44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 21, 2024 10:00AM
- Mar/21/24 10:05:05 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand here and present three e-petitions, all coordinated by a member of my riding, Mr. Brian Kerr. These three e-petitions, e-4605, e-3827 and e-4274, total over 45,000 signatures, which Brian has spearheaded among himself and others.
The petitioners call on the federal government to look at a form of recall election, which is not present here in Canada.
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- Mar/21/24 10:15:24 a.m.
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moved:
That the House declare non-confidence in the Prime Minister and his costly government for increasing the carbon tax 23 % on April 1, as part of his plan to quadruple the tax while Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat and house themselves, and call for the House to be dissolved so Canadians can vote in a carbon tax election.
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- Mar/21/24 10:45:47 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an extraordinary thing to say we are going to force an election that will cost $630 million.
I agree with my hon. colleague that a leader needs the guts to stand up. On Monday night, the leader of the Conservative Party voted nine times in a confidence motion to support the government, but he did it hiding behind the curtain. This was on the night when we had the historic vote on peace in the Middle East and Gaza.
He has a tendency to be missing in action when it is time to stand up. I could not get an answer from the member for Dairy Queen. However, tonight, if he is willing to take the government down, will he actually stand up and be in the House, or will he be off with his lobbyist chief of staff and her lobbyist friends eating canapés and getting backhanders?
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- Mar/21/24 10:47:14 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was not saying he was not in the House. I was asking if he is going to show up. There is a substantive difference. Since it is about an election, he better—
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- Mar/21/24 12:06:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in Parliament. On my way over here, I had to almost elbow my way through the big long line of Conservatives with their phones, doing selfie videos, saying that they were here in Parliament today, that they were going to huff and puff, and that they might blow the House down tonight, and then they asked people to please send money to their addresses as quickly as they could.
The price of a federal election is $630 million. If we tell our constituents and the people of Canada that the member for Carleton, the official opposition leader, is going to cost the Canadian taxpayer $630 million in an election because things are so desperate and people need to stand up, then we certainly expect him to be here to do that work if it is that serious.
Just this past Monday, we had nine confidence votes. For those who watch Conservative TikTok, I will give them a little explanation. A confidence vote causes an election, yet we saw all the dutiful backbench Conservatives vote to show confidence in the government. Now, three days later, it is the “huff and puff and they may blow the House down” strategy when there are going to be nine confidence votes tonight.
Given the importance of this and given the fact that we would plunge the nation into an election at this time, I really hope to see the member who lives at Stornoway standing here and leading his troops because it is one of the concerns I have had.
I have been accused of making claims about his background and about the fact that he apparently worked for Dairy Queen. I am willing to retract that, because we actually do not know if he worked at Dairy Queen. I have tried to find what his job résumé was before he became a professional political “whatever he has been his whole life”. Some say he had a paper route, and others say he worked at Dairy Queen. It does not seem that he actually may have done both. However, if he worked at Dairy Queen, I am sure they taught him that he had to show up, because showing up is a fundamental thing we learn in jobs.
When I was younger and was trying to feed my two young daughters by working on construction sites, I was told if I was not ready to go with all my tools by 7:30 in the morning, do not to bother to show up. I had to pay the rent at the end of the month, so I learned to show up. I raise this because there is a pattern with the member.
I remember when he said that he was going to stand in the House and speak until the budget fell. That was extraordinary. All the little Conservatives who repeat all his talking points and who get the gold stars, all stood around him. They were going to stay in the House until he brought the House down and would cause an election. Then, after about two hours, he ran out of gas because he ran out of slogans. When one's entire electoral platform is a bumper sticker slogan, even the member who lives at Stornoway gets tired, so after two hours, he gave up and went home, but he thought they were going to have an election.
I remember, before Christmas, he said he was going to keep us voting in the House until Christmas. We came and waited, and that never happened. Again, I do not know whether he was off having canapés and mojitos with Jenni Byrne, the lobbyist for Loblaws, and her staff, who are apparently lobbying the federal government through Forecheck Strategies, but we did not see him. All the poor schleps were left here for two nights doing the hard lifting of voting against the government.
What did they vote against? They voted against support for Ukraine, and that was actually one time he showed up; he showed up to vote against Ukraine. He had to be on the record that he voted against Ukraine, because Tucker Carlson would have been displeased. They voted against clean water on reserves. They wanted to get that on the record. They showed up and voted against a national suicide hotline, because they were going to force an election. I felt bad for my colleagues in the Conservative Party who dutifully stayed up all night when the member for Carleton was having canapés at fundraisers. We did not vote until Christmas, but he was going to bring the House down.
