44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 1, 2023 10:00AM
- Dec/1/23 10:38:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary completely avoided answering the question from the member for Lakeland, demonstrating that the bill would not actually impact the workers most affected by the unjust transition act. I know she wants to avoid saying that. The member from the Bloc directly asked the parliamentary secretary why it is that the legislation is not called by what it would actually do, which is unjustly transition workers out of the jobs they have worked in for generations, in many cases.
The parliamentary secretary also avoided answering another part of the member for Lakeland's question, which was about the fact that the subamendment being proposed at committee is to invite witnesses from companies and people directly affected from worker-held businesses and small businesses, who are not even talked about directly in the legislation. They are people who work in energy and in oil and gas, and, again, who contribute to the shared prosperity of this country.
Why is the parliamentary secretary avoiding answering these types of questions? Why is she focused only on procedural matters? I will remind her that at the industry committee right now, her own members are filibustering.
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- Dec/1/23 12:24:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise on behalf of the constituents of Calgary Shepard.
This is the 14th report of the Public Accounts committee, a committee I got to chair briefly. I know that there are other members here who have had the honour of chairing that committee as well. It is one of the most interesting committees to be on because it is one that deals very closely with the Auditor General and with their reports.
For constituents back home, the 14th report is an audit of several government programs, and I see five of them, that account for hundreds of millions of dollars, and of how the money is spent. All of these programs deal with input costs and how the government is trying to offset the high cost of certain grocery products available in the aisles. The report accounts for how, in this particular case, the programs try to provide reasonably, affordably priced groceries for people who are trying to purchase them.
For weeks now, we have been talking about Bill C-234, which is now stuck in the Senate because Liberal-appointed senators will not lead it to a vote so it can be passed after the House has already spoken. I have always been taken by the argument, made by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills, that Bill C-234 is a spending bill. The House has Standing Orders, and there is a long constitutional tradition that, when we pass spending bills in the House of Commons, the Senate of Canada, the other place, does not have the right to continuously block it; it has to pass those types of bills.
In a private member's bill, we cannot pass new taxation but we can do a carve-out, and Bill C-234 would do a carve out. There is already a carve-out that was, by the Liberal government's own admission, created by the government for individuals with heating oil—
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- Dec/1/23 12:26:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that answers to questions have been tabled in the House.
The government has now created one carve-out for heating oil. It did it for electoral reasons. One of the Liberal cabinet ministers said exactly that, that if westerners, prairie Canadians like myself, expected to get a carve-out for natural gas, which is the primary fuel used to heat our homes in the winter, then we should have elected more Liberals. It is very much political. The Supreme Court decision on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act confirmed that a carbon tax was possible in Canada. The Supreme Court specifically said that if applied all across the board, then there was a defensible nature to it. Carve-outs undermine that legal argument.
Bill C-234 demonstrates the willingness of the House to try to make groceries and food affordable again. After eight years of the Liberal government, we do not have that. Consistently, the number one issue I get emails about from the people in my riding is the sticker shock they get when they go to the aisles for fresh produce, cereals or meat. Everything is more expensive.
A lot of the government programs in place on which the Auditor General did an audit are trying to achieve affordable food, but we are not talking about more than $1 billion. Bill C-234 would give our farmers a billion-dollar tax break on the carbon tax by providing them with a carve-out. During question period today, members raised individual cases of farmers who are paying thousands of dollars a month on their farms for things like grain drying. These thousands of dollars then have to be passed on to consumers.
In my riding, I think the closest connection we have to farms is our grocery stores. I say that because a lot of farmers and ranchers retire to my riding; a lot of multi-generational farmers and ranchers choose to retire in the city. There is a very large hospital in my riding, and retirees want closeness to services. They retire to the city, but their kids continue the farm operations. They continue the long-standing family tradition of owning and operating a family farm. They are all facing tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs that they must pass on to consumers. That is what happens every time there is an increase that the government imposes. This is not a market mechanism; this is an imposition. It is going up $15 every single year. It does not care what the market says; it is just a government-imposed tax. It is simply driving up the costs of everything we buy in the grocery store.
As the Auditor General did an audit on these programs, I want to make sure people back home understand that the Senate continues to block Bill C-234 and not leave it to a vote because the Liberal senators do not want to see the vote. Liberal-appointed senators do not want to see a break for farmers of $1 billion. That billion dollars would be huge in my riding and would make a huge difference to the price we pay for groceries.
I always have a Yiddish proverb when I rise in the House. I think I may have forgotten once. The member for Edmonton West said “finally”, because he was waiting for this: “Truth never dies, but lives a [wretched] life.” That is a truth I want to share with the House today, because when we have heard from the government side, the Liberals' talking points are that they do not know how the Senate works. We do know how the Senate works. We have Conservative senators whom we caucus with. They explain to us what is going on on the floor of the Senate, what discussions are going on and which individual Liberal-appointed senators are leading the charge, making amendments and trying to stall at committees.
