44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 17, 2022 10:00AM
- Nov/17/22 2:09:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this past week, Germany inaugurated its first liquefied natural gas terminal. Germany started construction after the war in Ukraine began on February 24 to get off Russian gas. Before Russia's war on Ukraine, Germany had no LNG terminals. It took Germany 194 days to approve and build this new LNG terminal in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven. It took 194 days, and four more are on the way shortly.
Germany has a stronger set of environmental standards than Canada, and Germany has reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than Canada. Germany is also led by a left of centre Social Democratic chancellor, and its minister of economic affairs and climate action is a Green Party minister. Our government needs to ask itself how Germany can approve and build a new LNG terminal in 194 days, while it takes a decade or more to approve and build a single LNG terminal in this country.
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- Nov/17/22 2:10:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, British Columbia will be welcoming David Eby as our province's next premier on November 18. During this time of transition, I want to recognize and thank Premier John Horgan, who has served British Columbia since 2017.
Premier Horgan has been an advocate for the environment and an ally to our government on this important issue. Our governments have also found common ground on child care, with our government providing $3.2 billion to create more child care spaces to implement the $10-a-day child care in British Columbia.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our governments have worked together to ensure all British Columbians have access to vaccines. Premier Horgan has done well in advancing relationships with indigenous peoples based on respect and with the recognition of indigenous rights.
Recently, our governments partnered up by announcing improvements to the Glover Road crossing. This Highway 1 widening project is valued at $345 million, with $96 million coming from the federal government.
I want to wish Premier Horgan all the best in his future endeavours, and I want to extend my congratulations to David Eby on becoming B.C.’s next premier.
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- Nov/17/22 2:11:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, here are some sobering numbers to show how much Canada has been broken financially by these Liberals.
Government debt in Canada has doubled since 2015 to $1.13 trillion in 2022, meaning the Prime Minister has spent more than all previous prime ministers combined. The total cost of servicing that debt is roughly $42 billion per year and growing, exceeding the cost of yearly health transfers to the provinces.
Each man, woman and child in Canada owes $56,000 as their part of the national debt, and it is having an impact. Inflation is at a 40-year high and affordability anxiety is a major problem. There are 1.5 million Canadians who visited a food bank in September. Half of Canadians are $200 away from not being able to meet their monthly obligations, and 30% say they cannot meet their monthly obligations.
These Liberals, aided and abetted by the NDP, are causing Canadians to lose their jobs, their hopes, their dreams and their dignity. It is time to stop wasteful spending, eliminate the carbon tax and give Canadians a break, which is what they need the most.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians who have been shut out by Canada's traditional media gatekeepers are finding their voices on places like TikTok, Spotify and YouTube. It is amazing. I am talking about creators like Oorbee Roy, a South Asian mother from Toronto who shares her skill in and her love for skateboarding on TikTok. I am talking about Vanessa Brousseau, an indigenous woman who shares her artistry and her passion as she advocates for missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada.
These creators leverage digital platforms to share their uniquely Canadian stories with the world. Despite this, the government wants to kill their success and actually silence their voices. Through Bill C-11, the government would pick winners and losers by determining which content gets to be seen and which content has to be hidden.
As for everyday Canadian users, we are out of luck too, because whatever we post online, see online or hear online would be censored by the government. Hello, state censorship, and goodbye freedom. It is time for the government to read its notifications, because if it did, it would see there is a massive thumbs-down.
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- Nov/17/22 2:13:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, organizations and their volunteers are the heart of community life across Canada. They help to make our lives better, ensure a social safety net and strengthen community ties.
Today, I want to mark the anniversaries of two wonderful organizations in my riding of Châteauguay—Lacolle.
First, I want to wish a happy 20th anniversary to Les toits d'Émile, which was named in honour of poet Émile Nelligan. This organization has spent two decades providing people with mental illness with supervised apartments and activities to break their isolation.
Next, I want to wish a happy 30th anniversary to Club des ornithologues de Châteauguay. In addition to birdwatching, members of this group also support biodiversity, rally together to protect natural environments, and set up birdhouses for nesting.
