will make sure that, if it wants to spend a dollar more, it has to find a dollar in savings.
If the Liberals were serious about making life more affordable for workers, families and seniors, another thing they would do is cancel the tripling of the carbon tax immediately. It is not just groceries, gas and home heating the government has raised taxes on. In fact, it is difficult to find anything that the current government has not raised taxes on.
During the pandemic, the Liberal government raised payroll taxes and alcohol taxes three times. On top of that, it removed key tax credits that families depended on, like the fitness and arts credits, along with public transit credits. Now it is raising the payroll taxes of EI and CPP. This means every Canadian will be taking home less money at the end of each month. These taxes are coming at the worst possible time for Canadian families who are struggling with rising costs.
Instead of freezing taxes, or better yet reducing them, the Liberal government is raising taxes on people who are struggling to make ends meet. This is causing structural inflation. High spending and increased taxes can only be fixed with structural changes to government spending, not with one-off measures.
The bill will provide a one-time temporary relief, but it does not have to be this way. It does not have to be this type of relief. The best solution is a permanent one, not a temporary one. It is to restrain government spending, which causes inflation, lower taxes and eliminate the tripling of the carbon tax.
The hurt inflicted on Canadians by the government must stop. Canadians cannot simply afford the current government anymore.
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Mr. Speaker, I will not be asking questions, but I will share my comments, which I hope members will find very interesting.
First and foremost, let me pay my respects to those people who have to get ready for Hurricane Fiona, which is coming to their area, especially members such as you, Mr. Speaker. I do not know if I can personalize it, but you warned us very clearly today that this is a very serious issue. I would say to all the people who are in the path of the storm to please get ready and for others to not be afraid to make phone calls outside of the area to help those people if they need it. We are very pleased to hear that the official opposition leader and the government are working hand in hand to address this issue.
Hurricane Fiona is of course bearing down on eastern Canada, and chances are the impact on the Magdalen Islands and the Lower North Shore on Quebec's north shore will be brutal. We would like to remind everyone likely to be directly affected to plan accordingly. Anyone who knows people in the area should call them to offer support.
I also want to point out that Quebeckers will be going to the polls in just a week and a half. Advance polling starts Sunday. The storm may have consequences for advance polling on the Magdalen Islands and the Lower North Shore. We certainly hope voting can proceed as it should.
That is my segue to Quebec elections and the bill before the House today, which would lower the federal voting age from 18 to 16.
We do not support this position. We will always proudly defend the rights of all adolescents, all young Canadians. It is not because we think that 16-year-olds are not ready to vote, quite the contrary. I myself became interested in politics at a very young age and have been a member of the Conservative Party since 1981. At that time, I had a mop of black hair that was wider than my shoulders, but that is another subject. There are pictures, but they will never be made public, my colleagues can be sure of that. I could show my membership card from 1981, but I am not allowed to use props, which is a shame, so maybe that is also for another time.
That being said, I want to assure all 16- and 17-year-olds that it is very good to get involved in political advocacy. However, a limit needs to bet set. Why is the limit set at 18? Why not at 17, or 20 or 21? It is simply because we have to set a limit.
There will always be good arguments for increasing or lowering that limit, even by a few days, but there needs to be a limit. Along the same lines, there needs to be a limit for very technical issues such as creating time zones. In some places, the time can be different in two towns five kilometres apart. Is that the end of the world? No. At some point there needs to be a limit.
Mr. Speaker, I look at you and I am reminded that in New Brunswick and in the Atlantic provinces, when a television show is broadcast, it is always an hour later in the Maritimes. Sometimes I get the impression that it is an hour ahead of us, but that is another issue, and we will have a chance to debate it.
We therefore need to set an age limit. Of course, we know that the minimum age is not 18 for some civilian activities. For example, people can became an army reservist at age 16, and they can enlist in the army at age 17.
Some will say that, if a person can be ready to give their life for their country at age 17, then they should have the right to vote at age 17. However I would like to add a rather important point: those individuals need their parents' consent to enlist. If we apply the same principle to the right to vote at age 17 or 18, then those individuals would need their parents' consent to vote. If the parents do not think the same way as their child does, then would they give their child permission to vote? That could cause problems and arguments, and we do not need that.
That is why the age limit can be lower than 18 for certain civilian activities, but in those cases, parental consent is required, and that would not really work in the democratic process.
The same is true for driver's licences. When I was young, people could get a full driver's licence at age 16. With time and experience, Quebec increased the age for getting a full driver's licence to 19. This sort of thing can be assessed and we should be grateful for that. This is not the first time that the House has been asked to vote on a bill like this.
The people who did research for this bill drew my attention to the fact that, when he was a young MP back in 2005, which is not to say that he is an old MP now, the current government House leader, my former counterpart with whom I always greatly enjoyed working, introduced Bill C‑261. I remind members that this bill was defeated at second reading, which indicates that the current governing party might not have supported its current government leader. We shall see.
I had the privilege of sitting on a committee that was reviewing election legislation to allow for a casting vote. The Hon. Rona Ambrose, interim leader of our party, assigned me the responsibility of sitting on this committee. The committee made 13 recommendations, none of which had to do specifically with age. People were, however, quite open to honouring the election promise made by the government, which swore that the previous election would be the last under first-past-the-post, a system that ensures that members represent their ridings without any outside compensation. The Liberal Party made a promise, hand on heart, to change the electoral system, but that recommendation fell by the wayside because the Liberal government and the Prime Minister decided to abandon that promise midstream.
If by any chance the Liberals start lecturing or preaching about political commitments on voting ages, let us not forget that one of their top election promises in 2015 was to scrap the electoral system we have been using since 1867. However, they ended up scrapping their commitment, rather than scrapping the system.
I would also like to remind you that in 2015, since we are talking about it and, objectively speaking, it needs to be acknowledged, there were many young people who voted, which is wonderful. They may not have voted for us, but the important thing is that they voted.
Some have pointed out that over the last few months, during our party's leadership race, a lot of young people got involved and invested in supporting the candidacy of the member for Carleton. That is very good for democracy. The more young people who participate, the better. Some people will say that we should allow 16-year-olds to vote because that will give them even more of a taste for getting involved in politics, and thus increase voter turnout. That is a good thing.
There are precedents. Similar legislation was passed in Austria. There was an uptick in voter turnout at first, but it tumbled in the following three elections. Essentially, age is not the main factor that gets young people to the polls; it has more to do with their level of interest in election issues. I cannot stress this enough: we should all take an interest in politics no matter how old we are. When people cast their first ballot at 18, that is a deeply meaningful moment because it is the first time they mark that “X” and make that effort to get out there and vote for someone. We have said it before, and we will say it again: people have to vote to participate in the process.
Although the Conservative Party is not in favour of Bill C‑210, there is absolutely no reason young people should not get politically motivated, engaged and involved when they are 16, 17 or 18. I have been told that some of our fellow members were very young when they first got involved in politics, such as my friend from St. Albert—Edmonton, who was 14 when he got his start. That is never a bad thing.
In closing, I want to say that, as we speak, the electoral map is being redrawn. That occurs every 10 years. In my riding, there may be major changes, namely that the indigenous community of Wendake and the northern section of Loretteville, which we call Château-d'Eau, will be in a different riding. I will leave that to the experts. Personally, I am always uncomfortable having an elected member vote for or against a change in the electoral map, because we are judging something we have a stake in. I can say one thing: If it turns out that I no longer have the honour of representing the people of Wendake and the people of Château-d'Eau, the place where I was born and raised and where my parents settled in 1962, that will certainly break my heart. However, electoral maps are not drawn with the incumbent member's emotions in mind.
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