44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 24, 2023 11:00AM
Before I move on, Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with a great man, who we call the great boss from the great riding of Beauce.
When my family moved to Canada, there used to be a pretty good deal between Canada and its citizens. Today, after eight years of the Prime Minister and the Liberal-NDP government, that deal feels broken and so does Canada. One in five newcomers to our great country want to pack up and leave.
The number one reason for that is the high cost of living that has been caused by the Liberal-NDP government. It borrowed and spent more money than every single government before it combined. It made interest rates go up and that made the cost-of-living crisis even worse. The government is the architect of this inflationary fire, and the budget has thrown a $69.7-billion jerry can on top of the inflationary fire, which has made things even worse for Canadians.
My family moved here when I was young because we wanted to live the “Canadian dream”. My parents wanted us to have a safer future and a better education. They wanted us to be raised in a country where we could feel safe and where we could raise kids to feel the same way. However, after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, that Canadian dream is nothing but a nightmare and a broken dream today.
Newcomers should want to flock to Canada, but Canada is not seen as a country where people can survive. It is not seen as a country that is even open for business. When we look at the budget, productivity is not going to grow because the government has done nothing to help support businesses and create an environment that would have more investment coming to it.
In fact, the number one complaint that we hear is that the regulatory burdens and the economic uncertainty that the government has created does not let good investment and good jobs come to Canada. The government would rather stand under its make-believe ideology on things like the job-killing carbon tax, which is driving people away. It is driving costs up. It is making everything more expensive, and Canadians are suffering for that.
Canada is one of the last destinations people want to come to today. That is clear when we hear that one out of five newcomers want to pack up and leave.
We can look at some of the disastrous policies that have caused so much pain on Canadians today.
Let us look at housing. When we moved to Canada, it was reasonable to find a house. Someone could get a job and put in the hard work. That was the deal Canada used to have. If people worked hard, they would see the fruits of their labour. That deal is broken today. Nine out of 10 young people say that affording a home is just a pipe dream now because of the rising cost of living.
Who can save for a down payment? Down payments have doubled. People have to spend double just to for a down payment on a house now. Rents and mortgages have doubled under the Prime Minister, after eight years of failed housing policies. It is impossible for young people to move out of their parents' basements today because of eight years of failed housing policies.
How does a government spend $89 billion on housing and the outcome is that rents and mortgages have doubled, and nine out of 10 young people say they will never be able to afford a home? How does a government spend so much to accomplish so little? It is on par for that government. It shows its incompetence every day. It does not stand with the common person. It does not want to make the lives of people easier. If it did, it would not have jacked up the cost of the failed carbon tax. It has accomplished so little on that as well.
We finally have an environment minister who admitted that the government misled Canadians all along about the failed carbon tax scam. For years, the government said that it was going to make the lives of people better. For years, it said that Canadians would get more back from this carbon tax scam in so-called carbon pricing rebates than what they would pay into it. We now have the Liberal environment minister admitting that this was misleading all along.
We requested a report from the PBO report and that report confirmed that more Canadians would pay more out of pocket in this scam than what they would get back in these phoney rebates. It is time for the Liberal-NDP government to stop causing Canadians, farmers and producers pain. It needs to scrap this scam, axe the carbon tax and let Canadians survive.
If we look at the price of groceries today, we see how the carbon tax has impacted how expensive they are getting. The government has done nothing to help with the inflation it has caused. It not only has caused this inflation, but it keeps adding more fuel to the fire, and the carbon tax is a clear example of that when we look at the price of groceries.
When me and my family, and many other newcomers, came to this country, we could not have imagined that in a single month 1.5 million Canadians would be visiting a food bank, a third of whom are children. One-in-five Canadians are skipping meals. One-in-five Canadians are saying that they are completely out of money. This is not the Canada that me and my family envisioned when we moved here.
However, hope is on the horizon. We have a new Conservative leader who will turn this hurt that the Liberal-NDP government caused Canadians into hope. We are going to do many things, the first of which is to get rid of the Liberal-NDP government. We are going to ensure that we bring home powerful Canadian paycheques. We are going to bring home lower prices for Canadians. We are going to get rid of this job-killing, failed carbon tax scam. Most important, we are going to bring in more homes that our young people and many others can afford. We are going to get the gatekeepers out of the way. We are going to ensure that Canadians keep more of their hard-earned paycheques in their pockets so they can make their own decisions and bring back the freedom our country so much deserves.
The Conservatives will restore safety to our streets, so people do not feel they are going to be attacked randomly. We keep seeing violent crime on the increase after eight years of the government. We need to bring home common-sense solutions for the common people. We need to return Canada to a place where we have elected officials who work for the people, who understand their pain and do not cause more pain. That is exactly what the Conservatives will do when our new Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, becomes the Prime Minister of Canada. We will return Canada to being the freest nation in the world.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise today and speak to the implementation of the budget. It is an incredible honour for me, as well, to be splitting my time with the great member for Edmonton Manning, who is a very valuable colleague. I am really looking forward to hearing what he has to say later. However, before that, members have to endure 10 minutes of my speaking.
It might not come as any surprise, based on the debate we have had over the last couple of weeks, but Conservatives have not supported and will not be supporting the implementation of this budget, mainly for three reasons. We laid out key priorities that we wanted to see in this budget ahead of time and they really were not met.
