SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 302 - Apr/18/24

Hon. Pierre Poilievre (Leader of the Opposition, CPC)

Apr/18/24 11:18:03 a.m.
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Re: Bill C-21

We will also ensure that Canadians have a better way. We are not only going to ban the drugs. We are not only going to stop giving out taxpayer-funded drugs. We are going to provide treatment and recovery. If people are watching today and are suffering from addiction and do not know how they can turn their lives around, I want them to know that there is hope. There is a better future ahead. We will put the money into beautiful treatment centres with counselling, group therapy, physical exercise, yoga and sweat lodges for first nations, where people can graduate drug-free, live in nearby housing that helps them transition into a law-abiding, drug-free life, and come back to the centre for a counselling session, a workout or maybe even to mentor an incoming addict on the hopeful future that is ahead. That is the way we are going to bring our loved ones home, drug-free. As I always say, we are going to have a common-sense dollar-for-dollar law, requiring that we find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. In this case, that will include how we will partly pay for this. We will unleash the biggest lawsuit in Canadian history against the corrupt pharmaceutical companies that profited off of this nightmare. We will make them pay. Finally, we will stop the gun crime. We know that gun crime is out of control. Just yesterday, we saw this gold heist. By the way, all of the gold thieves are out on bail already, so do not to worry. They will have to send the Prime Minister a nugget of gold to thank him for passing Bill C-75 and letting them out of jail within a few days of this monster gold heist. Why did they steal the gold? They stole the gold so that they could buy the guns, because we know that all of the gun crime is happening with stolen guns. The Prime Minister wants to ban all civilian, law-abiding people from owning guns, but he wants to allow every criminal to have as many guns as they want. I am not just talking about rifles. I am talking about machine guns, fully loaded machine guns that are being found on the street, which never existed since they were banned in the 1970s. Now the criminals can get them because the Prime Minister has mismanaged the federal borders and ports and because he is wasting so much money going after the good guys. The Prime Minister wants to ban our hunting rifles. He said so in a December 2022 interview with CTV. He was very clear. If someone has a hunting rifle, he said he will have to take it away. He kept his word by introducing a 300-page amendment to his Bill C-21, which would have banned 300 pages of the most popular and safe hunting rifles. He only put that policy on hold because of a backlash that common-sense Conservatives led, which included rural Canadians, first nations Canadians and NDPers from rural communities. He had to flip-flop. I know that in places like Kapuskasing, the law-abiding people enjoy hunting. While the NDP leader and the Prime Minister look down on those people and think that they are to blame for crime, we know that the hunters in Kapuskasing are the salt of the earth, the best people around, and we are going to make sure that they can keep their hunting rifles. God love them. God love every one of them. While the Prime Minister wants to protect turkeys from hunters, common-sense Conservatives want to protect Canadians from criminals. That is why we will repeal his insane policies. By the way, I should point out that he has not even done any of the bans. We remember that he had that big press conference during the election. He said to his policy team that morning that he needed them to come up with a policy that would allow him to put a big, scary-looking black gun on his podium sign. They said, “Okay, we will think of something.” He put that scary-looking gun on his podium sign, and he said he was going to ban all of these assault rifles. They asked him what an assault rifle was, and he said he did not know, just that it was the black, scary thing on the front of his podium sign. That was the assault rifle he was referring to. It is now three years since he made that promise. He was asked again in the hallways what an assault rifle was. He said he was still working to figure it out. These rifles that he says he is going to ban one day, he does not know what they are but one day he is going to figure it out and ban them. In the meantime, he has spent $40 million to buy exactly zero guns from owners. He said he was going to ban them and buy them from the owners. Not one gun has been taken off the street after spending $40 million. We could have used that money to hire CBSA officers who would have secured our ports against the thousands of illegal guns that are pouring in and killing people on our streets. When I am prime minister, we will cancel this multi-billion dollar waste of money. We will use it to hire frontline boots-on-the-ground officers who will inspect shipping containers and to buy scanners that can pierce inside to stop the drugs, stop the illegal guns, stop the export of our stolen cars and stop the crime. What we are seeing is a very different philosophical approach. The finance minister said in her concluding remarks that what we need is bigger and stronger government. Does that not sound eerie? In other words, she and the Prime Minister want to be bigger and stronger. That is why they are always trying to make Canadians feel weaker and smaller. The Prime Minister literally called our people a small, fringe minority. He jabs his fingers in the faces of our citizens. He calls small businesses tax cheats. He claims that those who own hunting rifles are just Americans. The Prime Minister points his fingers at people who disagree with him. He has the audacity of claiming that anyone who is offside with him is a racist. This is a guy who dressed up in racist costumes so many times he cannot remember them all. He has been denigrating other people his whole life. That is because it is all about him. It is all about concentrating more power and more money in his hands. This budget is no different. It is about a bigger government and smaller citizens. It is about buying his way through the next election with cash that the working-class people have earned and he has burned. By contrast, I want the opposite. I want smaller government to make room for bigger citizens. I want a state that is a servant and not the master. I want a country where the prime minister actually lives up to the meaning of the word: “prime” meaning “first”, and “minister” meaning “servant”. That is what “minister” means. “Minister” is not master; “minister” is servant. We need a country that puts people back in charge of their money, their communities, their families and their lives, a country based on the common sense of the common people, united for our common home, their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home. Therefore, I move: That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “the House reject the government's budget since it fails to: a. Axe the tax on farmers and food by passing Bill C-234 in its original form. b. Build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities permit 15% more home building each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money. c. Cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation by requiring the government to find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/18/24 11:28:22 a.m.
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The amendment is in order. Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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Secretary

