SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Mar/19/24 10:44:35 a.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, for us, today really feels like Groundhog Day. It seems like every time there is a Conservative opposition day, it is always about the carbon tax. There are plenty of momentous issues we could be talking about this morning, but we are still talking about the carbon tax. It is so ridiculous. My Conservative friends and colleagues often talk about the government's inflationary spending. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 2022, the government gave the oil industry $50 billion in direct and indirect spending. Keep in mind that in 2022, the five biggest oil companies made a combined $200 billion in profits. This is in addition to the fact that the Liberal budget plans to spend $80 billion on tax credits for oil companies by 2035. That is not counting the $34 billion that Trans Mountain is going to cost. Does my colleague think that all this spending is inflationary spending, yes or no?

163 words

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Denis Trudel (Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, BQ)

Mar/19/24 1:24:16 p.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, I do not know if my colleagues from English Canada are aware that what we have been hearing in the House this morning is a ringing endorsement for Quebec sovereignty. In Quebec, we are concerned about fighting climate change. Our province has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, by the way, because we have taken action, because we rely on hydroelectricity and batteries. This morning, we have been hearing two things. On the one hand, we hear that the government has been spending a lot of money for years and has the world's worst record. Canada has the worst record when it comes to fighting climate change, despite quite needlessly throwing billions of dollars out there, with help from the NDP, which supports the government most of the time. On the other hand, we have the Conservatives saying that they are going to do even less. All Canadians are saying that no matter how much they spend or do not spend, they are getting nowhere. This is really a ringing endorsement for Quebec sovereignty. I hope that all Quebeckers are watching this debate today and taking note.

190 words

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Jagmeet Singh (Burnaby South, NDP)

Mar/19/24 2:28:19 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, after decades of Liberal and Conservative failure, indigenous communities continue to live in overcrowded homes that are in desperate need of repair. The Liberals promised to take a major step toward improving this by 2030, but today's Auditor General report makes it clear that the Liberals will break yet another promise to indigenous people. Will the Liberal government stop spending millions of dollars on private consultants and make this serious issue a priority in the upcoming budget?

80 words

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Jasraj Singh Hallan (Calgary Forest Lawn, CPC)

Mar/19/24 5:07:15 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Calgary Nose Hill for so eloquently reminding Canadians that common-sense Conservatives would spike the hike and axe the tax every step of the way. Ronald Reagan once said, “When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And...the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident.” After eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, Canadians are left with that bill, when they got 40-year highs in inflation due to the current government's doubling of the debt, which was supported by the NDP, that led to the most rapid interest rate hikes seen in Canadian history, and it is only getting worse. That also led to the doubling of rents and the doubling of mortgages. Now, it takes 25 years just to save up for a down payment on a house, when just before the current Prime Minister, one could pay off a mortgage in 25 years. That is what happens when we have a fiscally irresponsible Liberal-NDP government. After eight years, more is going toward shelter costs off the hard-working Canadians' paycheques than ever before. In some cases now, because of the government's uncontrolled spending, it can be 60% to 80% off Canadians' paycheques every single month going into just housing costs. That is why today we are seeing students living under bridges and people with good-paying jobs having to live in their cars. Now, more than ever, people are going into food banks. In some cases, double-income-earning families are going into food banks because they cannot afford the cost of gas, groceries and home heating going up day by day because of this carbon tax scam. Groceries will be up another $700 this year because the Liberal-NDP government is going to tax the farmers, the transporters and the retailers. What they do not understand is that at the end of the day, all those costs get passed down to the Canadians who are buying the food. Now, at food banks, we see empty shelves and long lineups. In fact, the lineups have now become so bad that the police have had to intervene, helping to hand out food and to control some of those lineups. This is after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government. Many newcomers came to this country with the promise of the Canadian dream that they could afford a home, could afford to buy groceries and could have a safe future, but after eight years of the Liberal-NDP government, life has never cost so much. There is crime, chaos and disorder all over the streets, and the dream of home ownership is dead, especially for nine out of 10 young people, who will never be able to afford a home because of the current government's out-of-control spending. In fact, this carbon tax scam does not give more back than what Canadians have to pay into it. That was proven by the Parliamentary Budget Officer in his reports, and yesterday, when he came to committee, he proved again that Canadians are poorer because of the carbon tax scam. In fact, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, on multiple occasions, proved that axing the tax would put a massive dent in the inflationary crisis we see today. Of the current inflation number, 0.6 would be taken off overnight. For hard-working, struggling Canadians today, that means the Governor of the Bank of Canada could start lowering those interest rates sooner, which means interest rates for mortgages could go down and rents could go down. However, with the continuous spending and the ideological obsession with making sure they cause economic pain with no environmental gain by the Liberal-NDP government, Canadians do not see a hope for gas, groceries and fuel prices to come down. That is unfortunate. There are two million Canadians going into food banks in a single month, and this year alone, a million more will go because of the cost of food. The Liberal-NDP government will do nothing to help that and will cause more pain to hard-working Canadians. Of the newcomers, 84% say that they do not even know why they came here. That Canadian dream is a nightmare to them now. The hope of owning a home and the hope of having a safe future for their kids are gone, and on top of that, they cannot afford groceries. There are moms we hear about who are rationing their food and who are making sure their kids are fed but are having to starve themselves. I have been to those food banks where I have seen this happen. In fact, when we talk about no environmental gain and all the economic pain, we do not have to look further than Alberta. The Liberal government says that people get more back in these phony rebates. On average, an Albertan family will pay $2,900 into the carbon tax scam. The rebate is $2,000. There is a Liberal math joke in there somewhere because the numbers do not add up. I remember the first time I ran for federal office. It was in 2019, and I went to the door of a single mom in a corner house with a for sale sign on it. I will never forget that conversation. I went to the door. I told her who I was and what our plan was. She told me to hang on and ran to get her Direct Energy bill. With tears in her eyes, she said that she had a for sale sign on her house because she used to work in oil and gas. She was a single mom and was laid off from her job, so she had to sell her house in order to feed her kids and to just survive. It was because of the anti-energy, anti-Alberta agenda of the Liberal-NDP government that she was laid off from her job. She then showed me her Direct Energy bill and asked me what the carbon tax was. She had always heated her home, and she questioned why she was being punished for doing something she had always done. She could barely feed her kids, and they were just taking more and more money from her. That is exactly what the carbon tax scam is. It is more pain for everyday Canadians, with no environmental gains. The Liberal-NDP government's own environment department says it does not even track how many emissions go down because they cannot. It is a scam. It has been a scam all along. Common-sense Conservatives will address the cost-of-living crisis by axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime. In the meantime, we are going to continue to call on the ideologically obsessed, carbon tax-obsessed Liberal-NDP government to axe the tax, scrap the scam and spike the hike.

1196 words