On Monday night, there was a historic opportunity to bring the government down, and he was voting from behind the curtain. That was the night we moved the historic vote for peace in Gaza, a vote that has been recognized around the world. Numerous other jurisdictions are now following Canada's lead because the New Democrats showed up that night. We showed what it means to come to work every day and work, to find a compromise plan to recognize the need to deal with the horrific death of innocent children in Gaza. We showed what it means to say that the terrorist attacks by Hamas should be condemned and that the people of Israel have a right to live in peace, but, because of the systemic killing of journalists, aid workers and children, the Netanyahu government cannot be given any more weapons. The New Democrats showed up, and that was historic.
Again, I would advise the member, who probably puts some ice cream and walnuts on a Dairy Queen banana float, that if he is going to be a leader of this country, he should show up and stand up at these historic moments. He does not get to go off to Stornoway, have canapés and leave the poor schleps on the backbench to do the heavy lifting. Monday night was an opportunity and he missed it.
With respect to the Conservative bumper sticker slogans, one has to put three or four of them on side by side now. Today the member comes in again, and this is the moment he says that he is going to axe the tax and force an election. He says he is putting $630 million on the line. Will he be here tonight?
In 2021, when the Liberals decided to go to an election, people were telling us to get back to work. They wanted us to work in here and get something done. They asked what I was going to do if I went back to Parliament. I said that we were going to get national dental care, because we heard about that at the doors. I said that we would fight to get national pharmacare if they gave us a check to hold the Liberals to account.
We will hold the Liberals to account, because that is what we do. We show up for work. It is not a hard concept. Canadians are hard-working people; they show up for work. They understand. Canadians are not dummies. The member who lives in a 19-room mansion with his own private chef goes on about a carbon tax affecting the price of food. Canadians know that it is the relentless gouging by Loblaws doing so. We have never, ever heard the member speak about Loblaws. Canadians understand this when they find out that Jenni Byrne, his chief boss, was a lobbyist for Loblaws.
Last night, a working-class guy wrote to me. He has to drive his truck to get to work and drives 50 to 100 kilometres each day to get out to the mine. He asked about the carbon tax, because he saw that the price of gas in our region went up 20¢ overnight. I told him he was getting gouged. Then he asked if I could break down the carbon price for him. I told him it was three cents a litre. Then he asked where the other 17¢ went. I told him that it went to Rich Kruger, the CEO of Suncor, who told his investors at the height of the worst climate catastrophe we have experienced that there was an urgent need for them to make even more money.
The oil industry in Canada last year made $78 billion, and we have never heard the member who lives at Stornoway talk about that. We have never heard a single Alberta Conservative stand up to talk about how we are four years into a brutal drought. The Oldman River reservoir is almost empty. I was in Edmonton in January; there was no snow on the ground and it was above zero. We have never heard a single Conservative talk when, because of the climate catastrophe, fire season is announced in northern Alberta in February. Conservatives are climate deniers, and there is a reason for that. If they admitted that the planet is on fire and children cannot go out because of the catastrophic fumes from the oil and gas sector's pumping of CO2 emissions, then they would need a plan. However, they do not have a plan because it would not fit on a bumper sticker slogan.
I am going to conclude on this simple thing: The member for Stornoway said that he is going to lead this country, force an election, bring it home, axe the yakking and do the backtracking all the way to a fundraising event tonight. He should show up and do his job.
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- Mar/21/24 12:45:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, why are they not speaking to the issue that all Canadians are talking about, which is the cost of living. That is why we need this election, so people have the opportunity to get back to having the Canadian dream?
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- Mar/21/24 1:36:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been some discussions this morning about the Dairy Queen, because we know that the Conservative leader did claim at some point to have worked in the summer at a Dairy Queen. It must be very clear that people who work at Dairy Queen work hard, but we do not know if the member who lives at Stornoway ever did work hard or whether he got fired. He has never had a job.
I raise this because he has this bad habit of huffing and puffing, threatening and demanding, and then not showing up. There were nine confidence votes on Monday night when his party could have said they were going to bring the government down, but there was not a peep. Right now, he has his backbenchers all jumping up. They are all punching their chests and saying they are going to bring the government down.
My simple question is this: Will the leader who lives in Stornoway actually show up to cause this $630-million election, or will he be with Jenni Byrne, the Loblaw's lobbyist, having canapés and mojitos tonight at Stornoway? He never shows up, and he leaves the poor schleps on the backbench to stand and do the voting, night after night.