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

Apr/18/24 11:29:09 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there are many aspects I could ask the Leader of the Conservative Party on, but time will not allow me to do that. Suffice it to say there is no doubt that the leader is a master of manipulation of information, and we see that through social media and many of the speeches he delivers in the House. Let me give a classic example. He was glowing about when he was the minister responsible for housing, and the truth is that he built six affordable houses while he was the minister of housing. Canadians have a reality today that demands that a government be involved in a significant way and work with other jurisdictions. Instead, as leader, he endlessly insults municipal leaders and provincial politicians in regard to not coming to the table on housing. Why does he truly believe Canadians should trust him at all, given his past record, his disrespect for different levels of government and his inability to produce any—

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Leaders

The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/18/24 11:30:28 a.m.
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The hon. leader of the official opposition.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:30:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will start by correcting the disinformation in the question. The member gets his information on my record from his source, the Twitter account of the housing minister. Before you turn to that Twitter account, remember that this is the same guy— Mr. Mark Gerretsen: I have a point of order.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/18/24 11:30:49 a.m.
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The member will address all questions and comments through the Chair. I am assuming that may be the point of order the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands is referring to. The hon. official opposition leader has the floor.

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:31:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is the same housing minister who lost track of one million immigrants when he was the immigration minister. This is the same housing minister who unleashed absolute out-of-control chaos in our immigration system, not according to me but according to his Liberal successor and the Prime Minister, so the member opposite should stop using that source. If you want to know, Madam Speaker, how many affordable homes were built when I was the minister, we completed 92,782 apartments, and the average rent was $973. Can anyone tell me where we can find $973 per month rent after nine years of the Liberals?

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Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Apr/18/24 11:32:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, until recently, the only questions the Conservatives asked in French during question period were about the carbon tax. For months, that was all they talked about. Finally, they had an epiphany and realized that it does not apply to Quebec, which goes to show they could understand the concept easily enough once it was explained to them over and over again. They figured they had to find something else to hammer away on during question period. They came up with federal interference in Quebec's jurisdictions, and they have been getting some good mileage out of that for the past few days. Now, I hear the Conservative leader talking about housing. He says he is going to tell the cities what to do, but without encroaching on their areas of jurisdiction. However, when any cities disagree with him, he is quick to insult the mayors. Basically, he insults them respectfully. There was a time when Harper promised to eliminate the spending power in order to respect jurisdictions. The only way to truly respect jurisdictions is to make unconditional transfers. Will the leader of the official opposition commit to making unconditional housing transfers to Quebec if he ever takes power?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:33:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there will be no conditions. There will be results. I will simply tell the municipalities that they will be paid for the number of homes built. That is not interference. That is results. The Bloc Québécois agrees that the government should make housing transfers. We simply disagree on the formula. The Bloc Québécois is proposing that money just be injected in building up local bureaucracies. I am proposing to pay the municipalities for the number of homes that they allow to be built. They can do that in several ways: fast-tracking permits, selling land, using any strategy that works for them. What we want to fund is the result. For its part, the Bloc Québécois wants to fund bureaucracy, especially the federal bureaucracy that it voted for in order to finance the spending of this Prime Minister's centralist government.

