44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 8, 2024 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address the House today. Yesterday, common-sense Conservatives announced our demands for the upcoming federal budget.
We called on the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form. We called on the government to build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money. Finally, we called on the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. We said the government must find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending.
These were the three common-sense Conservative demands for the budget: axing the tax on farmers and food; building homes, not bureaucracies; and instituting a dollar-for-dollar rule. Of course, Conservatives in government would go further to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Under the NDP-Liberal government, we see how spending is completely out of control. Under the Prime Minister, Canada will spend $46.5 billion this year to service the debt. That is more than the federal health transfer. The government is spending more on servicing the debt than it does on the federal health transfer.
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- Apr/8/24 12:34:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. When the budget comes out, the member will be provided a wonderful opportunity to talk about the budget. It will be coming up very soon, but today we are debating about an individual, Mr. Firth, coming to the bar.
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- Apr/8/24 12:58:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to predict the timeline, but I have a great deal of hope about the critical steps that a Conservative government would take to fix the budget, and that includes establishing a dollar-for-dollar rule. This is common sense, that if a government is going to spend a dollar on something new, it should be able to explain where that dollar is coming from.
Those NDP-Liberal coalition partners are keen to announce all kinds of new spending initiatives, but they never explain where the money is going to come from. Clearly, in all of these new spending proposals, and, in many cases, I do not think they are serious about doing them, they promise new spending that will kick in at some distant point in the future. In every case, where the money is actually spent, it is digging us further into deep debt.
Beyond that, we have this flow of wasteful spending, the middle-man consultants, the management consultants who have done so well under the government.
If we instituted a dollar-for-dollar rule, this will get us back on track to understand that if we are going to spend a dollar on something, it has to come from somewhere.
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- Apr/8/24 1:48:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Sarnia—Lambton for her leadership and mentorship to me during the seven years since I was elected. My seven-year anniversary was April 3. I am truly grateful for that.
The reality is that the price is incredible. We are at a $1.2-billion deficit in government across Canada at this point. We saw a $40-billion deficit in the most recent update of the government. Frankly, I am terrified of the budget and what this means for Canadians. I have no doubt the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance will be attempting to buy off Canadians once again. We know that it is not going to work.
What I do know is that it will take my son and the member for Sarnia—Lambton's children and grandchildren generations to pay this back. I am very sorry for that, but I am grateful for her.
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- Apr/8/24 2:22:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, while the common-sense Conservatives want to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost.
When it comes to inflation, after eight years, the Prime Minister is like a pyromaniac firefighter who is spraying gas instead of water on the inflationary fire. Does the Prime Minister realize that his billions of dollars in spending are putting the heat and the costs on taxpayers?
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- Apr/8/24 2:43:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is shocking that the average Canadian family must now spend 63.5% of their total pre-tax household income in order to afford a mortgage for the typical home in Canada.
It is even worse in British Columbia, where that is 106%. One hundred per cent is someone's entire income. No wonder families are in a financial crisis, where they can barely afford to live or feed themselves. This is after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government.
Will the Prime Minister actually build the homes, not bureaucracy and photo ops, in his budget?
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- Apr/8/24 2:46:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of deficits, people are no longer able to put a roof over their heads. There is still more red tape than common-sense solutions, like giving bonuses to cities that build more housing.
As we have said before, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost. The demand for housing is skyrocketing. A landlord in Saguenay received over 200 applications for his rental unit in just 24 hours. Apartments are increasingly scarce and increasingly expensive.
In the upcoming budget, will the Prime Minister finally build housing and stop adding red tape?
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- Apr/8/24 2:46:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the next budget is coming and the member already knows that it will contain additional housing measures.
What he should also know is that, just a few months ago, we signed a $1.8-billion agreement with the Government of Quebec that will provide, all at once, the largest number of new housing units in the history of Quebec. This is an extraordinary event resulting from an extraordinary collaboration.
Unlike the Conservatives, who keep spewing insults, picking fights and calling people, particularly municipal and provincial representatives, incompetent, we are working for Quebeckers to get hundreds and even thousands of housing units built in the coming months and years.
