SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 186

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 27, 2023 10:00AM
  • Apr/27/23 10:03:11 a.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-21 
Mr. Speaker, I have 21 petitions calling on the government to repeal Bill C-21, the confiscation of private property act.
21 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 10:03:48 a.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, I also have petitions asking that the government repeal the results of the mandates, hire soldiers back and reverse the hatred and contempt toward individuals who exercise their constitutionally protected conscience rights.
34 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 10:40:22 a.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, the member tirelessly champions seniors. It was mentioned that seniors are now more likely to be visiting food banks to be able to eat. Just two weeks ago, the Minister of Agriculture announced Canada's first food policy, and the food policy is going to be to fund food banks. Having Canadians dependent on government to fill their rice bowls is our first food policy. What does this tell the member about the government's intention to make life more affordable for Canadians?
85 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 3:16:32 p.m.
  • Watch
Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise on behalf of the fiscally sane constituents of Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke. This is supposed to be a debate about a budget. Sadly, the document the Liberals tabled is an insult to the word “budget”. They claim it is fiscally responsible as they cast away the last fiscal anchor. They claim it is about productivity while they strangle innovation with red tape. They claim their GST rebate is a grocery rebate, when there is no GST on groceries. Spending is clearly out of control. Each budget and fiscal update revises future spending upward. Whether it is a household budget or a business budget, the goal is to make a plan in the face of an uncertain future. If a person is responsible in their financial planning, some years they will be a little over in their estimates, and other years a little under. For a business, that might mean that an estimated profit of 5% at the end of the year might come in at 4.9% or 5.1%. It is like target shooting. If a person is generally around the target, they can be satisfied they are doing it accurately, but if their shots are way off to the extreme left, it means they are doing it wrong. As this gang shoots Canada farther and farther to the extreme left, they are no longer shooting at the target. Instead, they have decided that the best thing for Canada is to shoot ourselves in the foot. That is the best way to describe this glut of corporate subsidies for green energy. The Liberals claim that they have to spend like crazy because the Americans and Europeans are spending like crazy. No one told the Liberals that, just because all of their friends are throwing money off the bridge, it does not mean that they should too. The Liberals claim they believe in free trade, but they do not really get it. If our competitors are lighting money on fire, we do not join the bonfire; we sell them matches. Canada had an opportunity to sell natural gas to Europe, but the Prime Minister, the Mr. Dressup drama teacher, claimed there was no business case. The finance minister claims they are not picking winners and losers, then proceeds to pick which Liberal-friendly companies will get subsides and picks out all the small businesses and expects them to pay for those subsides. The government is picking electricity-hogging electric vehicles over more emissions-efficient hybrid vehicles. The government is effectively prohibiting carbon-neutral fuel development in Canada by banning internal combustion engines. All this extravagant spending is supposed to lead us to a promised land of green jobs. This was the same pipe dream we heard from Dalton McGuinty in Ontario. The result was higher electricity prices, tens of billions of tax dollars wasted, and, according to the Auditor General, over 60,000 net jobs lost. After laying waste to Ontario’s economy, the Liberals packed up their taxpayer-funded moving trucks and came to Ottawa to repeat their failed experiment. This seems to be the socialist mindset. Every time socialism is implemented, it leads to misery, suffering and death. Yet they continue to try again, thinking that, somehow, it will be different. Einstein called this insanity. What is worse is that failure only seems to make the Liberals more ambitious. In their first budget, they said they would conserve an additional 7% of Canada’s natural habitat by 2020. After eight years, they managed to reach only half of their goal. A normal person who missed the mark by half would lower their future estimates. Instead, this Prime Minister announced that he would conserve 30% by 2030. That would require him to conserve four times as much land in the next seven years as he has in the last eight years. The truth is that the Liberals know they will not be held accountable for empty promises, so they just use the simplest slogans. That is why they announced a target of 30% reduction in fertilizer emissions by 2030. They announced a Soviet-style sales quota mandating that 30% of cars must be EV by 2030, and then there is their Paris pledge of a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide by 2030. This policy-making is based on slogan. It is tweet-sized thinking. It is TikTok-style government: short, snappy, attention-deprived and a little too close to the Communists in Beijing. If we need any more evidence that this government is abandoning liberal democracy for a progressive socialist technocracy, we need look no further than the Public Health Agency report on public health and climate change.
