44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 26, 2022 11:00AM
- Sep/26/22 3:16:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am presenting a petition on behalf of Canadians across the country who are opposed to the COVID–19 mandates and want them all to come to an end. The petitioners state that throughout the pandemic truckers have served Canadians, that they are heroes and that they have been subjected to the vaccine mandates that have impacted our supply chains. The petitioners say the Prime Minister has politicized the vaccines and insulted Canadians who disagreed with him. They are calling on the House of Commons to immediately end all COVID–19 vaccine mandates and restrictions implemented and controlled by the federal government.
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- Sep/26/22 3:20:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I am tabling comes from Canadians who are concerned about forced organ harvesting and trafficking. This bill has passed through the Senate twice and in this House once in its current form. It is currently stalled before the foreign affairs committee. The petitioners are hoping it will soon be passed. The families of victims of forced organ harvesting and trafficking have now waited almost 15 years for Canada to pass this legislation. The petitioners are calling for the House to pass this legislation quickly.
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- Sep/26/22 3:20:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I have today comes from petitioners across the country who are concerned about how young people can easily access explicit material online, including violently explicit and degrading material. The petitioners comment on how this access is an important public health and safety concern. They note that a significant portion of commercially accessed sexually explicit material has no age verification software. Moreover, age verification software can ascertain the age of users without breaching their privacy rights. The petitioners note the many serious harms associated with sexually explicit material, including the development of addictions and attitudes favourable to sexual violence and the harassment of women. As such, they are calling on the House of Commons to pass Bill S-210, the protecting young persons from exposure to pornography act.
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- Sep/26/22 3:20:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next petition I have to present is from citizens across the country who are concerned about the Liberal Party's promise in its 2021 platform that would deny charitable status to organizations that have convictions about abortion with which the Liberal Party is in disagreement. This may jeopardize the charitable status of hospitals, houses of worship, schools, homeless shelters and other charitable organizations that do not agree with the Liberal Party on this matter. Many Canadians depend upon and benefit from these charities and the work they do. Therefore, the petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada and the House of Commons to protect and preserve the application of charitable status rules on a politically and ideologically neutral basis, without discrimination on the basis of political or religious values and without imposing another values test.
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- Sep/26/22 3:20:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the last petition I have today is from Canadians across this country who are suffering under inflation and the Liberals' carbon tax. The petitioners claim that the carbon tax is causing inflation and increasing the cost of everyday essentials, including gas, groceries and heating, making life very expensive for Canadians. The Bank of Canada has also said that the carbon tax is contributing to the impacts of inflation and is an added expense for Canadian businesses, which creates an economic disadvantage compared with other nations. The petitioners are calling for an end to the carbon tax. They want the government to control inflation and reduce its spending.
Finally, the petitioners want to see pipelines and other projects approved, especially LNG pipelines, to take clean, ethical Canadian energy to tidewater and international markets to displace the fuel provided by authoritarian regimes and dictators.
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Madam Speaker, I, too, want to add my voice to the discussion around Bill C-30.
In my lifetime, I have never experienced such inflationary times as these. We are living in immensely inflationary times, and I think this bill is an attempt to rectify that situation. We have seen a dramatic increase in the cost of living, the cost of food, the cost of fuel and the cost of housing. We have seen the average price of a house in Canada double over the last two years. Since the Prime Minister has become the Prime Minister, we have seen the price of housing double in this country. Over the last two years, we have seen butter, for example, come up 16%. Fuel has basically doubled in the last year. We are seeing how life is getting more and more expensive.
There are two ways to address this issue. First is to make more money in order to pay for the things that we need to pay for. Second is to try to lower the cost of living and the cost of everything that we have to pay for like housing and all of those things. The reality that will come into effect is that both of those things will happen. People will find ways to make more money and hopefully the government will work to reduce the cost of things or at least stem inflation.
We watched Joe Biden celebrate a little while ago. He said that inflation was flat for a particular month. He was wrong when he said that. In fact, inflation did not increase for a particular month. The percentage of inflation is how much one's money is being reduced in value every month. If the inflation rate is running at 5%, then our money is worth 5% less over that particular period of time. If that inflation rate stays at 5% and does not increase to 6%, that is not good news. It is just that, over the next same amount of time, that money will be worth 5% less instead of being worth 6% less. An inflation rate that is close to zero is what the goal of our whole system ought to be.
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Madam Speaker, I was just running my timer.
Nonetheless, there is the work that needs to be done to make life more affordable in Canada and to reduce the inflation rate. What kind of tools does the government have at its disposal to reduce the inflation rate? Taxation is a big part of the tools the government has. We, as Conservatives, are calling on the government to impose no new taxes.
On January 1 we will have a brand new tax increase on CPP and EI premiums. Happy new year. They are not optional fees for people to pay. If they were optional, the government may have been able to get away with not calling them taxes, but they will come off of people's paycheques whether they like it or not. They are taxes. That will reduce the amount of money people take home. They will make people's paycheques smaller, essentially. That will not help the inflation situation. It is not necessarily driving inflation, but it is one of the things that will not help people get over the inflation hump, so to speak.
On the other side of this, on April 1 the carbon tax will go up. The carbon tax is very much an inflationary tax. The carbon tax gets built into the cost of everything. Whether it is the shoes we wear, the food we eat, driving to work, driving the kids to school, or driving anywhere, the carbon tax is making all of that exponentially more expensive.
One thing that happens is that the carbon tax gets added into every part of the economy. When the raw products are taken out of the ground or the trees are taken out of the forest, the trucks that haul the trees to the lumber mill are paying for the carbon tax on their fuel. That cost gets built into the transportation costs of bringing the raw product out of the forest to the mill. The mill has to pay the carbon tax on the energy the mill uses to process that, so there is another added cost. As well, all of the packaging materials and supplies the mill needs are being shipped to that mill and they are paying the carbon tax on the products that are coming in, which is adding an increased cost.
