- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Niagara Falls
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $102,468.80
- Government Page
- Apr/4/22 12:41:17 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak once again to Bill C-8, an act to implement certain provisions of the economic and fiscal update from December, which is now before us at report stage in the House of Commons.
In February, during second reading debate, I questioned the previous Liberal minority government on its leadership in governing our country during these times of crisis. It turns out that since then, the Prime Minister now feels he needs the help of the NDP to retain the confidence of the House. With the support of his NDP coalition partners, this may in fact be true in this place, but my constituents and Canadians across the country had lost faith and confidence in the Prime Minister and the Liberal government a long time ago. A recent public opinion poll conducted by Ipsos found a majority of people, 53%, listed “help with the soaring costs of everyday needs due to inflation” as one of the top three priorities they had. That is quite a departure from the so-called Liberal-NDP ideological “build back better” agenda, which has not made life better for Canadians. In fact, it has only made life harder and more expensive.
In my February speech on Bill C-8,, I asked the government where its plan was to get Canadian lives back to normal after more than two years of Canadians having to endure this pandemic. Two months later, I still do not have an answer. Meanwhile, federal mandates continue to inconveniently plague Canadians and delay them from returning to their normal lives.
Since February, Canada's Conservatives have called on the federal government to lift all federal pandemic restrictions in order to protect the jobs of federally regulated employees, to enable Canadians to travel unimpeded, to ensure Canada's tourism industry recovery and to allow for the free flow of goods across the Canada-U.S. border. However, the NDP and the Liberals have outright rejected our efforts, even in the face of provinces and territories pivoting toward reopening their economies after two long years of government-forced closures and lockdowns.
Since the onset of this pandemic, we have also raised the importance of vaccines and rapid testing, and have called on the government to make these essential tools more readily available for Canadians to use. However, as seen throughout this pandemic, federal leadership has been either delayed or missing. It has taken a back seat to wedge-issue politics, the politics of division and, most recently, the politics of convenience, which we see with this NDP-Liberal coalition that Canadians did not vote for. I would suggest that this is an abdication of leadership not befitting the needs and wants of Canadians.
For instance, over a year ago, the federal government purchased 52 million doses of Novavax. Meanwhile, the details of the $126-million Novavax production plant in Montreal remain in question. On February 17, 2022, I was pleased to see Health Canada finally approve the Novavax vaccine for use. After two years it finally happened. In theory, this vaccine lets Canadians choose a more traditional protein-based vaccine to protect against COVID, as opposed to those who simply do not want an mRNA vaccine. However, as we speak, Novavax is still inaccessible to many Canadians.
Just last week, a constituent contacted me. She is a federally regulated worker who was concerned about losing her job if she continues to be unvaccinated. Despite her vaccine status, she is eager to get vaccinated and wishes to receive the Novavax vaccine. She has contacted local pharmacies and public health in Niagara and Hamilton, but she has had to be placed on a waiting list with no firm timelines for when she will receive Novavax. My constituent is trying her best, and we need the federal government to try harder to make these critical health care tools available to Canadians. It disappoints me greatly that the Prime Minister and his NDP partners are delaying access to critical health care tools that can give all Canadians greater freedoms and choices, especially as they pertain to managing their personal health care and family well-being.
In the limited time I have today, there are two additional issues I want to raise, both of which significantly impact my riding of Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie.
The first major problem is the continued mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app at our Canada-U.S. border crossings. In my riding alone, we have four international bridge border crossings. We rely on these bridges for trade, travel and tourism, and not only in Niagara. They are the gateways to our country's broader economy. The summer of 2022 could be our third straight pandemic summer. The great people of Niagara are hopeful that this summer will be a more normal event than the previous two, but that hope will quickly be dashed if the NDP-Liberal government continues to use this flawed mobile application.