I hope these organizations will be around for many years to come.
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- Nov/17/22 2:15:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians have the right to know the health risks of what they are consuming, yet when looking at the bottle, one would never know that alcohol is a class one carcinogen.
Last week, constituents in my riding of Nanaimo—Ladysmith gathered to talk about this exact issue. Many were shocked to learn that alcohol is linked to cancers, including breast, colon, larynx and liver, as well as other health impacts, such as dementia. Despite all this, alcoholic beverages still do not have warning labels.
This is a health and safety issue. It should not be left to rich CEOs to decide what information Canadians deserve to have access to. We need a national strategy, similar to those for cannabis and cigarettes, to ensure the risks are clearly communicated.
The Liberal government needs to take federal leadership today and support the motion I tabled to implement a national warning label strategy for alcoholic beverages, ensuring all Canadians have the information they need to make informed decisions.
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- Nov/17/22 2:16:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in 2020, according to a report on homelessness in Quebec, nearly 600,000 people, or 7% of Quebec's population, experienced hidden homelessness at some point in their lives. The census identified 6,000 individuals experiencing visible homelessness.
Members can see why I would want to highlight the essential, monumental work of a vital player in my riding, the Table itinérance Rive-Sud, which is marking its 20th anniversary today, November 17, 2022.
Table itinérance Rive-Sud's mission is to bring together organizations that address homelessness. These organizations work both upstream and downstream of the issue to create a continuum of services that support the dignity of people experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness.
Again, I am deeply grateful to the Table itinérance Rive-Sud, and I wish the organization a happy 20th anniversary.
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- Nov/17/22 2:18:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, CMHC, the federal government's housing agency, has spent $4.5 billion and committed another $9 billion to tackle homelessness, but it has no idea if anyone is benefiting from their work.
It has no idea. How can there be no accountability for billions of dollars when more Canadians are living in tents or cars and inflation is skyrocketing? This is absurd. If any member in the House takes a walk through their downtown, they will see the homeless crisis is getting worse every single day.
Lynn, a senior in her mid-60s, is homeless because she cannot afford rent in Toronto. She lived in her car for seven weeks before finding a place in a shelter system. Sage lives in a tent. She is 23 years old, from Portage la Prairie, and has been homeless for two years. These are not data points on a graph. They are people.
The Liberals plan to announce large amounts of funding that no one can access with zero accountability is not working. Canada needs leadership. It needs a plan. It needs accountability. It needs housing.
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- Nov/17/22 2:19:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last week, we honoured our veterans, who served proudly to preserve those freedoms. The responsibility of remembrance falls on all of us, and we recognize and appreciate the peace that we have today.
Each year the Royal Canadian Legion holds a literary contest to engage our youth in acts of remembrance. Julia Mederak, a student at John Sweeney Catholic Elementary School in Kitchener submitted a poem entitled “Remembrance Day” and won first place. She shared her poem on Kitchener’s CBC morning radio show, and I would like to read the last stanza of her award-winning work.
We celebrate Remembrance Day We honour the vetOur heads bowed in silenceLest We Forget.
I send my congratulations to Julia. We thank her for her contributions in guiding our next generation as we continue to remember.
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- Nov/17/22 2:20:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, 10 months ago, our security and intelligence services informed the Prime Minister of allegations that a foreign government had interfered in our elections through illegal donations. The Prime Minister should have informed the Commissioner of Canada Elections so that the matter could be investigated.
Did the Prime Minister inform the commissioner of Canada Elections to instigate an investigation after he became aware, almost 10 months ago, of allegations of illegal foreign funding?
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- Nov/17/22 2:21:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government understands that some of the world's dictatorships are actively trying to undermine democracies around the world.
As a university student, I lived and studied in an authoritarian communist regime, the Soviet Union. I have no illusions about the nature of that political system. Our national security agencies have stepped up their efforts to counter threats from foreign actors.