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- Apr/8/24 2:51:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, Canadians cannot achieve the goal of owning a home and continue to struggle amidst this crisis.
According to a recent report in The Globe and Mail, Canada needs to complete 320,000 housing units annually from now until 2030 to meet the demand. Canadians have had enough and must see this crisis managed properly. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost or the corruption.
Will the Prime Minister stop basing the budget on bureaucracy and photo ops and actually build the homes?
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- Apr/8/24 2:53:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Liberal government, finding housing in Canada is a nightmare. It was actually kind of funny and a bit ironic to see the ministers and the Prime Minister strutting around the country last week talking about how incompetent they have been when it comes to housing. The proof is that the CMHC confirmed last week that average home prices doubled between 2019 and 2022. That was all under the Liberals.
Is next week's budget going to build housing, not just create even more red tape?
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- Apr/8/24 2:54:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, obviously, next week's budget is going to build even more housing. Consider these two numbers: six and 8,000. They are clear. During his reign as minister responsible for housing, the Conservative Leader created six affordable housing units in the entire country. In recent months, we signed an agreement with the Quebec government for a total of $1.8 billion that will build 8,000 affordable housing units, in Quebec alone, over the next few years.
Unfortunately, my Conservative colleagues from Quebec do not seem to be aware of the projects being carried out in their own ridings. If they would like more information, they can easily contact us.
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- Apr/8/24 3:02:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, young Canadians in my community of Richmond and across Canada are struggling to find housing that fits their budget.
We are scaling up our efforts to build more homes and to build them faster at prices Canadians can afford. Through the housing accelerator fund, the federal government is investing over $35 million in the city of Richmond to fast-track the construction of 1,000 homes over the next three years and 3,100 homes over the next decade.
Can the minister share, with my community of Richmond and communities across British Columbia, how the government is supporting housing in budget 2024?
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Madam Speaker, as I begin my speech, I want to talk a bit about how Canadians cannot afford the higher taxes and inflation that the government has brought on, and they cannot afford the Prime Minister. That is why we have been calling for judicial use of taxpayer dollars. We have been calling for the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234. We have demanded that the government build homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition of receiving federal funding. We have also asked the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down the interest rates and inflation. Conservatives said we will not support the government in its budget unless it does these things, so we will vote non-confidence if the government does not axe the tax; build more homes, not bureaucracy; and cap the spending.
It is the spending that brings us here today. We have seen that the ArriveCAN app, an app that could have cost only $80,000 to produce, ended up costing over $60 million. We have seen some unsavoury contractors taking advantage of the government, but the government also failed to maintain records.
This is a classic case of a time when we see a critical situation. Oftentimes this happens, and it is always very suspicious. There is a crime scene, a camera is recording the crime scene, but during the two minutes the crime happened, the camera seems to be mysteriously turned off, and then the camera comes back on after that. This is again one of these cases where we can smell that something is wrong and see that something is wrong.
We have the scathing Auditor General's report, which says that a massive amount of money was spent, and she cannot find what the money was spent on. She anticipates that 67% of the subcontractors did no actual work, yet here we are with a scandal of grand proportion. It appears that the tape was not running, that the camera was turned off for that period of time. The Auditor General says it could be as little as $60 million, and it could be far more.
We are debating a privilege motion here today. A privilege motion has to do with the ability of members of Parliament to do their jobs. Members of Parliament have particular privileges that are not broadly used by citizens. Taking a seat in the House of Commons is a privilege that only members of Parliament have, but the government has particular privileges as well. The government gets to write the cheques for Canada. It holds the chequebook. That is not an opposition party job. That is a job of the government. Therefore, it is incredibly important that the government maintains control of the chequebook and maintains the scrutiny of where the cheques are going. That is a massive failure, and we are trying to get to the bottom of that.