Most of these mills are publicly traded. Our pension funds are probably invested in these particular companies. As everybody wants to retire, they want a return on their investment. They are looking for a nominal 10% return on their investments. There is an expectation that no matter what the costs are to that particular mill, they have to turn a profit, so they are going to increase the cost. When the carbon tax on all of these different things is added to their input, it raises the cost of their input. When they sell their products, lumber for example, they are going to have to increase the price of lumber in order to get the 10% return they are offering to their shareholders and people who have invested in the stock market. There is that dramatic increase.
As that carbon tax is bumped up, it cascades through the economy making it more expensive. I never even talked about that lumber getting delivered. The carbon tax will be charged as part of the costs of the truck driver for hauling it, including the diesel fuel needed for that particular truck hauling that lumber away from the mill to the local lumber yard. The local lumber yard is paying carbon tax on the natural gas they burn to keep the building warm. They are paying it on what they deliver. By the time someone gets that lumber delivered to their yard, there may not be a line on the invoice for that lumber that says “carbon tax” but rest assured that a significant amount of the cost of that two-by-four will be for carbon tax.
The increase in the carbon tax on April 1, in particular, could be paused by the government. The government could pause that increase instead of ramping it up to three times from what it currently is. It could pause it or it could remove the carbon tax. The removal of the carbon tax would have the dramatic effect of reducing the cost of things across the country. I think that currently the carbon tax on gasoline is 12¢ a litre.
Imagine if, in much the same way as Alberta has done, the provincial fuel tax was removed. When oil went over $90 a barrel, Alberta removed the fuel tax, causing a dramatic decrease in the price of fuel, which made life more affordable. People could get to work and their paycheques could go further. I hear more frequently from people who are having to ration their funds with respect to what they are buying and how they are heating their homes just so they can buy fuel for their pickup truck to make it to wherever they work.
The Conservatives are calling for two things. One is a reduction in, the removal of, or no increase to the carbon tax on April 1. This would help to stem the tide of inflation and dramatically improve the cost of things. Two is no increase to the payroll taxes. This would allow people's paycheques to pay for all the things they need.
The Conservatives are also calling on the government to quit borrowing money, quit raising taxes and quit raising inflation. We are calling on the government to stop borrowing money. We are calling for a one-to-one ratio. When the government wants to spend new money on a new program or a new initiative, it has to go back to the budget and find where there are some savings, whether that is from a program it is not interested in using anymore or it does not need. As society progresses, we see the government spend money and then, over time, the programs are not necessarily needed any longer. We are looking for that one-to-one savings, no new taxes, and for the government to balance the budget in the coming years.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that the member opposite obviously thinks like a Liberal. Every time there is a problem, the Liberals pull out the government's debit card and try to spend their way out of it. Now they are faced with a particular problem they cannot spend their way out of. More spending of government money will only cause more inflation. The very thing the government is trying to stop will not be solved by spending more money.
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Madam Speaker, I would say that I am quite familiar with the northern stores and how the nutrition north program works. Once again, this proves that the government struggles to build programs that work.
Many times the free market is able to sort this stuff out better. I have heard of examples where Amazon Prime customers in northern Canada are able to get groceries cheaper than at their northern stores. Often those are the options.
I look forward to working with the member to try to come up with some solutions for the north for sure.
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Madam Speaker, I want to respond to the comment about helping citizens cope with the rising costs.
I would argue that working to reduce the cost of everyday items that are needed to live would help Canadians cope. A one-time $500 cheque that would be written would not increase that person's long-term paycheque and would not decrease the costs of natural gas, food and other things.
We need to work to ensure there is more of the things that we need and less government.
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- Sep/26/22 11:50:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her speech tonight and her stories about the heat dome in B.C.
My hon. colleague from the NDP is probably going to bring this up as well, but around the case for mitigation, could the member share her thoughts on how we go forward on mitigating some of these climate change effects that we are experiencing in Canada?
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- Sep/26/22 11:56:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will assure you that I did not have very much to do with the building of the Confederation Bridge.
Tonight, we are debating in this emergency debate another instance of nature trying to kill us. We have seen that a big hurricane has hit the east coast of Canada. To some degree, the very nature of civilization or being civilized is our war against nature. It is our war to ensure that nature does not kill us. To be civilized is to live in a warm home. To be civilized is to have clean running water. To be civilized is to have clothing that allows us to function when nature is trying to kill us, whether that means too warm or too cold. Humans are fragile beings and we are therefore always in a struggle to survive. The very fact that people live on every square inch of this planet is a testament to our dominion over nature. We do live in every corner of the globe, so there is a resilience that comes from the human experience.
As an Albertan, I want to extend our support for the Maritimes and Quebec at this time, and I want to say a bit about the many folks who have moved from that part of the country to my riding to support work in the oil patch. They have helped me in my campaigns along the way as well. They are Sonya Andrews from Newfoundland, JD Dennis from Nova Scotia, Glenn Mitchell from New Brunswick and Jordan Johnson from P.E.I. All of these folks I am pleased to call friends, and I know that every one of them has family back home they are concerned about. They will likely be heading there to help with the cleanup efforts.
This is the Canadian story: When our neighbours are in trouble, we step up. We head out and gas up our chainsaw, and do what we have to do to show up and ensure that our neighbours thrive and flourish and that we collectively, to be civilized people, war with nature to survive.
I am very excited to add my voice to the debate tonight, and I look forward to the resiliency of Canadians as we rebuild eastern Canada.
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