Recently the general manager of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority wrote Niagara MPs and municipal politicians. He noted that, while it is positive that Canada is lifting the COVID testing requirements at the borders as of April 1, their analysis shows that “continued mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app will result in much longer processing times and very lengthy border waits, which will significantly depress cross-border traffic at a time when we are moving into the 2022 summer tourist season.” He further wrote that CBSA had confirmed to him that ArriveCAN will remain mandatory and that there will be no phase-in period to make the vast majority of the travelling public, which is non-essential, aware of this requirement. He concluded by saying that the purpose of his email to me and to the members of Parliament for Niagara Centre and St. Catharines was to make us “aware that this summer's tourist season will be difficult and frustrating at the border.”
The world is reopening, provinces and territories are reopening and our economies are reopening, yet the federal government continues to drag its feet. The NDP-Liberal government is fully aware of how much chaos the ArriveCAN app could cause at the borders this summer for travellers, tourists and trade. It knows the risks to our economy, and it knows the potential impacts this will have in Niagara and beyond, so why is it continuing to use ArriveCAN and why is it continuing to make ArriveCAN mandatory to use?
We did not have, nor did we need, the federal government's app before the pandemic to cross our borders. Certainly, we do not need this app to continue operating after the pandemic.
The other major issue that has still not been addressed is the underused housing tax, which has the potential to severely and disproportionately impact local property owners in my riding. On March 14, 2022, I wrote the Minister of Finance about this, expressing my great concern. In my email I shared multiple pieces of correspondence I had received as well as a news article that was published by the Buffalo News in New York State.
I wrote seeking urgent clarification of the proposed wording for the listed exemptions found as part of the underused housing tax proposal, which would add a 1% annual tax on underused foreign-owned real estate in Canada. Unfortunately there is considerable confusion in Niagara across multiple levels of government, both in Canada and the U.S., in the business community and among private property owners as to how this tax will or will not apply to Niagara and foreign-owned vacation properties located in my riding. Our communities and stakeholders who may be impacted by this tax policy deserve to know with certainty whether they will actually be impacted.
For generations our Canada and U.S. communities along the Niagara River have become highly integrated. When our international borders are open, citizens of both countries frequently travel across the four local bridges to visit family, friends and loved ones, to work, to attend school, to play sports, to receive medical treatments and to travel and enjoy a vacation in their foreign-owned properties on either side of the river. As a result, many Americans own property in various small towns across my riding. Many have owned their properties for decades, going back generations, and a few for over a century. Some of these properties are fitted to be used year-round, while others are seasonal.
Regardless, when our international border finally and fully reopens and travel irritants, such as ArriveCAN, are removed, these small Niagara communities will benefit economically from our American family, friends and neighbours who will be visiting once again. These long-time property owners are considered valued members of our Niagara community. They are part of our social fabric, and they support our local economies. It would be wrong to target them specifically in Niagara with a punitive levy such as the underused housing tax.
I could go on for so much longer on what we need from the federal government to achieve economic recovery. Our economy should be fully reopened and recovered from this pandemic by now, but it is not. Workers should be back to work to help alleviate severe labour shortages and strengthen our supply chains, but they are not. For two years, Canadians have done their part. It is due time for the federal government to hold up its end of the bargain by ending the federal pandemic mandates and letting Canadians get on with their lives.
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- Mar/24/22 4:16:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will just reiterate the comments of Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Tam. On February 18, she said, “We should be able to manage the pandemic going into the future without, I think, some of the more stringent or restrictive public health measures.”
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- Mar/24/22 4:15:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to say the member's riding is just as wonderful and beautiful as mine from a tourism perspective, but mine is the number one tourism destination in all of Canada. Let us not forget that.
I would like to reiterate that the government has taken vaccines from that COVAX program, and that is something that is abhorrent. What we need to be doing is supporting those countries in order to prevent variants from coming forward again, so people can get vaccinated and so we can prevent the spread of COVID-19. What the government did was deny that from happening. That is my response to that question.
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- Mar/24/22 4:13:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have asked consistently. Last year, we had a motion before the House asking for a plan to be put forward to end the restrictions and the mandates. We have done so again, and we continue to be told no by the government and its supporters in its coalition.