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- Nov/17/22 2:21:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as the world's wealthy gather for the COP conference, burning massive amounts of jet fuel to get there, what is becoming clear is that the government does not have a climate plan; it has a tax plan. Its plan has failed to reach a single solidarity greenhouse gas emissions target and Canada now ranks 58th out of 64 countries on climate performance. This is after it has hit Canadians with high taxes. It plans to triple the tax, tripling down on failure.
Will the Liberals cancel the carbon tax and come up with a real environmental plan?
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- Nov/17/22 2:22:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all Canadians know that the Conservative leader does not have a plan to tackle climate change, and that means he does not have a plan to grow the Canadian economy.
The reality today is that our most important trading partners, the U.S. and the EU, are all taking serious climate action. These are our allies and these are our customers. That is why in the fall economic statement, we invested heavily in the green transition, and we are going to continue to do that.
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- Nov/17/22 2:23:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, these are our allies and these are our customers, and all of them have better climate change performance than the government has in Canada.
What it has done in Canada is raise taxes on people's energy use, energy that they must use. People do need to heat their homes if they live in rural Newfoundland, and they need to use oil to do it because that is all there is. The cost is already up 77% year over year and likely to go up further. Some families will pay as much as $6,000 to heat their homes.
Is the government really going to tell them that they have to pay more for the government's failures on the environment?
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- Nov/17/22 2:23:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians understand that putting a price on pollution is the most effective way to fight climate change. In fact, one of the Canadians who was early to advocate this economically effective approach was none other than Preston Manning.
It is also worth pointing out that our price on pollution is revenue neutral. All the money goes back to Canadian families. A family in Alberta is getting back more than $1,000. That is true for a family in Saskatchewan as well.
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- Nov/17/22 2:24:24 p.m.
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Revenue neutral, Mr. Speaker? It is not neutral for taxpayers who will pay thousands of dollars more in the tax than they get back in any rebates, according to the government's own Parliamentary Budget Officer.
If the government really wanted to fight greenhouse gas emissions, it would approve projects that do that. For example, there were 15 LNG projects proposed when the government took office. Not a single one has been built. The only one that is under construction was approved by the previous Conservative government and it required subsequent governments to exempt it from the carbon tax in order for it to be economical and to speed up its approval by ignoring Bill C-69.
Will the government get out of the way and let our projects go ahead to protect the earth?
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- Nov/17/22 2:25:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our government bought and will complete the building of the Trans Mountain pipeline. Our government absolutely understands that LNG is an important transition fuel and plays a valuable role for Canada and the world.
I do want to point out that we understand that for projects to work, they have to meet environmental standards and indigenous people have to be consulted. That is how we are going to get projects in Canada built, including necessary renewable energy projects.
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- Nov/17/22 2:25:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is true that they have to meet environmental standards. We had real environmental standards under the previous Conservative government. In fact, the only way that the LNG Canada project in western Canada went ahead was by exempting it from the new anti-development, Bill C-69.
She is right also that first nations have to be consulted. One person is an indigenous grandmother from the Haisla first nation who told me that LNG Canada and projects like it meant that her autistic grandchild would have the resources for treatment. That means help for first nations, paycheques for people and clean energy for the world.
Why will the Liberals not get out of the way and let it happen?
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- Nov/17/22 2:26:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians know better than to listen to the economic advice of the Conservative leader. Let me tell the House about Robert Breedlove. He is a bitcoin trader who posted “Central banking is an institution of slavery. Burn. It....Down.” After that was posted, the Conservative leader appeared on Mr. Breedlove's YouTube channel and said that he found it extremely informative.
The Conservative leader needs to publicly disavow those inflammatory comments and apologize to Canadians for his own reckless advice.
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- Nov/17/22 2:27:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the shortfall in health care funding for Quebec is around $6 billion. Stretchers are piling up in emergency rooms. Surgery waiting lists are suffering a similar effect, with all the anguish that goes along with that. There is also a national mental health crisis, with its prescriptions and fears of suicide attempts. At this rate, we will not be sending help abroad; we will be receiving it here.
The government claimed it wanted to work hand in hand with Quebec, but now it is being unbelievably arrogant. How can the government justify that arrogance?
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