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Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP)

Apr/18/24 11:34:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member likes to talk about single moms, so let me talk about Brianna. Brianna is a single mom with five kids who benefited from the life-changing interim dental benefit that the NDP negotiated. She got $1,300 per child to help them get their teeth taken care of, just like the member's children do, from taxpayer dollars by the way. However, this is something the Conservatives voted against. Now, we learn, as the member said yesterday in French, that under a Conservative government, a dental care program that allows everyone to go to the dentist does not exist. Can the member repeat this in English, so that Brianna and all Canadians know where the member stands on the right of every Canadian to have access to dental care?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:35:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it does not currently exist after nine years of this Prime Minister and roughly two years of the NDP joining the federal government. What we have is a promise that it will eventually exist, and we do not know when and if that promise will ever be fulfilled. We know that already there are many dentists who are refusing to participate because the program is so badly run, and we know that this and other programs are being run through hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts to profit-making insurance companies, once again with the support, ironically, of the NDP. This NDP member has betrayed his constituents to support the Prime Minister doubling the housing costs, quadrupling the carbon tax and forcing two million Canadians to a food bank. He should go back and talk to that single mother and all single mothers and apologize to them for increasing their food, gas and heating bills and making it impossible for them to ever own a home.

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Mr. Mike Morrice (Kitchener Centre, GP)

Apr/18/24 11:36:53 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government gave the oil and gas industry $18.5 billion in corporate handouts last year and $65 billion over the last four years alone. This is an industry whose top five companies made $38 billion in record-breaking profits in 2022, while fuelling the climate crisis. I understand that the Leader of the Opposition, if I am hearing him right, wants to reduce government spending. He also seems to like yes or no questions, so my question for him, yes or no, is this: If he were in government, would he end this $18.5 billion in corporate handouts to an industry that is already making record-breaking profits?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:37:33 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will end corporate handouts to all industries. I do not believe in corporate handouts. We are the only party that stands against corporate welfare. We believe businesses should make money, not take money. We believe in the free market, not state capitalism. It is the NDP and the Liberals who continually stroke these monster cheques to businesses that have not earned the money. Ironically, they are always angry at businesses that make money by selling things that consumers choose to buy, but they are never upset to take money by force from working taxpayers and hand the money to large corporations who have very skilful lobbyists. I want an economy where businesses make money, not take money, where they make profit based on the quality of their products, not the quality of their lobbyists, where they please customers rather than pleasing politicians. It is called the free market.

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Mr. John Nater (Perth—Wellington, CPC)

Apr/18/24 11:38:36 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we know that Canadians are going to be footing the bill from this massive Liberal spending. We are now going to be paying more in debt servicing charges than we pay on health care. How does the hon. Leader of the Opposition propose that we fix the budget?

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Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:38:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we will fix the budget with a dollar-for-dollar law and run our finances the way single moms and small businesses run their finances, which is by finding an equal amount of savings for every new expenditure. That is the scarcity with which every single creature in the universe must live, except for the politician, who simply externalizes the scarcity through more inflation, more debt and more taxes for everybody else. By internalizing the scarcity within the operations of government, we will force the bureaucrats and politicians to go hunting in their own backyard for savings, rather than forcing more austerity on Canadian families and entrepreneurs through higher taxes. It is common sense. It is how we will balance the budget to bring home lower prices, lower inflation and lower interest rates.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/18/24 11:39:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Members cannot intentionally mislead the House, and I am afraid that the leader of the Conservative Party did just that when he knowingly made the assertion that when he was the minister of housing, he was responsible for building tens of thousands— Some hon. members: Debate. Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: This is not debate.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/18/24 11:40:25 a.m.
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First of all, the mic is off. I did not ask for the mic to be off. I will finish hearing the point of order, and I will determine whether it is debate or not. The hon. parliamentary secretary.

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Mic
Hearing

Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Apr/18/24 11:40:42 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think this is really important, because I believe he is intentionally misleading the House. He was the minister responsible—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

Apr/18/24 11:40:57 a.m.
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If the hon. member is in disagreement with what is being said, he can raise that in debate. The hon. Leader of the Opposition also has a point of order on this.

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Disagreement

Hon. Pierre Poilievre

Apr/18/24 11:41:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we can put the matter to rest. I believe that if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for me to table in the House of Commons data from the Statistics Canada website, which shows that 92,782 apartment units were built at an average price of $973 per month—

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