We need a plan to get out of COVID. The people of Niagara Falls, those tourism workers, simply want to go back to work. They want to get back to their jobs. They want to welcome those millions of visitors who come to our community and make it the vibrant tourism community that it is. That is being denied by COVID, and we need to get back to those days.
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- Mar/24/22 4:12:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what should be disturbing to this new NDP-Liberal coalition government is the funding that is required through the COVAX program. The federal government should be ashamed that it actually took money and vaccines from that program that should be going to those countries that need it most, so that they can get vaccinated, so that we can provide assistance to them and so that we can avoid situations with continued growth of variants that continue to emerge throughout the world.
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- Mar/24/22 4:03:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in this place to speak to our Conservative opposition day motion, introduced by my colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.
The motion reads:
That, given that Canada has one of the world's highest vaccination rates and every province across Canada has lifted or has a plan to lift vaccine mandates, the House call on the government to immediately lift all federal vaccine mandates in order to:
(a) protect the jobs of federally regulated employees;
(b) enable Canadians to travel unimpeded;
(c) ensure Canada's tourism industry recovery; and
(d) allow for the free flow of goods across the Canadian border.
This is a motion that I agree with, and it is a motion that is particularly relevant for constituents in my beautiful riding of Niagara Falls, which includes the city of Niagara Falls and the towns of Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie.
As members of the House may know, my riding is Canada's top leisure tourism destination in all of Canada. It is also home to four international bridge crossings that connect Canada to the United States. Before the pandemic, tourism generated $2.4 billion in receipts in Niagara alone, and the local tourism sector employed 40,000 Niagara residents. These numbers were record highs in 2019, and they were followed by record lows a year later, as the world entered lockdown in 2020 to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
As we all know, the Canadian travel and tourism industry was hit first, was hit the hardest and will take the longest to recover from this pandemic. Before COVID, Canada's national tourism industry employed one in 10 Canadians and was a $105-billion industry. Today, we are at just 50% of where we were in 2019, and forecasting does not see recovery being achieved until at least the end of 2025.
For the sake of supporting Canada's travel and tourism industry, we need to get back to the days of 2019, and we need to do so in a safe and responsible way, following what the data and the science is now telling us. That is why I have been encouraged by the remarks of some of Canada's top doctors in this regard.
On February 18 of this year, CTV News reported Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, saying, “We should be able to manage the pandemic going into the future without, I think, some of the more stringent or restrictive public health measures”. Meanwhile, the day before Dr. Tam's statement, Global News reported Dr. Kieran Moore saying, “We do think the highest risk is behind us, that we’re heading into a lower risk environment, and that the need for vaccination policies across Ontario sectors, whether it’s health, or in colleges and universities, is no longer necessary”.
Many of my constituents cannot afford to lose a third consecutive summer tourism season, whether they own and operate a tourism-related business or they are workers whose jobs depend on tourism visitation to our region. We are more than two years into this pandemic, and Canadians simply want a return to their normal lives.
For many months now, Canada's Conservatives, myself included, have been calling on the federal government to present a plan on how we get out of this pandemic and achieve recovery. While provinces and territories are beginning to reverse their policies and expect to have all of their policies fully reversed by the end of April, we continue to see reluctance and hesitation from the federal government to do the same in areas of its jurisdiction.
For a long time, Canada's Conservatives have called on this federal government to eliminate all predeparture testing requirements for fully vaccinated travellers. That is why we welcomed the news when the federal government finally made its recent announcement to do just that. However, it is not enough to leave it at that. We need the federal government to do more and to do so more quickly if we are going to have a strong summer tourism season in Niagara. At this delicate and critical time, international travellers are planning their summer vacations. Our jobs as a Parliament and the job of this government is to make it easy for international travellers to choose Canada as their summer tourism destination.
This year, the ArriveCAN app has been anything but easy for travellers since its implementation. Just today, I received correspondence from the general manager of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Peace Bridge Authority who wrote, “The continued mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app will result in much longer processing times and very lengthy border wait times, which will significantly depress cross-border traffic at a time when we are moving into the 2022 summer tourist season.” He further indicated, “Border delays discourage cross-border travel, and that will continue to adversely impact hard-hit tourism industries in the Niagara region that are trying to recover from two years of pandemic-related border restrictions.”
