44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2024 10:00AM
- May/2/24 1:36:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I do not know how many litres of fuel it takes to get to Newfoundland and Labrador. The committee did not make it there. If the aim was to have consultations, perhaps they should have made it there.
However, I can say that I have to drive for six hours every time I travel from Saguenay to Ottawa, and I do it in an electric car. I invite my colleague to do the same when he goes back home.
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- May/2/24 1:36:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to get some clarification from the member if I can. What the member was actually telling me in his answer was that there are conditions where Ottawa, or a political party in Ottawa, can be in opposition to what a province wants. Therefore, even though Newfoundland and Labrador and the Province of Nova Scotia want this legislation passed, because of the policy of the Bloc, its members believe that it is not in Canada's best interests to see it passed.
Would that same principle apply for all provinces?
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- May/2/24 2:44:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a unanimous motion by the National Assembly of Quebec is historic. Canada's Liberals have been denounced by their Liberal allies in Quebec. The NDP has been denounced by Québec solidaire. The Conservatives have not been denounced by their ally Éric Duhaime because he has no members. Quebeckers do not vote Conservative. However, the Conservatives were also unanimously condemned by the National Assembly of Quebec.
All elected members in Quebec City see that all federalist members in Ottawa are working to undermine Quebeckers' ability to make their own societal choices.
Does the government realize the precedent it has set?
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- May/2/24 3:43:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have two provincial premiers who have come to the table expecting to see provincial legislation that mirrors the federal legislation. We have multiple parties, different levels of government, coming together, recognizing the potential that this legislation has with respect to the future prosperity for Atlantic Canada, and yet both the Conservative Party of Canada, the new far-right, and the Bloc are joining forces to try to prevent this bill from passing. I wonder if the hon. member could provide his thoughts in regard to why we see a lack of respect for the two provinces working with Ottawa to make this happen.
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- May/2/24 7:18:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the women and men serving in the Canadian Armed Forces in the Ottawa valley, across Canada and abroad.
In February, the Standing Committee on National Defence passed its eighth report. The report said, “Given that, rent for Canadian military personnel living on bases is increasing this April, and at a time when the military is struggling to recruit and retain personnel, the committee report to the House, that the government immediately cancel all plans to increase rent on military accommodations used by the Department of National Defence.”
Unfortunately, for those living and serving in the CAF, the NDP-Liberal government could not be bothered to read that. April 1 came and the rent went up. Along with the higher rents, our fighting forces also had to pay the higher Liberal carbon tax.
The official policy of the Liberal Party is to make life unaffordable. While Canadians saw taxes on energy go up 23% across the country, the average rent for Canadians in uniform went up 4.2%. If the socialist coalition had its way, CAF members in Ontario would have seen a 6.8% rent hike. It was only thanks to the Ford government in Toronto putting a cap on rent increases at 2.5% that the NDP-Liberal cash grab was prevented.
The same thing happened in Nova Scotia. The radical extremist government wanted to hike rents by 9.3%. Instead, the province capped rent hikes to 5%. CAF members in Newfoundland and Labrador were not lucky enough to have a Conservative premier. Their rents went up 8.3%. In Yellowknife, rents were up by $111 a month. In Iqaluit, rents went up by $131 a month. A Bay Street lawyer renting a fancy penthouse in downtown Toronto, paying $5,000 a month, would have seen a smaller rent increase than a soldier stationed in Iqaluit. Under Chrétien and Martin, we got the feeling that Liberals were largely indifferent to the Canadian Armed Forces, but this bunch treats them with disdain.
These punishing rent hikes reveal the true ideology of the socialist coalition. It is intentionally underfunding the armed forces, driving serving members out of the military and discouraging new recruits from joining. They want to see the fighting force atrophy and eventually die, so that they can replace the military with a climate corps focused only on disaster response. Even the stuff the old Liberals used to prefer the military to focus on, such as so-called peacekeeping is now outsourced to the Communists who control China.
The latest Liberal cuts to defence budget spending are putting our women and men at risk. Normally, before being stationed abroad, our armed forces undergo combined arms training. Every unit that had been sent to Latvia as a part of Operation Reassurance had undergone combined arms training, until now. Thanks to the latest round of Liberal austerity, combined arms training has been cut. Former Liberal member of Parliament and retired general Andrew Leslie told the CBC today that cuts to military training were dangerous, saying he was “not aware of any other [NATO] army which will be deploying troops to the front line of a possible confrontation with Russia, who are not 100 per cent trained according to a variety of battle test standards.”
