44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 23, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of my constituents in the food-producing riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
Normally, Canadians would have to first elect a Conservative government before they could receive Conservative legislation. After eight years, it is possible that the gravity of the financial hold the Liberal-NDP government has plunged us into is warping space and time. The other possibility is that a desperate Prime Minister, down in the polls, will steal any idea he can to save his tired, worn-out, socialist coalition. It might be a tired cliché, but if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Bill C-56 might just be a Liberal love letter to the Conservative Party. The Liberals think that if they can walk like Conservatives and talk like Conservatives, maybe they will poll like Conservatives.
The bill is what the Internet likes to call “copypasta”, which refers to any text-based meme copied and shared on the Internet, what people born in the last century used to call “quotes”. The bill copies and pastes text from the member for Bay of Quinte's private member's bill on competition reform into the legislation before us. The bill also copies and pastes the policy of the leader of His Majesty's official opposition to eliminate GST on purpose-built rental housing.
Nonetheless, even when the NDP-Liberal government takes a break from bankrupting the country to pass Conservative legislation, it does so in the most deceptive way possible. It is calling the legislation the “affordable housing and groceries act”. Back in the days when Canada had a strong, stable economy and a strong, stable Conservative prime minister, the Liberals used to complain constantly about our approach to naming legislation with obvious political messaging. The Liberal member for Winnipeg North rose 22 times to complain about the presence of a single word in a short title. Since we are debating copypasta legislation, I am just going to borrow four sentences from the member for Winnipeg North when he sat on this side of the House. He said:
One of the biggest issues I have with the [Liberal] government is the type of propaganda and political spin it puts on the legislation it brings to the House of Commons. We see this yet again with Bill [C-56]. The Government of Canada and the Prime Minister are trying to give the impression that if we pass this legislation there will be [affordable groceries]. If the [Liberals] were honest with Canadians, which is a rarity with the government, they would acknowledge that achieving [affordable groceries] is not as easy as just saying it in the title of a bill and then having [338] members of Parliament voting in favour of the legislation.
The actual bill the member for Winnipeg North was referring to was the Drug-Free Prisons Act. The bill specifically addressed the issue of drugs in our prisons. He said that the Conservative government was trying to give the impression that passing this would mean prisons were drug-free. Any reasonable Canadian could look at the bill and say, “Yes, the Conservative government wants prisons to be drug-free.” It was not called the “100% drug-free prisons act”. It was not called the “totally drug-free prisons act”. It was just the Drug-Free Prisons Act, yet that was enough for the Liberals to accuse us of misleading Canadians.
The hypocrisy of the Liberal Party truly knows no limits. For Liberals to call the legislation before us the “affordable housing and groceries act” is a slap in the face to every single Canadian struggling with the cost of living. Canadians are struggling to afford food, and the Liberal government is trying to gaslight them into thinking the legislation would somehow undo the grocery cartels, but the bill would address only threats to competition from mergers going forward. That would be an important change to make in a country that suffers from a lack of competition in banking, transportation and telecommunications, which are, not coincidentally, all federally regulated industries. The NDP-Liberal government knows the legislation would have zero impact on food prices, yet it calls it the “affordable housing and groceries act”. That is pure propaganda, and it is insulting.
However, Canadians are not stupid. They can clearly see the NDP-Liberal government's real grocery policy is higher prices. Every Canadian knows this is the official policy of the Liberal Party: to increase the cost of energy. It is Liberal policy to increase prices on everything made using energy, everything shipped using energy and everything grown using energy.
That is the purpose of the carbon tax. That is the purpose of the costly fuel regulations. That is the purpose of the blackout electricity regulations. Together, these policies represent a triple threat to affordable food prices—
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- Nov/23/23 10:14:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, together, these policies represent a triple threat to affordable food prices, but that was not enough for the proudly socialist coalition. They were not happy enough with Canadians sucking up bad policies through paper straws. That is why the minister for Communist China's environment is using a pollution prevention order to ban plastic food packaging. The Liberals are not passing legislation. They are not even using regulation. They are issuing an order under the Environmental Protection Act.