789 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 3:21:40 p.m.
  • Watch
For the Public Health Agency report, they hired a radical academic to act as an outside consultant. They used taxpayer money to conduct focus groups with other far-left extremists working in public health. What was the conclusion of the government-published report? According to the so-called experts, climate change is not caused by carbon but by capitalism, individual liberty and democracy. In socialist mindset, capitalism is always the villain. In reality, socialist and authoritarian countries are the worst environmental offenders. Unfortunately for Canadians, the Liberals have abandoned reality-based policy, making for visions of a socialist utopia. The radical socialist public health manifesto said that non-western science fiction “offers a way of imagining the future without colonization and asking ourselves how we can get there.” While it is true that Star Trek was inspiring to many who worked at NASA, it should not form the basis of our climate policy. If these radical socialists were just sitting around in a big self-congratulatory circle while fantasizing about a climate apocalypse, they could be dismissed. However, they have laid out their plan for all to see. The report calls for a complete reordering of Canadian values led by these radical public health socialists. The authors of the report wrote, “Many experts we heard from highlighted the importance of shifting dominant societal values and transitioning to health and well-being economies if meaningful action is to be taken on climate change adaptation and mitigation.” What are those societal values that they need to shift? Here is what one expert had to say: Ultimately, there are 3 core values in western society, and for that matter, in global society, that have to change. One core value is about growth and materialism. The second core value is liberty and individualism, which has to be rethought because the kind of individualism that is preached by neoliberals is part of the problem. In response to this extremist claim that individual liberty and ending poverty are the root of all evil, the report's authors wrote: The above-noted core values, which are undermining public health and well-being, are well known, but public health systems have been successful in reorienting society values. For example, public health research and communications have changed our societal relationship with tobacco products. That is shocking to read. Radical public health experts want to socially stigmatize liberty. They want to socially stigmatize economic growth. Stigmatizing people has become the current government's calling card. That is what the Prime Minister was doing when he accused opponents of forced vaccinations of being misogynists and racists who hold unacceptable views. If someone does not agree with their plan to use climate change as an excuse to advance socialism, they accuse them of being a climate denier. The goal is to rhetorically link critics of bad climate policy to racist anti-Semites who deny the Nazi Holocaust. All societies stigmatize gluttony and over-consumption, but these socialists want to stigmatize all consumption. Then he tried to stigmatize words like “freedom” by labelling them as dog whistles. They are even trying to stigmatize the Canadian flag. None of this comes as a surprise. The Prime Minister said that Canada is a “postnational state”, and he is committed to seeing this fantasy become reality. The budget bill would further entrench the government in the market. It would keep expanding the state and driving out free enterprise until there is nothing left but the party and the state. Ever since the Prime Minister positioned the Liberals to the left of the NDP and broke the Canadian consensus that balancing the budget was the responsible thing to do, we have been sent down a dangerous path. We have become governed by slogans. The Liberals have forgotten Canada's multicultural heritage in favour of a single narrative of oppression. They love to claim they have Canadians' backs; the truth is that they just find it easier to pick people's wallets when they are hiding behind them. After eight years, the Liberals are tired, desperate and dangerous. Reduced to spewing slogans like “30 by 30”, they now project their policy on poverty onto us. We have a plan to put more money into people's wallets. They have a tax plan; we have an environmental plan. They have slogans; we have solutions. If they had any real confidence in their radical socialist agenda, they would put it to Canadians to decide. While the Liberals are busy dividing and stigmatizing Canadians, Conservatives offer unity and hope.
768 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 3:27:56 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, what this member opposite just did is called paltering: stating a fact then propagating it with a lie. What I said was that there is no GST on groceries, yet they call the bonus they are giving Canadians a GST rebate. They do not make sense. We have a concrete plan. The plan is to reduce taxes, so there is more money in people's pockets to pay their bills, feed their families and spend their money the way they feel is best, and not have the government spending on their behalves.
94 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 3:29:57 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, I am familiar with dental plans, and what they have put forth is not a dental plan. A dental plan matches codes with procedures. This is dental CERB, and we are still sorting out the problems from the CERB, which went forth initially without the necessary screening. Now we have people who were given all these thousands of dollars who need to find ways of paying it back because it was not given properly.