If we listen to the Liberals, they would have us believe that it is these evil contractors, and I am not denying that, who have been taking advantage of the government, which, by all accounts, appears to be the case, but where were the checks and balances? Where was the trust and verify? Why did it not ask if we were getting good value for money? This has been a common problem with the Liberals for a long time, that whenever they are questioned about a government failure, they point out how much money they have spent on a particular issue, whether it is border security, policing or managing vehicle crimes. They talk about how much money they are spending on a particular program, when the problem only seems to be getting worse.
Contractors have figured out that limiting the money being spent has not been an active priority for the government. Maintaining some sort of fiscal restraint is not something the government has been known for, and contractors have been taking advantage of that, for sure.
Common-sense Conservatives, after eight years of the Prime Minister, are putting forward a plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, and that is really what this comes down to.
We have heard some incredible things that have come out of committee. First is the fact that the Auditor General said that it was incredibly hard to track down what this money was spent on, as the contracts that GS Strategies got were more and more vague as time went on. They were for longer and longer periods of time and for larger and larger amounts of money. However, there have been some other interesting things, such as resumés that had been submitted to get the contracts being forged, which appears to be just straight-up fraud. There was a requirement for experience and qualifications, and GC Strategies admitted that it doctored these resumés to make sure that they fit in order to get the contracts.
The other really interesting thing that happened, which we discovered last week at committee, was that KPMG was approached by the government to do an audit of the effectiveness of the app, but rather than the government contracting KPMG directly to do this audit, the government employee suggested to KPMG that it should approach GC Strategies to do this audit rather than just doing it directly, even though it was the government that approached KPMG. There does seem to be something very interesting going on between the bureaucracy and GC Strategies.
Again, going back to this video camera that, for some apparent reason, seems to have been shut off just when the crime seemed to be happening, interestingly, all of the emails associated with this discussion of the KPMG contract have disappeared. The government employee who had been communicating on this deleted all of his emails and is no longer affiliated with the department that he worked with. I am not sure, but I think he has been suspended from the public service, so we do not have the documents.
Members might say, “Well, that's the actions of one individual” or “Mr. Firth is not answering our questions, and that's the actions of a particular individual”, but I would say that this has been the MO of the government. I remember back in 2015 when the Liberals came into power with the grand slogan of being “open by default”. That is what it said, yet we have seen more redactions, and we have seen the government take the Speaker of the House of Commons to court to prevent documents from coming to this place. We have seen endless amounts of redactions. We have an ATIP process that is completely dysfunctional. We will get an ATIP back, and it will be entirely blacked out. We have also seen the Prime Minister call an election to prevent the Winnipeg lab documents from coming to this place. He first sued the Speaker to prevent it, and then called an election to prevent the truth coming to light on a number of things.
It is not a far leap that, when citizens see the government refusing to answer questions and redacting or not allowing documents to come forth, citizens who are then called before Parliament would not treat Parliament with the respect that is required or would not be as forthright with Parliament as they should be, which is why we are calling on Mr. Firth to come to the bar so he can be questioned on a number of these issues. However, we also want to point out that we wish the government would be more forthright with documentation as well so we can get to the bottom of a number of these scandals.
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- Apr/8/24 9:10:32 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I hope to answer the member in French one day. I am working on my French.
The member opposite mentioned advocacy efforts. We take every opportunity and the Prime Minister takes every opportunity. Last year when President Biden visited Canada in March, the Prime Minister raised it with President Biden. At every opportunity, the trade minister brings this up, as do many ministers in cabinet. It is very important that we continue to raise these advocacy efforts.
The member opposite mentioned support, what we are doing and what more we can do. I want to highlight that budget 2023 provided an additional almost $370 million over three years to renew and update the forestry sector supports, and this includes support for research and development, and indigenous and international leadership. We have also invested over $130 million in the sector to accelerate the adoption of transformative technologies and products through the investments in forest industry transformation program as well as over $12 million to provide economic opportunities for indigenous communities in the forestry sector through the indigenous forestry initiative.
Whether one is in B.C., Alberta, Quebec or any other province, we will continue to be there with the lumber industry, because we know that it supports over 200,000 jobs and it supports innovation in our sector.
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