House Hansard - 122

44th Parl. 1st Sess.

November 1, 2022 10:00AM

Ms. Michelle Ferreri (Peterborough—Kawartha, CPC)

Nov/1/22 4:05:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable. It is always an honour to rise in the House of Commons to represent my constituents of Peterborough—Kawartha. Today we have put forth an opposition motion. For those who are watching at home or starting to get interested in politics, opposition motions are so important. Every day the Liberals get to decide what is important, and we know that they are not choosing what is really important to Canadians. With an opposition motion, the Conservatives can use our voices to speak for Canadians. I will read our opposition motion that we put forth today. We will have a vote after this, and we are asking the Liberals, NDP and Bloc to support us on this motion to pass it. The motion says: That, given that, (i) the cost of government is driving up the cost of living, (ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer states that 40% of new spending is not related to COVID-19, (iii) Canadians are now paying higher prices and higher interest rates as a result, (iv) it is more important than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate wasteful spending, the House call on the Auditor General of Canada to conduct a performance audit, including the payments, contracts and sub-contracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and to prioritize this investigation. This is a very important motion. Today in the House, I heard members from the Liberal side of the House say the motion is too broad and it deals too much with the cost of living. When the Liberal government in charge is responsible for spending Canadian taxpayers' money and is wasting their money when we are in a cost of living crisis, it absolutely is pertinent to this motion. The ArriveCAN app cost $54 million and we do not know where that money was spent, because it was only supposed to cost $250,000. Canadian taxpayers deserve to know. This motion is extremely important as we look at the complex issue of the cost of living crisis. There are people who cannot afford to buy bread or eggs and the government is wasting money. Really what this comes down to is mismanagement of funds, possibly corruption, but we do not know. That is why we are calling on the government. If we do not have accountability, how do we get to the bottom of it? If we do not ask the right questions, we cannot get the right answers. Canadians do not have trust anymore. We need trust restored so that we can help the people. There were 1.5 million Canadians who used a food bank in March. That is the highest number ever recorded in Canadian history. In one month, 1.5 million people accessed a food bank. One in three of those were children. This past weekend I went to the grocery store to get some essentials. Like everyone else, I noticed the outrageous cost of food. The cashier said to me that at least three people a day tell her that they are going to have to use a food bank. We live in a G7 country. I like to think that everyone in the House cares. I do. I really think that everyone is here because they want to serve and that is why they took this job. However, some days it is hard to believe that because of the wasteful spending and the lack of acknowledgement of an app. Just admit that it did not work, that it was a waste and we need to fix it. Let the Auditor General do it, learn from it and move on. Restore trust. I was former shadow minister or critic for tourism, and I took so many calls about this app. I have one constituent who was featured on Global National. Her name is Katie. Katie works in the States but she is a Canadian citizen. Katie went across the border. Some of the stats will show us what happened to Katie. Her story was featured on Global National with the ArriveCAN app. She was one of the 10,000 people who were impacted by the glitch of the app, but no communication was ever made to Katie. None. This is just another epic fail in terms of the accountability of the Liberals. She was told she was going to be fined up to $1 million. She was not just getting an email; she was literally getting accosted. She was receiving threatening messages every single day. I do not know how one measures the damage to Katie's mental health. She was threatened with being imprisoned for up to three years. She was threatened with admission into a federal quarantine facility. The worst part is that she was threatened with never being allowed back into her own country. There is so much wrong with this app. Conservatives kept on telling Liberals it was not working. We felt like parrots. We were saying it was not doing whatever they thought it was supposed to do. We talked about the backlogs at borders and at Pearson. Canada established this reputation whereby people had zero travel confidence to come to Canada, because of the ArriveCAN app. I travelled from Germany, in March I believe it was, and the anger from the people on the airline at how poorly Canada was run was embarrassing. They said the ArriveCAN app was disgusting. We cannot even begin to calculate the lost revenue this faulty app created. I do not know what tools we would use to calculate this. The tourism industry before COVID was a $105-billion industry. It is up to only $80 billion at this point. We have lost so much money because of this app. The member from Kingston loves to heckle me, and he has come in to distract me. I have said it before and will say it again: If you don't want to listen to me, leave.

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House Hansard - 122