We have a bicameral system, two Houses in our Parliament. I am an Albertan, and I would like to see more elected senators. I hold firm to that position. A triple-E Senate is a long-standing Alberta position. Albertans have been demanding an elected Senate for generations now. We do have Senate elections. I want to pay homage to the fact that we do have them and that the Prime Minister should be appointing from our senatorial election list: Pam Davidson, Erica Barootes and Mykhailo Martyniouk, who is a proud Ukrainian Canadian. The government refuses to appoint them. The Prime Minister refuses to appoint a Ukrainian Canadian senator from Edmonton who earned the right to sit in the Senate by running in an election. I just checked, and he has received more votes, over 220,000 votes in the senatorial election, than any member of the House, including myself. I came near, as close as probably any other member, with over 44,000 votes in my riding. It was close, but not close enough to what Mykhailo got.
Some of our elected senators have received over 300,000 votes. They have earned the right, by universal suffrage in Alberta, to sit in the Senate and represent people and they have a right to do that.
Leading back to this audit and leading back to the Yiddish proverb that I shared, every single time the government rises in the House and tries to make a claim that we do not know how the Senate works, that senators are doing their jobs and that these are independent senators, I have not seen a single Conservative senator appointed by the government. I have not seen a single senator appointed by the government side that does not—
Mr. Charlie Angus: Larry Smith, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy.
Mr. Tom Kmiec: Mr. Speaker, I hear a member heckling again. It is the same voice I hear all the time, from the member for Timmins—James Bay. He spends more time heckling and talking about Toronto subways than he does about the people from Timmins—James Bay. I want to wish him good luck in a future life when he perhaps will try to go and get a pundit job with maybe the CBC; sorry, not the CBC because we are going to defund that once we earn the right to govern. Maybe he will have a good time at his condo in Toronto and will have a long time in retirement there when he keeps fighting for those subway systems that his constituents do not use. His constituents are also paying. They are seeing the sticker shock in their grocery stores, like my constituents are.
Farmers are paying a carbon tax that they get no relief from. This was not audited in the Auditor General's public accounts report here, but I am speaking of a $1-billion tax relief for our farmers, and they deserve it. They work hard. I see this in those who retired to my riding who are ranchers and farmers who spent 40 or 50 years doing back-breaking labour producing the food that we eat that is in our grocery stores. The government imposes new taxes and raises the personal income tax and in fact went after farmers when it went after professional corporations. It jacked up taxes. I watched an orchard farmer from Atlantic Canada break down and cry at the finance committee because he was facing the destruction of his business, pre-2019, when the government was changing the small-business tax rate. He wanted to be able to pass the orchard on to his daughters. That is the current government. This is what it does every single time.
Therefore, as we are standing here drawing the attention of Canadians, of the House of Commons and of members of Parliament and senators who are watching, we want the senators to pass Bill C-234 before Christmas and the faster the better, so that Canadians can put a good healthy meal on the table and have a merry Christmas this winter, which they deserve and they work hard for.
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- Dec/1/23 12:35:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have respect for the member for Winnipeg North. He does the best he can for his Liberal side, rising consistently in the House and trying to do the best that he can with the miserable talking points that the Liberals receive.
Let us go back to the record. There is RADARSAT satellite imagery of where Russian troops went across the border. The Stephen Harper government gave access to the Ukrainian government to use RADARSAT. The government took it away in 2016 and denied the ability of Ukraine to prepare itself for a possible Russian invasion.
Former minister of foreign affairs, Stéphane Dion, at the foreign affairs committee used to claim that we must speak of Vladimir Putin and restore relations and talk to him wherever possible. The chair of that foreign affairs committee, Bob Nault, repeatedly said things that I would say were for the restoration of a pro-Russian line and speaking more to Russians.
That same party keeps denying that we already have a free trade agreement. The Liberals keep expecting that we could do more free trade now, but we already have a free trade deal with Ukraine.
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- Dec/1/23 12:37:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us talk about Bill C-11, which was passed in the Senate. I think there is a big difference when we are talking about a bill that seeks to determine what people have the right to access online, the freedom of speech that they should have and what the government can control on YouTube, Facebook and the Internet in general.
With regard to the cost of food, we know that more than two million people have visited food banks over the past few months. With Bill C-234, we see an opportunity to tell the Senate, as we have before, that we, in the House of Commons, are the ones who have the right to impose taxes and create tax credits. That is $1 million for our farmers. It is an opportunity to ensure that people can put food on the table this Christmas.
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- Dec/1/23 12:39:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is not enough time to respond to that ridiculous statement.
I just want to wish the member a happy defeat in the next election when the people of Timmins—James Bay send him packing, and I hope that he enjoys his retirement.
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