44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 1, 2024 10:00AM
- Feb/1/24 10:07:34 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise and present this petition on behalf of folks who note that a guaranteed livable income would, first of all, establish an income floor below which no Canadian could fall and reflect regional differences in the cost of living.
The petitioners go on to note that it could replace the current patchwork of federal and provincial income assistance programs with a single, universal cash benefit. They note that it could be administered through the existing tax system and require no means testing, thereby dramatically reducing federal and provincial administrative costs.
The petitioners go on to note that it could reduce poverty, thereby reducing the demand on social services, law enforcement and health care, resulting in additional cost savings for government and taxpayers. Most importantly, it would provide a financial safety net for all Canadians, especially through major economic shifts, pandemics, natural disasters and industry automation.
As a result, the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to implement a guaranteed livable income for all Canadians.
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- Feb/1/24 10:21:00 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that the carbon tax has proven to be a tax plan, not an environmental plan, the House call on the Liberal government to cancel the April 1, 2024, carbon tax increase.
He said: Mr. Speaker, after eight years in office, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost. That is why Canada needs a common-sense government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop crime.
After eight years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. That is why we need a common-sense Conservative government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Today, I rise on the first of those Conservative priorities. I think members across the way are becoming more and more convinced that we might be onto something with this four-point plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Why do we want to axe the tax? Let me start with yesterday's debate with the Prime Minister.
I highlighted, once again, the Medeiros family farm. It produces mushrooms for all the city of Ottawa but has been facing tens of thousands of dollars in monthly carbon tax bills alone. Now, the Prime Minister claimed that I told the farm to stand on its own two feet when it was trying to bring natural gas to the farm and that I could not possibly understand what he was referring to because, of course, I helped the farm. I dug up the quote, and I said, in response to high energy prices, that the goal was “to find a commercially viable way that this kind of...project”, natural gas for farms, “can stand on its own two feet, pay for itself and create some jobs”.
From that moment, I went to Enbridge, which, being a large multinational pipeline company, had been hard for an individual farmer to contact on the phone. I got the executives on the phone. I told them the pipeline was needed to take gas to the mushroom farm in order to generate the steam and the other power that is needed to produce mushrooms. Ultimately, the project got done without any tax dollars and paid for itself, because natural gas is significantly cheaper and less polluting than propane and oil. That is an example of how we can do great things for our farm families without costing Canadian taxpayers money and without creating new federal bureaucracy.
The Prime Minister's comments do speak to his patronizing view of all Canadians. He believes that Canadians can never stand on their own two feet. In fact, the only reason Canadians are struggling to do so is that he is on their backs. It is like the Canadian people are carrying a backpack, and he comes along and asks: “Can I help you with that? It looks heavy.” He puts the backpack on his shoulders, and then he piggybacks on the Canadian who was carrying it in the first place. Now, they are not only carrying the bag but also carrying him. In this case, the analogy refers to his carbon tax.
That same family farm, which was thriving through intelligent investments, including in natural gas that he and his radical environment minister want to eliminate, was thriving and employing dozens of people in our community. Now, it is paying carbon taxes of $10,000 to $20,000 per month, an amount the Prime Minister wants to quadruple to 61¢ a litre and place an equivalent charge on natural gas. On April 1, the Prime Minister, with the full support of the NDP, intends to raise the carbon tax by 23%. This is at a time when Canadians cannot afford to eat.
Moments ago, the Prime Minister had one of his parliamentary secretaries, the member for Kingston and the Islands, get up and say that one in four school children is not able to eat. That is quite an admission by a government that has been in power for eight years. It used it as a justification to create a new federal bureaucracy. The Liberals say that it is a school food program, except there is no food in the program. In fact, it is not even in the schools; it is in Ottawa. In downtown Ottawa, the Liberals propose to create a series of meetings, bureaucracies and organizations that will collect yet more money from the rest of the population in order to talk about creating agreements and frameworks for discussions and consultations about an eventual program that supposedly will feed the one in four kids who is hungry because the government is taxing their food. Why not skip all those steps and just stop taxing the food?
Like everything the Prime Minister does, he doubles housing costs, and then he says we need a new government housing program. He doubles the number of shootings in Canada with his catch-and-release policies, and then he says we need new government programs to combat the gun violence the government unleashed with its Criminal Code changes. He causes these problems, and then the problems he causes are a pretext for him to have more power and more money. We all know that the Prime Minister is not the solution. He is the problem. The last thing we need is to take more money from our working-class families, our farmers and our seniors and to put it in his hands.
