44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 21, 2022 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is a great honour to rise in the House and discuss what the Conservative Party has put out as its key platform for dealing with inflation: cryptocurrency. It is a really good opportunity to look at what the Conservative leader has as an economic vision. It is perfect that it is happening here just after the weekend, when FTX, the crypto exchange site, collapsed, destroying 32 billion dollars' worth of savings in 48 hours. That is a record for a complete financial collapse. Could we say that money was vaporized?
If we look at what we have offered as New Democrats for responding to inflation, we put forward the need to get children dental care. The Conservative leader, whose kids get their own dental care paid for by the taxpayer, opposed that and said all that money to help children would vaporize. We talked about doubling the GST tax credit. The Conservatives were against it. They said that money would vaporize because of inflation. Of course, there was our work to get rent support for low-income housing, and the Conservatives were dead set against that. They said inflation would vaporize it. What did the leader of the Conservative Party offer as his one solution for fighting inflation? It was Ponzi schemes and cryptocurrency.
The Conservatives had a two-part strategy. One was to spin cryptocurrency as something we could buy a shawarma with and put our life savings into. The second part of the Conservative strategy is even more important to look at. It was his full-on attack on the basic principle of having financial regulations to keep people from being scammed.
I really appreciate the member for Calgary Nose Hill for bringing forward legislation that talks about the need for legislation. She has rightly pointed out that if we do not have regulation, this dark money system could easily be a forum for money laundering and terrorist financing. Who else would want to have a financial system with no checks and balances so we cannot trace where the money goes?
I appreciate that there are members of the Conservative Party who are not in the thrall of whack-job economics. Unfortunately, her leader is a complete devout believer in whack-job economics, because he is dead set against this principle of regulation. He said, “Canada needs less financial control for politicians and bankers and more financial freedom for the people.” He has referred to financial regulations as “cobwebs” that need to be blown away. Of course, he has his other great folk devil, the gatekeepers. We have to attack the gatekeepers, which is why he wants to get rid of the Bank of Canada. It is a full-on attack of basic regulations.
The reason we have these so-called cobwebs is that time and time again we have seen hard-working people's savings wiped out by flim-flam artists: Bre-X, Bernie Madoff, junk bonds and the derivative market that destroyed the savings of millions of people. They would love this leader of the Conservative Party. They would embrace him. They embrace the notion of freedom as the freedom to swindle, the freedom to hustle and the freedom to rob people of their savings.
The leader of the Conservative Party was promoting crypto, but then we found out he was an investor in crypto. I think that is really telling because with a Ponzi scheme, we only get our money back if we sucker other rubes into put their money in too. We had the leader of the Conservative Party using his platform to tell Canadians who were worried about their savings to invest in crypto. He thought, “This is where I'm going to get my money back.” That is highly irresponsible, because who pays the price when $32 billion just vaporizes? It is not Goldman Sachs. It is not Jeff Bezos. It is ordinary working-class and middle-class people who are afraid they do not have enough savings.
I met many people who were investing in crypto because they were guaranteed that it was going to give them the kind of return on investment they could not get anywhere else. They trusted the leader of the Conservative Party.
Of course, he explained what his financial knowledge was: He stays up late into the night watching YouTube videos. I stay up late into the night watching YouTube videos too. I love watching old Motown videos. When I have to fix my toilet, YouTube is a great place to learn how to fix my toilet. However, one thing I learned from the pandemic is that just because buddy with a baseball cap sitting in his mother's basement claims he is an expert on immunology and vaccinations does not mean YouTube is a good place to get medical advice.
What we have learned is the leader of the Conservative Party stays up late into the night learning economics. It is not really too bright to trust the leader of the Conservative Party when he gets his economic vision from YouTube. He is saying he is going to get rid of regulations, he is going to get rid of the Bank of Canada and he is going to get rid of all the cobwebs that have protected people from financial scams year in, year out.