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- Mar/21/24 2:16:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, our country is at a crossroads. On April 1, the Liberal government will raise the carbon tax by 23%. This tax increase is opposed by 70% of Canadians and 70% of Canada's premiers.
Canadians are struggling to make ends meet. People are choosing between heating their homes and putting gas in their cars. Millions of Canadians are relying on food banks. People are going through garbage dumpsters in search of food. Mothers are diluting their babies' milk to stretch the formula.
Canadians need a government that understands the struggles of daily living and commits to making life more affordable.
Today, Conservatives are calling for a carbon tax election. It is time that the House joins Conservatives, puts the people first, votes no confidence and brings home an election.
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- Mar/21/24 2:37:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is how desperate and pathetic the Liberal government is. The ministers who repeat these talking points quote a two-year-old PBO report. It is two years old. The PBO was just at committee two weeks ago and debunked everything they have to say, because the carbon tax costs Canadians, and we know it. Orangeville, my hometown, is now predicting that, in a few years, 5,000 to 6,000 residents will go to the food bank every month in a town of 27,000 people. This is the Liberal carbon tax.
Will they spike the hike, axe the tax or call a carbon tax election?
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- Mar/21/24 3:13:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it being Thursday, we are in the middle of the carbon tax election debate, the Conservative motion for today, where we are urging the government to take this to the Canadian people. It believes that Canadians would prefer its plan to quadruple the tax. We believe Canadians will choose our plan to axe the tax, so I have a simple question for the government. If this motion passes today, will they do the right thing, dissolve Parliament and call a carbon tax election?
If they do not have the spine and intestinal fortitude to take this to the Canadian people, can the House leader tell us, when we come back after Easter, what business the House will be dealing with?
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- Mar/21/24 4:00:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague from Chilliwack—Hope on his excellent speech today. He has once again demonstrated how good Conservatives are at voicing the concerns of people across the country here in the House. My colleague just conveyed the concerns of people way over on the other side of the country, in British Columbia. I want to thank him for that.
I think it is worth taking a few moments today to point out that we are here to debate a motion of non-confidence. What does that mean? Simply put, if the government does not win the vote, it has to call an election.
The motion reads as follows:
That the House declare non-confidence in the Prime Minister and his costly government for increasing the carbon tax 23 % on April 1, as part of his plan to quadruple the tax....
Today, we find ourselves in a situation where the future of the government is in the hands of the opposition parties. We know the Liberal members will vote against our motion, even though some of them would rather not. There is a party line, and they will toe it.
Coincidentally, another party exists within the same party. Together, they are called the NDP-Liberal coalition. It would come as quite a surprise if the NDP decided to stand by its values and defeat this government, which it heavily criticizes every day. It claims that it is keeping the Liberals in power to make gains that it achieves by coercing and manipulating the government. Knowing that the government is being manipulated by another party should be one more reason for us to want to defeat it.
Then there is the Bloc Québécois, which voices its many recriminations against the Liberal government day after day. It could vote in step with the wishes of the majority of Quebeckers. The majority of Quebeckers want a change of government. Most Quebeckers want the Prime Minister to go. This would give the Bloc Québécois an opportunity to fill the role it has claimed for itself all along as the representative of Quebeckers in the House of Commons. Will it vote to defeat this Liberal government tonight? We should not get our hopes up too high. Based on what I heard today, the Bloc Québécois is going to rush to defend the Liberal government and the Prime Minister once again.
Why does it feel like we are dealing with a majority government when it is actually a minority government? It is important to mention this for anyone who may be watching us right now. This minority government should not be so self-assured and arrogant as to impose its inflationary spending, for these decisions are creating chaos across the country, particularly in terms of the cost of housing, inflation and the cost of food. Normally, all these decisions should have led the opposition parties to say that enough is enough and that they wanted to put an end to this government. This is a minority government, and there is no reason to keep it in power.
Unfortunately, not everyone is keen to call an election and change the government. In fact, in a La Presse article, the leader of the Bloc Québécois proudly said, “If the next election is two years away, that doesn't bother me at all. It gives us time to properly identify, define and share information about our opponents.” He also said that Bloc Québécois members have been telling Liberal ministers that they are in no rush to head into an election campaign.
If this Prime Minister and his government hang on for another two years, it is also because of the support they are getting from the Bloc Québécois, which is very comfortable with all the consequences, of which there are many.