We stand in the House of Commons as the only party that opposes the carbon tax hike. The NDP has betrayed working-class people in places like Vancouver Island, northern British Columbia and northern Ontario where its constituents rely on pickup trucks, where the rural people and the farmers use energy to power their combines, their tractors, their farm drying equipment and their barns. The NDP raises taxes on all those people. The NDP wants to shut down Canada's resource sector. Just the other day, the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie cheered at the prospect of shutting down the entire natural gas economy, which would devastate the people in the NDP riding of Skeena—Bulkley Valley.
What we have is a radical agenda by the Prime Minister and his NDP allies, coalition partners, to quadruple the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre, all while shutting down our resource sector so that we can import from dirty dictatorships.
What we have from the Prime Minister is a pro-Russia energy policy that shuts down our energy industry to give more and more business to power Putin's war machine. All of that is supported by the NDP.
These facts build a firm and final case that only common-sense Conservatives stand on the side of working-class people, who need their pickup trucks to do their jobs and to build the country; seniors, who need to heat their homes in Edmonton in -50°C weather; single mothers, who are putting water in their children's milk because the cost of produce has risen under the Liberal-NDP carbon tax; children, one in four of whom, by the government's own admission today, are going hungry in our schools. This is the misery that Canadians are living after eight years of the Prime Minister.
The definition of insanity is when one does the same thing over and over again and expects a different result. Raising taxes and shutting down industries has sent two million people to the food bank. It has doubled housing costs. It has led to homeless encampments that we never had before in cities across this country. There are 30 homeless encampments in Halifax alone. There is the re-emergence of illnesses that were long ago banished, like scurvy, because people have become malnourished under the Prime Minister's impoverishing policies.
We, as common-sense Conservatives, will undo this damage. We will axe the tax to lower the cost of gas, heat and groceries so that our seniors can heat their homes, and our families can feed their kids. Our farmers can, once again, repatriate production of food to this country and can use the best environmental stewardship on planet earth. Our energy and resource companies can harvest the cornucopia of bounty that our country has beneath its feet and can use those resources to lift the world out of poverty in the most environmentally friendly way that could possibly be imagined.
We are the best. Our workers are the best. Our inventors are the best. Our businesses are the best. If we could get the government out of the way, then we could have the best. We will have that, and we will do it not by big powerful government dictating from on high, but we will do it by the great Canadian people standing on their own two feet and by the common sense of the common people united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
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- Feb/1/24 1:19:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know full well that the Liberal government and the Conservatives get along just fine when it comes to doling out billions of dollars and tax breaks to Canadian oil companies. We know that the Minister of the Environment said that this government had abolished subsidies when in fact they never were abolished. The government nationalized the Trans Mountain pipeline, which has cost $30.9 billion to expand. Most of that cost will be passed on to taxpayers.
I would like the member to explain to me what the government is going to do to improve the environment and the cost of living.
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- Feb/1/24 2:13:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday at the industry committee, the former CEO of the Liberals' billion-dollar green slush fund revealed that the Liberals were aware of corruption and self-dealing at the fund for years. As early as 2019, the then industry minister, Navdeep Bains, was informed that the company of the Liberal-appointed chair was receiving millions of dollars from the fund. Despite this outrageous conflict of interest, the Liberals allowed the chair to remain in charge.
This new evidence completely shreds the credibility of the current minister, who claims that the Liberals only recently learned of corruption at the fund, corruption involving the misappropriation of tens of millions of taxpayers' dollars. The minister knew about the corruption. He turned a blind eye to it, and when he got caught, he tried to cover it up. It speaks to the utter rot and corruption on the part of the Liberals. Canadians deserve so much better.
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- Feb/1/24 3:12:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, some UNRWA personnel are said to have participated in the October 7 Hamas terror attack. However, Canada had sent UNRWA $48 million by the time the government got around to suspending its funding. Aside from transparency, timing and creative accounting, International Development, Global Affairs, is now shocked to learn taxpayer dollars have been going to an agency joined at the fanatical hip with Hamas.
Does the Minister of International Development still think UNRWA is a “trusted” agency, or is he finally going to recognize that taxpayers do not like funding an agency linked to a listed terror group?
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