76 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/27/23 3:31:20 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, there are all kinds of unexploded ordinances hidden in this budget implementation bill. We cannot even tell what they will be until they start blowing up in Canadians' faces. I know “Her Majesty” is still copied and pasted and put into templates, referring to Her Majesty giving a royal assent. This is probably another copy and pasted budget. I would be surprised if it says “His Majesty” anywhere in the budget. In the meantime, Canadians should be very careful. We have had experiences with budget implementations where people had tax imposed retroactively. That is the kind of thing they bury when they push through the budget before a fulsome scrutiny can be taken on a committee-by-committee basis.
125 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/28/23 12:18:51 a.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, as the member of Parliament for the Ontario riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, I begin my comments by recognizing Canadians struggling with high food, fuel and tax bills from a broken federal government. During question period in the House, I made a direct request to the Prime Minister and his socialist coalition: give Canadians a tax break. Cancel the carbon taxes. The carbon tax is not an environmental policy, regardless of what the NDP-Liberal coalition falsely claims. The carbon tax is a tax policy. As a tax policy, the carbon tax is making life unaffordable for Canadians. While the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is not prepared to be honest with Canadians about the fact that the carbon tax is making life unaffordable for average Canadians, moments later during the same question period came this astonishing admission of failure from the Minister of Agriculture. She said and I quote, from the March 30 Hansard, “Canada's...official food policy...is designed to...support the creation of more food banks.” She even bragged that this was Canada's first official food policy. Food banks are policy failures. It is an admission of failure. The need for food banks, thanks to rising Liberal carbon taxes, is not something to be proud of. No Canadian in a country as rich and blessed in natural resources as we are should have to rely on food banks to meet their daily nutritional requirements. Food insecurity in Canada is a direct result of carbon tax policy, a bad tax policy that is intended to change the behaviour of residents who have no alternative when it comes to how they heat their homes or how they get to work. The Parliamentary Budget Officer shows that the carbon tax will cost the average family between $400 and $847 in 2023, even after the rebates, but to justify the carbon tax, the Prime Minister falsely claims that carbon tax opponents do not care about the environment. This is a bit rich coming from someone who bills working Canadians $6,000 a night to stay in fancy European hotels. Just how out of touch is this Prime Minister with the struggles of ordinary Canadians? Canadian taxpayers paid $160,000 just for security and staff for his most recent Caribbean vacation with billionaire and family friend Peter Green. Green has also made a large donation to the now discredited Pierre Elliott Trudeau family foundation that is mixed up in the Communist China election interference scandal, but $160,000 is cheap compared to the $247,000 taxpayers were forced to shell out for an earlier Caribbean vacation at the Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas. This Prime Minister is out of touch with just how destructive his policies are to average Canadians. When the Liberal Party in general and the Prime Minister in particular talk about the environment, or man-made global warming, the Prime Minister uses a propaganda technique called paltering. Paltering is the use of truthful facts to deceive. It might not feel like lying but it is. An example of paltering is, well, we know that climate is changing. That is fact. That is then followed up with some form of deception like climate alarmism. Climate alarmism, which is used by some climate extremists to justify carbon tax policy, omits the fact that climate science is still developing. Climate models are being made to say what they do not say: truth and deception. Using climate alarmism to deceive is the default excuse for every government failure, including the need for food banks as a substitute for real food security for Canadians. This is all being done to justify higher and higher carbon taxes. Paltering is being used by the government to try to sell rightfully skeptical Canadians not only on the policy for carbon taxes but a need for carbon taxes to keep increasing at a higher and higher rate.
662 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/28/23 12:26:50 a.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, paltering is used to deflect from food bank usage by promoting a grocery rebate that would not even begin to cover inflationary policy that is raising the cost of food and rebates on the carbon tax that do not cover the cost of the carbon tax. Not content to tax Canadians $40 a tonne, the carbon tax went up to $65 a tonne with the latest April Fool's Day increase. The real cost of rising carbon taxes is the need for more food banks, according to the Liberal minister of food insecurity. Conservatives believe we should protect our environment with technology, not taxes. We do not believe in punishing working people for heating their homes and driving to work. Food banks should not be a government food policy. It is time this out-of-touch Prime Minister and his costly coalition admit that carbon taxes are hurting Canadians.
151 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Apr/28/23 12:28:49 a.m.
  • Watch
They should not have taken the money in the first place.
11 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border