44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 27, 2023 10:00AM
- Apr/27/23 10:40:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I just wanted to ask my hon. colleague about the carbon tax. He did not talk too much about it, but I know the carbon tax is a massive driver of inflation here in Canada, and I was just wondering if he has any thoughts on what we should do with the carbon tax.
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- Apr/27/23 10:54:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was not here during the Harper years, so it is always great to hear some of the stories of the glory years of Canada. I know that Alberta flourished under those years. I know that Conservatives have worked hard to bring down taxes all across the country. I am wondering if he has any other good stories about the Harper years of bringing down taxes.
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- Apr/27/23 10:58:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is great to be able to follow the speech from the member for Red Deer—Lacombe, who is one of my mentors in this place and one of the first members of Parliament I ever met.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: That's scary.
Mr. Arnold Viersen: Madam Speaker, the Liberal member across the way is saying that is scary. I am not sure who his mentor is, but I assure him the member for Red Deer—Lacombe has been a great mentor to me in this place, and I want to thank him for that.
I do not say this often, but the Liberals have got something right in this budget. Members might be surprised to hear that from me. I hope the people at home will stay on to listen a bit longer to my speech, because the Liberals got something right on page 92. If one checks out the budget booklet that was handed out in this place, page 92 mentions “Getting Major Projects Done”. I cannot agree more with that.
This country has a deficit of major projects getting built. Under Stephen Harper, under the Conservatives, there was a great focus on developing our natural resources, on building things and on being a country that made things, built things, got our resources to market, that ensured our grain was moving on trains, all these kinds of things.
The Liberals are finally admitting in the latest budget that this is a country that cannot get things built and they are going to need to pay special attention to getting major projects built. A case in point is the Trans Mountain pipeline, a pipeline that was approved under a Conservative government. It is a pipeline that was ready to be built. A private company was going to use its own money to build it. The Liberal government came along and said it would buy it, so it bought the pipeline for $6 billion and figured it would cost another $6 billion to build it. We are now at over $30 billion spent and that pipeline is not built. This is a case in point that the Liberals cannot build major projects.
We have seen over 15 different pipeline projects and LNG projects that were ready to be built and going through the approval process back in 2015 when Conservatives were in government all disappear off the books one by one as companies took their money and looked elsewhere.
In my own riding of Peace River—Westlock in northern Alberta, the Carmon Creek project was a major oil sands development by Shell. It was a $5-billion project, if my memory serves me well. Shell, in 2015, had already spent $2 billion on that project and cancelled it. It walked away from the $2 billion it spent in northern Alberta, took the rest of the money and invested it in a new project. It was fascinating to watch. A week after it cancelled the Carmon Creek project, it announced it was pursuing an oil development project in Kazakhstan.
That just goes to show the world noticed Canada was not open for business. Since then we have seen a dramatic reduction in the production of all the things Canada produces.
I want to point out the way Liberals think. It is an interesting way of dealing with things. Their measure of success is how much money they spend on things. It sounds good. I get it. The Liberals will say they spent a certain amount of money on something. Especially when it is in the billions of dollars, one thinks that if that much money was spent, it is great, but what they never reference is what we get for that.
A case in point brings me back to the Trans Mountain pipeline again. That pipeline was going to be built by private money with no money from the government. The Liberal government bought the pipeline and is now spending taxpayers' money to build that pipeline. The money that was spent there is not a success at all. We could have had that pipeline built in Canada by a private company that would be paying tax revenue to Canada. The amount of money the government has paid to build pipelines in this country is not a success. No matter how big the number is, it is never going to be a success. It uses that for a whole host of different things.
When we point out to the Liberals that our border is not secure, they say they are spending more money than the Conservatives ever did on security. It is a fascinating thing that the border used to be much more secure. We did not have problems with people running across the border when the Conservatives were in power. When the Liberals came to power, that became a problem. They have spent more money on border security and have less of a secure border. That is not success. It is paying more and getting less. That is the worst.