That takes us to the collapse of FTX. There were a lot of of dodgy crypto sites, but this was supposed to be the good one. This was a really good one, apparently. It was set up in the Bahamas, of course, because there is almost no regulation there. They have very limited financial regulation and it is set up as a tax haven with no reporting obligations to anybody. It is like an opaque, financial black box. Is that not exactly what the leader of the Conservative Party thinks is good for getting people investing and believing in crypto?
FTX did not have a board of directors and was not under the oversight of any American regulators, such as the SEC or the CFTC. It is this black box run by a bunch of 20-year-olds who probably would love to party with the leader of the Conservative Party as they talk about crypto conspiracies. However, here is the thing: We found out that FTX also ran a hedge fund, so people were putting their savings into and trusting this black box with no accountability or regulatory oversight. It was moving anywhere from between $1 billion and $10 billion into this side hustle. That is why we have proper financial regulations.
It is really irresponsible for the leader of the Conservative Party to feed on the fears of people in a time of uncertainty by hustling a Ponzi scheme. That is what he was doing. He was saying to trust him on the Ponzi scheme because he was going to get rid of any regulation so people could not really tell what was happening, but that Ponzi scheme would be there for people whenever they needed it. It was not, and we have seen the results.
I am certainly pleased that the member for Calgary Nose Hill is one of the few Conservatives willing to stand up in the face of this party that has now committed to anti-science, anti-vaccination and anti-economics. The Conservatives feel that any kind of regulation on hustlers and swindlers is somehow an attack on freedom: It is the freedom we all enjoy to take our hard-earned savings and get hustled by some scam artist down in the Bahamas. That is not what we should be doing.
We have to have rules in place, we have to have oversight and we have to ask questions about a system that is supposed to be financial and is trading something that does not exist in order to have no financial tracking of it. If we have an ability to transfer money through sites without tracking, of course it is going to be where money is laundered and where criminal activities are. Is that the freedom the Conservative Party believes is so important to protect: the freedom of gunrunners and gangs to clean money through cryptocurrency? We need to shine a light on this practice.
For the people who lost $32 billion in savings in 48 hours, what kind of freedom do they get? Those are hard-working people who trusted this guy while he was standing there eating a shawarma and telling everyone this is the best thing to do. Their kids should not get dental care and should not get the GST, but what they should get is an investment in cryptocurrency with no oversight and they will be better off.
The Liberals are not clear on this either. Before crypto collapsed, they were thinking this was pretty good stuff too. In fact, I know the Liberals invested in cryptocurrency in the Deputy Prime Minister's riding. Before we start promoting these kinds of dodgy financial hustles, we need to ask what rules are in place to protect people and their savings and to have proper oversight. That is something the leader of the Conservative Party refuses to do and he needs to be accountable for it.
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Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I know the member is a little cranky and a little upset because nobody is paying attention, but the word “lapdog” is unparliamentary. I would ask him to withdraw that.
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Madam Speaker, let us talk about kicking the dead dog here. I have never met a Conservative who supports any investment into green energy or green tech in western Canada.
However, what I also find fascinating is that my Liberal colleague has said the government is going to ensure that Canada remains the fourth-largest oil and gas producer. We went to COP27 with more oil and gas executives than anything else. Canada is seen as a country that is ignoring its obligations internationally. The Canada Energy Regulator predicts that Canada's oil and gas production in 2050 will be the same as it is today.
I would ask my hon. colleague this. How can the government claim it is going to meet the International Energy Agency's obligations to rapidly reduce and transition, and work with Alberta energy workers who are pushing a green economy, when what we see from the Liberals is that they continue to pump money into big oil time and again?
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- Nov/21/22 2:49:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while winter is hitting hard across northern Canada and Canadians are struggling with the rising cost of home heating, particularly in rural regions like my own, where people are on fixed incomes, oil companies are making record profits, Canadians are paying through the nose and the Conservative solution is to make pollution free for big oil, which is great for the shareholders.
As for the heat pumps, if people cannot pay their bills now, they are not going to be able to afford the rest of the cost of the installation. However, there is something the government can do. It can work with New Democrats to take the GST off home heating so that seniors and the working class can have a better deal this winter.
Will the government work with us?
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