The government was given extraordinary power by Parliament to protect the environment from actual danger. Past orders included requiring dentists to prevent mercury from getting into the environment when disposing of dental amalgams. They were never meant for taking recyclable food containers off store shelves. This is another obvious abuse of power.
It is the same as when the Liberals illegally banned plastic straws. They knew this sneaky policy will increase the price of food, the same way they knew imposing the carbon tax and the costly fuel regulations would hammer Atlantic Canada especially hard. They knew it and they did it anyhow. They knew their policies would make life unaffordable. They knew making energy more expensive would make food more expensive. They knew it, but they did not care about Canadians struggling with the cost of living.
Their ideological obsession has morphed into a religious obsession. The church of climate socialism believes we must repent for the sin of capitalism or else we will face a climate apocalypse. Anyone who dissents from climate socialism is branded a heretic. The Liberals need this deep faith in their own righteousness to justify to themselves that it is okay to call this an affordable groceries bill when it has nothing to do with grocery prices. As I said from the start, the contents of the bill were lifted from Conservative bills. Conservatives put forward positive policies. We look forward to seeing how they can be improved in committee.
The government could have chosen plenty of positive-sounding political titles to market the bill. Instead, the Prime Minister made the decision to gaslight Canadians. He will fly around the country dumping tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere claiming he has an affordable groceries bill that proves he is not completely out of touch. Meanwhile, the environment minister, the unrepentant vandal who once attacked the home of Ralph Klein and terrorized his wife, seeks to increase the cost of food with more plastic bans. Not only will this plastic packaging ban lead to higher prices, but it will also reduce competition. This would be like Harper introducing the drug-free prison act while Peter MacKay and Jason Kenney are going around handing out crack pipes to convicts. I can just imagine what the member for Winnipeg North would have to say about that.
Let us get the bill to committee. Even though it has been plagiarized from Conservative bills, we have to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. We know the Liberals like to copy and paste things into legislation. We know it because they did it when they tried to ban hunting rifles. That bill was riddled with the kinds of typographical errors that come from copying and pasting text between different types of documents. That Liberals are lazy and lackadaisical about legislation is not a surprise to lawful firearms owners, but after eight years, one would have thought they would be making fewer errors with experience.
The truth is that they are tired and worn out. That is why we have seen a steady march of senior Liberal staffers out of government and into senior lobbying positions. The smart ones are fleeing a sinking ship. The desperate ones are trying to bail it out. The bad ones claim the ship is not sinking. The Liberals claim the ship is flying full of affordable food. Canadians will pay a heavy price for Liberal delusions. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
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- Nov/23/23 10:21:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise to hear this kind of question from the “block everything” party. In fact, what our legislation was going to say is that what would happen is that we would—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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- Nov/23/23 10:22:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservative legislation would have provided extra incentive for the municipalities that chose to build more housing and remove the barriers, such as costly development fees that do not justify what the work being done is or the building permit cost that, right now, is $15,000 a house in some places.
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- Nov/23/23 10:23:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a Christian. I only hear the proselytizing from the other parties, so I have not joined that and I have not attended one of their religious meetings. I think this time it is going to be held in the United Arab Emirates, or perhaps it is going on right now. Perhaps they will tell one of the crowd of people who have been dispatched from Canada to tell us about it when they come back and explain that particular curriculum.
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- Nov/23/23 10:25:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is misinformation, disinformation and malinformation. Call up the Kremlin and have them bring their spy back over there. The next thing we know, we are going to be watching an episode of what the member of Parliament has been doing on Spy Ops. We will have to tune into Netflix if it is not censored yet.
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- Nov/23/23 10:25:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I can say that Canadians, especially the ones I have been talking to across the country, know they are being gaslit and are tired of it. Not only that, they are tired of the carbon tax being applied to the gaslighting fuel the Liberals are gaslighting them with.
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