I once made a speech in this place about what kind of car we are buying. The Liberals will tell us that they spent x amount of dollars or lots of money buying a particular car, but they never tell us what kind of car they bought. If they bought a Rolls-Royce for that kind of money, we might say “Oh, good job”, but if they bought a K-car, we would say “Oh, we are getting ripped off here.” They never tell us what kind of car. They never want to talk about that side of the equation. That is really what we are after here.
We have also seen record 40-year highs in inflation. I want to note that the member for Winnipeg North was saying that since this budget was introduced, inflation has gone down. If we are driving away from town at 100 kilometres an hour and we slow down to 80 kilometres an hour, we are still moving away from town. The inflation rate is like the speed we are going at. Therefore, when the member says that the rate of inflation has slowed down, that is great, but the inflation would actually have to go negative for a time in order for us to return and get the prices of things back to what they were two years ago. We would have to go to a negative inflation rate. Therefore, when they say that the inflation went from 6% or 9% down to 4% or 5%, it is great that the inflation is heading in the right direction, but it actually has to go negative for a time before we are going to get the prices of things going back.
If we want to head back to town, we actually have to stop, get to zero kilometres an hour, turn around and head in the other direction. It is quite misleading when the Liberals say the inflation is going down. The inflation is the speed of things or the rate of things; it is not the direction in which we are going. We need to turn the inflation around. We need to ensure that Canadians' paycheques can buy the things that Canadians need to live. Money is the measure of things and not necessarily the value of things. Probably the fundamental difference between Liberals and Conservatives is our view of money.
I also want to talk a bit about the carbon tax and its inflationary impacts on Canadians. I have talked to folks from across the country, and particularly in my riding, about how the carbon tax is just killing everybody's ability to get to work, buy groceries and heat their homes. I talked to people at the big lumber production facilities in my area, and the amount of carbon tax they pay in a single month is just astounding. Some of these facilities use a lot of electricity, and the carbon tax on that is astronomical. Therefore, when the Liberals say that most Canadians are getting back more than they pay, that is not true. Even if that were true, still the major industries that we deal with in this country are paying the carbon tax on electricity that our competitor countries that are producing the same products are not. We are importing those products across the border without charging that carbon tax on them. We are putting ourselves at a massive disadvantage.
Finally, I want to talk a bit about the strike that is happening right now. The Liberal government has increased the public service dramatically. It nearly doubled the cost of the public service over that last eight years. Never before have we seen such a big strike in Canadian history. We have never had the public service go on strike like this before, so we are very concerned about the fact that the government would spend so much more money on the public service and yet still continue to get a strike out of the deal. We need to support our public servants. We need to back them up. We need to not use them as fodder for political scandals that happen in this place. We have seen, over and over again, that when the Prime Minister runs into trouble with his own ethical scandals he throws some public servant under the bus and skates away from the issue.
Therefore, we will be opposing this budget. We will be putting forward a Conservative vision of Canada and we look forward to facing the Canadian public in the next election.
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- Apr/27/23 11:09:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I had many more things to say, and one of the other areas I wanted to talk about was the crime rates in this country. Under Stephen Harper, the crime rates had fallen to historic lows. Violent crime was down to places it had never been before. If we look at graphs of violent crime, there is a distinct downward trend until 2015 and since then it has gone exponentially up.
After eight years of this Liberal government, Canadians do not feel safe on their own streets.
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- Apr/27/23 11:11:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to point out that currently in northern British Columbia, logging companies are shutting down mills. Under the Liberal government, logging cannot continue in this country. It also has a lot to do with the NDP government, which is a do nothing—
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- Apr/27/23 11:11:34 p.m.
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—make sure nothing is happening in this country, make sure that our natural resources do not get developed, make sure—
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- Apr/27/23 11:11:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to point out that under an NDP government, sawmills in northern British Columbia are being shut down and the Liberal-NDP coalition seems to be fine with that.
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- Apr/27/23 11:12:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, whatever the member is talking about is cold comfort to the over 600 people who have lost their jobs in Chetwynd and Houston, British Columbia. We know that the NDP-Liberal coalition is terrible for resource development.
A Conservative government will ensure that our resources get to market and that people get paid a fair value for those resources.
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