44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 18, 2022 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, we are broke. That is the state of this country. We are $1.3 trillion in debt and we are having trouble keeping the lights on, so to speak.
Now is not the time for expensive new government programs, particularly when we have a government that is negligent on all of the other things that it is in charge of. I do not have to point very far. Have members had constituents trying to get a passport lately? Folks are waiting months for a passport. That is a basic role of the Canadian government.
The federal government does not have too many jobs. It has to manage the military. It has to manage our border security. It has to manage our justice system. Those would be top priorities for the government. In all three of those cases, it is failing dramatically, never mind coming up with or running new programs.
Here we are, the government has run our credit cards up to the max, and now it is going out and talking about buying a new Rolls Royce, while Canadians are out there trying to figure out how they are going to keep their older car on the road. Buying a new car has become unaffordable for many Canadians, and new cars are hard to come by. Therefore, Canadians are looking at Kijiji and Facebook Marketplace for a used car, and finding out the used car they bought maybe six or seven years ago is still worth the same amount of money they bought it for. These are the challenges.
The member for Winnipeg North just spoke before me, and we heard over and over again about supporting Canadians. There is a difference between when Conservatives say supporting Canadians and when the Liberals say supporting Canadians. When the Liberals say it, they generally mean getting out the chequebook and writing a cheque. When the Conservatives say supporting Canadians, they mean making sure that the systems of government work to ensure that Canadians can thrive.
I reference this more like a tree. If Canada were an apple tree in an orchard of which we got to enjoy the fruit, Conservatives would be concerned about the soil and making sure that the tree got enough water, that the roots were well tended for, that the tree grew and flourished, maybe pruning the tree where it was needed, and therefore watching, expecting and hoping for a harvest of apples. Liberals do not want to worry about all of those kinds of things, they just want to make sure that they can polish the couple of apples that are there to make them really shiny and show them off, while perhaps the tree is dying, there is not enough attention or water coming to the tree, the soil has eroded or the tree has not been pruned in a very long time.
That is where I feel the difference is between the Conservatives and the Liberals. The Liberals want to emphasize the fruit without being concerned about the tree the fruit is growing on, the systems that are in place to ensure that Canadians thrive. When Conservatives say they will support Canadians, they mean making sure that our systems in this country operate in a manner so that Canadians can continue to thrive.
We have seen that in the past when Conservative governments were in power. We saw things like crime rates going down, our dollar improving in value, the average working wages of Canadians going up and housing remaining affordable.
We warned the government that, when it did not run balanced budgets, eventually inflation would come into play, and when it was printing money like it was going out of style, eventually inflation would catch on. Here we are in a world of out-of-control inflation, where the cost of living has gone up and where housing is completely unaffordable. Now the government, after causing that problem, is coming in and saying that it will write a cheque to ensure it can eliminate some of the pain we are feeling, and it will come up with a new program.
Going back to my tree analogy, now the tree is half-dead and we have to resuscitate it. We have to go build an irrigation system. We should have been concerned about that a long time ago.
Again, another case in point around this is LNG in this country. When I first got elected back in 2015, there were 15 LNG projects on the books. Companies were knocking on Canada's door, saying that they would like to start an LNG project here in Canada. Today, seven years later, not one of those projects has been built. Again that is one of those cases where there was a lack of tending to the roots and tending to the soil, tending to the things that make our country survive.
Canadians are suffering today. I do not know if members know of something called “stumpot”. It is a good Dutch meal. It is potatoes and carrots or potatoes and kale mixed together. It is kind of like mashed potatoes, but it is all mixed together and typically they put a good bratwurst or sausage on top of it. I hear from people who say they cannot afford the sausage anymore. They are having to go with hot dogs on the top. That is the thing. Canadians are supplementing their diets with inferior products because they cannot afford the food that they are used to eating. That is a real challenge for them.
Now the government is concerned about dental and rental. That is what the Liberals are calling this bill. We see the government once again get out the chequebook of Canada and pull out the credit card of Canada and say that there is not a problem that they cannot solve without spending some more money.
One of the things that we could have in this country is water on reserves. I do not know if members know this, but they put fluoride in most public water systems in this country to prevent dental issues. It helps dental health dramatically to have fluoride in the water. The government, back in 2015, promised that it would have drinking water on reserves. One of the consequences of having water on reserves would be improved dental health.
However, we have seen that this has been a total failure of the current government. The Liberals promised back in 2015 that by 2019 the government would have the water on reserves fixed. Here we are, seven years later, and it still continues to be a problem. That is another example of where the government has failed. Here it is now with a shiny object, a “polishing the fruit” exercise, writing cheques to individual Canadians and trying to solve the problems that it was negligent on or created in the past. That is generally a major problem.
We are seeing in these systems of Canada and in the way that Canada works, that generally these are indications of the health of the society and the health of the system. We generally have conversations about competing systems from one country to another.
The Government of Canada, the Liberal government, brought in a MAID regime that is now being used as an alleviation to poverty. We see that people in countries around the world are writing in horror in their own media. There was a headline just the other day out of the U.K. saying, “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” That is a headline coming out of the U.K. Not only has the Liberal government made life unaffordable for Canadians, but it has made a euthanasia regime that is so wide open with holes, that the poor are accessing MAID instead of being able to live in dignity right here in Canada. We see all of those issues going on.
I see this as being nothing more than a vote-buying exercise and a major distraction as Canadians suffer under the weight of this Liberal-made inflation. Now the Liberals come out with a payment scheme that goes directly to members of the public to alleviate some of these problems. I do not deny that $500 would be a dramatic improvement for many people's lives. Nonetheless, going back to my tree analogy, it does not go to feeding the roots, pruning the tree or maybe throwing some fertilizer into the system to ensure that we can enjoy the fruit of the fruit tree by ensuring that our systems operate, by ensuring that we can have clean water on reserves, by ensuring that our justice system works properly so that we do not have to live in a world of crime, by ensuring that we can get a passport and by ensuring that our border is secure.
Therefore, I will not be supporting the bill because I do not think that it tackles the fundamental issues here in Canada.
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Madam Speaker, I want to inform the hon. member, who is not from Alberta, which I will forgive him for, that we have a great system for ensuring that everybody who needs dental care gets dental care. I think that is a fact across the country. Many provinces have in place a system to ensure that the people who need dental care get dental care. That is a fact. If there is concern around the funding of dental care, as the Bloc has pointed out, why is the government duplicating some of these systems and not just transferring the money to the provinces?
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Madam Speaker, one of the interesting things here is that there are many things I think the government can and needs to do, without spending money, to encourage the building of houses. I do not have a really clear grasp on that, but I would say that when it comes to the border crossing at Roxham Road, to go to an example I know a bit more about, the Liberals have always accused the Conservatives of not spending a lot on border measures. However, when we were in power, Roxham Road was not an issue because we had enforcement at the border in Canada. There are many things the government can do to encourage these things without spending money.
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Madam Speaker, just to dispute the facts, Alberta Health Services has a dental program for those in financial need. I do not know what else the member is referring to. It is available for everybody who needs dental care in Alberta.
While I am talking about folks in Alberta, what they really need is the economy to be thriving. What they need is pipelines to be built so that we all have good jobs and we can all afford dental care. We do not need a government program to provide it.
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