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House Hansard - 122

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 1, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 122 - Nov/1/22
Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)
  • Nov/1/22 10:49:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his speech. I would have to agree with the previous questioner on this. ArriveCAN was basically doomed from the start, because the government was requiring all Canadians re-entering Canada to use it. They did not have a choice. It assumed one had a cell phone, and it assumed one had the tech savvy to use the app. Many people did not. I have a riding with six border crossings in it, and I had numerous complaints about how it failed people and sent them into quarantine when they should not have been sent into quarantine. Now we hear that it cost a ridiculous amount of money. My question is this: Given that the government has spent more money in the last year on hiring IT consultants than it has spent on its own in-government IT workforce, will it really make sure that it builds a good IT workforce that we can depend on, that we have control over and that we have transparency on, so we can get things done with a good, moderate amount of money and have control over that?
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Context: House Hansard - 122 - Nov/1/22
Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)
  • Nov/1/22 12:39:54 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I used to sit on the Forest Appeals Commission in British Columbia. At appeal hearings, we would hear forest companies blame their contractors for some misdemeanour and the contractors would blame their subcontractors, and the subcontractors would blame their sub-subcontractors. I wonder if the member could comment on the practice of hiring teams to assemble teams to assemble teams that not only balloons the cost of a project like the ArriveCAN app but shields it from any sort of transparency.
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Context: House Hansard - 122 - Nov/1/22
Mr. Richard Cannings (South Okanagan—West Kootenay, NDP)
  • Nov/1/22 1:23:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will try to be brief, but there is so much I want to get into. First is the idea that if we cut gas taxes at the pumps, it will help people. The member's own provincial government in Alberta tried this, and for a week the price went down relative to what it is in British Columbia. However, a week later gas companies pushed it back up to where it used to be, so it was cutting government income and saving nobody any money at all. Second, when it comes to the debate we had last week, NDP members had asked the Conservatives to support their idea of cutting the GST on home energy and they refused, instead fixating on a carbon tax that will go up by two cents a litre in April, saving nobody—
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