It is not just the army facing cuts. The far left, socialist Prime Minister is outsourcing fighter pilot training. Now the second-largest country in the world cannot even train its own fighter pilots. For anyone with a passing knowledge of Canadian history, the loss of pilot training under the socialist coalition is heartbreaking. Canada was home to the Commonwealth air training program. Between 1939 and 1945, over 130,000 pilots and aircrew from around the world were trained here in Canada. Many of those pilots fell in love with Canada or a Canadian and then came back here after the war and helped build this great nation. Few Canadians even know we once had an aircraft carrier, until it was scrapped by Pierre Trudeau. The anti-military apple does not fall far from the Marxist tree.
I almost wish the Prime Minister's military dismantling was part of a hidden agenda, but it is not. It is a very public agenda and young Canadians are paying attention. They see the news stories about higher rents for CAF members. They see the news stories about poor equipment and cuts to training. They see what the government is doing and they want no part of it. Recruitment will continue to decline because the government and the Prime Minister have done everything they can to drive it down. Fewer serving members in the CAF means less money for the defence department and more money for buying votes from special interest groups.
The recent budget reveals the government's real priorities. It plans to spend zero dollars on military housing this year and zero dollars next year, but two years from now, watch out, because it plans to spend a whopping $1 million on military housing. That is the same year these socialists have budgeted to spend over $500 billion on program expenses. Despite Liberal inflation, $1 million still sounds like a lot, but in a half-trillion dollar budget it comes out to 0.0000002%. That $1 million was not a rounding error, but that was about three zeros ago. One million dollars for military housing two years from now is an insult. Compare that to the $400 million the government plans to spend this year on housing students seeking asylum at Conestoga College. That is money the CAF could use today to make desperately needed repairs to military housing.
As the member of Parliament for the largest army base in Canada, I have seen first-hand the state of some of the housing. Asbestos, black mould, peeling paint and leaky pipes are just some of the ongoing issues on base. The government has never put that on recruiting posters. However, as bad as some units are, many soldiers will happily take whatever they can because the cost to rent off base has exploded under the Prime Minister. It used to be that a serving soldier was earning enough to buy a house, but now they have to reach the rank of general to afford buying a home.
With yesterday's confession by the Minister of National Defence the truth is out. He stated, “Trying to go to cabinet or even to Canadians and tell them that we had to do this because we need to meet this magical threshold of 2%...don't get me wrong, it's important, but it was really hard to convince people that it was a worthy goal, that it was some noble standard we had to meet.”
Recent polls have shown that a majority of Canadians support much higher defence spending. Canadians would have needed no convincing had the Minister of National Defence made the case to them, but he never tried. His description of the NATO defence pledge as a “magical threshold”, a “worthy goal” or a “noble standard” is revealing. It hardly sounds like someone who could make a persuasive case to a group of pacifists and socialists. Russia is waging a war on Ukraine. China is threatening to invade Taiwan. Iran is funding terror worldwide and launching drone attacks on Israel. Not since the Korean War has the case for increasing defence spending been more obvious, yet despite the state of the world, the NDP-Liberal government is cutting defence spending.
This is not the first time the Liberals have led the CAF into a decade of darkness, but this time it is different. Even under the Chrétien Liberals' cuts in the 1990s, Canadians were still eager to join up. Those days are gone. That is because an entire generation of Canadians have spent the last nine years hearing the Prime Minister downplay our once proud country. Why would any young person risk their lives for a post-nation state? Why sign up for a country whose own prime minister would rather apologize for?
When members of the socialist coalition look at the country all they see is a racist colonial oppressor, full of neo-Nazis hiding behind every truck trailer. They have hired an army of ideological storm troopers to lead re-education camps. They use every opportunity to erase symbols of our proud history. The truth is that the NDP-Liberal government is ashamed of Canada. Why would anyone want to serve their country when the very people running it do not like it?
It is not only that these socialists do not like Canada. They do not think much of those of us who love Canada. They do not like the kind of people who are proud to wear the uniform bearing our national flag. For the current Prime Minister, they are all just a bunch of racist misogynists and an unacceptable fringe minority. The truth is that these radical far-left Marxists across the way are the fringe minority of government.
After nine years, Canadians are tired of a Prime Minister who constantly apologizes for our country's very existence. He is just not worth the cost to our security.
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