The Conservatives have a common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Why do we want to cut taxes? Let me talk about agriculture, for one. The Minister of Agriculture bragged about the sector's resilience, with continued growth in farm income. While he was saying that, there were 400 farmers and their families in the Lower St. Lawrence who were making a heartfelt plea and talking about their financial distress.
Martin Caron, president of the Union des producteurs agricoles, said that the annual net income for farmers in Quebec would be close to zero in 2024. It is unacceptable for people who work so hard, who get up before the sun rises and go to bed after everyone else, to have zero net income.
A week after the demonstration in the Lower St. Lawrence, farmers descended on the streets of Quebec City and the north shore to express their frustration. People are not taking it anymore. Why? The input costs for farmers have gone up because the carbon tax has a direct impact on the cost of inputs that these farmers have to buy to grow their crops. The carbon tax has a direct impact on farmers and growers who produce food across Canada. It has a direct impact on the people who process this food because they have to pay the carbon tax. It has a direct impact on truck drivers who transport the food and deliver it to Quebec. When we look at the list of all the taxes that farmers, processors and truck drivers have to pay before the food arrives in Quebec, it is not surprising that the cost of food in Quebec has gone up.
Unfortunately, the Bloc Québécois wants to drastically increase this tax, which is why, yesterday, it voted against our motion to cancel the carbon tax hike set for April 1. That is no April Fool's joke. That is the date the government chose to increase the carbon tax by 23%.
We need to build housing. Has anyone not heard about the current nationwide housing crisis? There is a housing crisis in Quebec, too. When the common-sense Conservatives asked the minister about his housing accelerator fund, he admitted that not a single housing unit had been built as a result of that fund, even though it cost Canadian taxpayers $3.15 billion.
I would like to talk about a Montreal couple, Martin and Marie-Hélène, who are pandemic borrowers. They renewed their mortgage in 2020 at a very low 2% rate and will have to renew in 2025 at a much higher rate. When asked whether they have figured out how much more it is going to cost them, Martin immediately said he is just not ready to calculate how much more it will cost him every month. He knows full well that he may have trouble paying the bill.
When it comes to taxes and housing, the Bloc Québécois has clearly chosen to support the Liberals. Why?
We are going to fix the budget. As everyone knows, this government's inflationary spending has contributed to rising interest rates. That has made housing and food more expensive, and people cannot make ends meet. Unfortunately, the $20 billion in additional discretionary spending introduced by the minister in the last budget update received full support form the Bloc Québécois. In fact, 100% of that discretionary spending was supported by the Bloc Québécois.
Finally, everyone knows that crime levels across the country are going from bad to worse. Just think about car thefts, this government's lax policies and its willingness to allow dangerous repeat criminals to serve their sentences at home rather than in prison. This has created an extremely chaotic situation across the country. We want to fix it. Unfortunately, these lax policies that allow house arrest instead of jail time have also been supported by the Bloc Québécois.
I invite the Bloc Québécois to support this motion this evening in order to truly represent the interests of the majority of Quebeckers who no longer want this government. There is a way to do this. Let us set ideological squabbles aside and focus on the practical. If we want to get rid of this government, then we have to vote for the Conservatives' common-sense motion.
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- Mar/21/24 4:28:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech, and I wonder if he is as confused as I am about this Conservative motion calling for a carbon tax election. Clearly, the carbon tax is not popular with a lot of Canadians, but they recognize that it is a better idea than doing nothing about climate change.
In the last three elections, a majority of Canadians voted for parties that supported the tax. If we have a carbon tax election, why do the Conservatives think Canadians would suddenly change their minds and vote for a party that opposes doing something about climate change?
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- Mar/21/24 4:30:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciated what the member had to say. I find it really interesting. The Right Hon. Brian Mulroney was lying in state. His body has now been moved to Montreal, and the funeral will take place on Saturday. This was a leader during a time when Progressive Conservatives existed, when people recognized the importance of trade, fiscally responsible policies and the need to take action on the environment.
I remember being in elementary school and hearing there was a hole in the ozone layer. People around me were saying I did not need to worry about what to do in the future because we would probably not have a planet, and here we are. I hear Conservatives chirping across the way. One of the members said that we should call an election, and I said that elections cost money. There was one time when the “C” in the Conservative Party stood for conservatism. Today, it stands for “cocky” and “chirping”.
Do we need to be concerned about the environment? Should we be concerned about future generations? Does the Government of Canada have a role to play, or do we just need slogans and gimmicks, which are the only things that Conservatives offer?
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