This budget would add billions of dollars in debt, with no plan to get back to balance. The Prime Minister has already added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined in this country and there is no plan to get to balance. That is the part that really worries me. Not only would this spending add fuel to the inflationary fire and increase the cost of living, but it would also threaten the sustainability of our public services for future generations. Each dollar we have to spend servicing debt is a dollar we cannot be spending on other services. That is something we all have to keep in mind, moving forward, and the government should keep in mind that, when it racks up billions of dollars in debt, it is threatening our social services for future generations. This budget would also raise taxes. As I just alluded to, we know there is a cost of living crisis with inflation. The government has chosen, once again, to raise taxes for Canadians further and there is truly no plan to build homes and get affordable units built.
For those three main reasons, Conservatives voted against the budget, and I have every expectation that, moving forward, we will be voting against the implementation of this budget.
I want to take a step back and talk about another major issues that I feel is neglected in this budget. That is about community safety. We have seen concerns with community safety around the region in northwestern Ontario in communities like Kenora, Dryden and Sioux Lookout. Policing calls for services have been up, as have, of course, the costs that go with this, to the point where municipalities are struggling and trying to figure out how they are going to be able to deal with those costs. We have seen assaults, slashed tires, vehicle break-ins and things like needles being found around the community, all happening with greater frequency around the area.
As I mentioned, we are seeing this right across northwestern Ontario, but there has been a certain amount of media coverage specifically around the city of Kenora. It is the largest community in the riding, so a lot of the notes I will refer to will mention Kenora specifically, but I would like members to keep in mind that it is something that is not unique to the city of Kenora but is right across northwestern Ontario.
We have seen articles with headlines such as “Kenora assault leaves one with life threatening injuries”, from March. The Kenora OPP has recently released figures showing that property crime has actually increased 10% year over year. It is now at the point where local professionals and business owners are scared to go to work. When I go door knocking and talk to people around the community, many residents tell me they are afraid to go downtown and certainly would not go downtown in the evening or at night. That is incredibly sad on a number of levels. Kenora is one of the smallest cities in Ontario. It has 15,000 people. We did not even lock our doors when we were growing up. It is really one of those tight-knit, small-town communities and people are now scared to go downtown. Many businesses have been locking their doors during operating hours; people have to ring the doorbell in order to gain access.
It brings up the question of what is driving all of this. Why are we seeing this increase in crime, and why are people feeling less safe? There is certainly no single answer and there is no single solution, but one of the issues we are seeing in Kenora and in the other communities of our riding is that, unfortunately, there are many homeless residents. Many of these individuals are struggling with their mental health and with addiction challenges, and they do not have proper supports around them. There is great work being done by people like Dr. Jonny Grek, who has been going around providing treatment to homeless residents on the street. I had the opportunity very recently to join him for a walk to see what he does.
There are other organizations, like Ne-Chee Friendship Centre; the Makwa Patrol, also known as the Bear Clan Patrol in other areas of the country; and the Morningstar Detoxification Centre. These are all incredible organizations with great people doing great work to help those who are vulnerable and those who are struggling. However, it is an indisputable fact that the current systems just cannot deal with the magnitude of the issue before us right now. This is truly a crisis.
Coupled with the addiction concern, there has been an increase in HIV. In 2022, there were more HIV cases in Kenora than in the previous eight years combined. Overdose deaths have increased 82%, year over year, and northwestern Ontario now has the highest per capita overdose mortality rate in the province of Ontario.
On housing, and I mentioned that this issue is coupled with housing, the KDSB, the Kenora District Services Board, for those who do not know, estimates that there are 100 homeless residents in the small community of Kenora. There are more than 1,300 households on an affordable housing wait-list; that is an increase of nearly 1,000 households from just nine years ago, to paint the picture of the broader housing issue we are seeing across the region.
This budget does mention housing a bit. It does mention treatment and recovery, but on treatment and recovery specifically, it is light on details. Given the fact that this issue has been spiralling for the last eight years and that there have not been proper supports put in place, I know that a lot of people in the Kenora district and northwestern Ontario, myself included, really do not feel the government will step up to meet this challenge.
On the other hand, Conservatives support policies that get people into recovery instead of spending a night in a cell, only to be released and continue that cycle over and over again. I have seen that far too often. I have done a few ride-alongs and have been able to go around the community, not just in Kenora but also in Pickle Lake, Dryden and others. I have seen people who have asked to be arrested so that they have somewhere to stay. I have heard of people who have chosen to commit a crime so that, if they do not have proper supports around them, they know they will have a few nights of somewhere to stay where they will have a bed and a meal.
Conservatives support treatment and recovery options. That includes giving Correctional Services power to designate all or part of a penitentiary as a treatment facility. We also support greater consequences for repeat violent offenders and for the drug dealers who are preying on these vulnerable people with addictions. We want to see greater consequences for those individuals, but, unfortunately, violent crime was not mentioned even once in this budget. Overall, those solutions, addictions treatment and recovery, are what I feel is missing from this budget and it is what Conservatives will certainly be focusing on over the next number of months and into the term in which we form government.
As I mentioned, there is no silver-bullet solution to this, but it would certainly help to address the crisis that we are seeing on the streets of Kenora, of Dryden and of Sioux Lookout, to help ensure that everyone in our community is safe, from the vulnerable residents, the homeless population, to the business owners and professionals and the visitors. Kenora sits on the beautiful Lake of the Woods in northwestern Ontario and it is an incredibly popular tourist spot each summer. We want to make sure that everyone in our community is safe.
This budget does not get it done, but Conservatives will.
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Madam Speaker, the budget contains much inflationary pressure. There is $15 billion for an infrastructure bank that never built a project and another $15 billion for a slush fund in the Canada growth fund with no details on what that is about. Although there is such an crisis in affordable housing, as there is in my riding, the budget has $5.5 billion dollars to build only 4,500 spaces and remove barriers to building maybe another 100,000. That is a huge gap, and it is another inflationary pressure.
Could the member comment on that?
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