These continued federal barriers harm Canada's reputation as a travel destination, and our country continues to be perceived by international travellers as a destination that is too complicated to travel to. We need the federal government to be an international champion for Canadian travel and tourism again.
Our motion today is asking the federal government to lift all federal vaccine mandates so our country can fully reopen. This would not only benefit trade, travel and tourism, but would also address federally regulated workers who may or may not be vaccinated for whatever their personal reasons.
The government's job, and our job as parliamentarians, is to give Canadians the tools they need so they can make decisions about their own health care choices and well-being. Tools create choice, and I believe in giving Canadians a choice on this important matter. Given the high vaccination rates, millions upon millions of Canadians have chosen to get vaccinated. It is an approach that I and many of my parliamentary colleagues have encouraged since the early days of this pandemic.
My support for vaccines remains steadfast. I am triple-vaccinated. My wife is a public health nurse, and she has worked at our local vaccination clinics. Having said that, the government has no right to decide an individual's health choice. Federally regulated workers, including frontline workers such as our Canadian Armed Forces members, CBSA officers and health care workers, should never have been forced into an ultimatum by the Liberal government of having to choose between getting vaccinated and getting fired, nor should Canadians have been denied the right to travel freely in their own country to visit loved ones who, for example, may have lived in other provinces.
Tools exist to give Canadians choices about their health care and to help us adapt to living with COVID. For example, rapid testing is one such tool. Why is it that the House only recently authorized the spending of $2.5 billion on rapid tests? We should have done that a year and a half ago, as Canada's Conservatives have been calling for the use of these important tools.
All Canadians deserve a federal government that is here to serve and protect its citizens and our national best interests. That means it does not matter what our political party is, where we live in this country, what faith we follow or what our vaccination status is. The duty of government and of everyone here is to work so that we bring people together to find solutions that are in the best interests of all Canadians.
Our economy should be fully reopened and recovered from this pandemic by now. For two years, Canadians have done their part. It is now time for the current federal government to hold up its end of the bargain and lift all federal vaccine mandates in Canada. I will be supporting this motion, and I hope my parliamentary colleagues will do so as well.
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- Feb/7/22 1:00:09 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, the member is correct in mentioning the issue of divisiveness. The Liberal government revels in the whole notion of wedge issues to create division, to turn Canadians against one another.
I do not know about the members opposite, but I think we are all here because we want to help people, not because we want to turn the majority against the minority. Our job as representatives is to work together to find solutions that bridge those differences and find accommodations for those who do not want to be vaccinated. We should not be seeing what we are seeing on the streets of Ottawa. The government has brought it about. It is the manifestation of its own wedge-issue politics, and it should be ashamed of that.
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- Feb/7/22 12:59:08 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Oh, yes. Again, it is more righteous indignation—
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- Feb/7/22 12:48:23 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity in my first speech of the 44th Parliament to congratulate my Conservative colleague, the hon. member for Portage—Lisgar, on her recent election to be our party's interim leader. I look forward to working with her and with all of my Conservative colleagues in the days, weeks and months ahead as we hold the government to account while growing our party stronger.
I would also like to take a moment to provide my sincere thanks to the former Conservative leader, the hon. member for Durham. I want to thank him and his family for their dedication and efforts in helping guide our party over the past 18 months.
While the leadership of the Conservative Party has undergone change over the past week, I am disappointed to report that the Liberal government leadership in Ottawa remains the same: missing in action, as thousands of protesters from the “freedom convoy” have camped in the nation's capital and blockaded downtown Ottawa for over a week now. What is the government's solution to this impasse outside the walls of this place? We still wait to hear of one. In fact, he is so committed to resolving the issue, the Prime Minister was required to take a personal day off yesterday. Instead of ignoring the situation at hand, where is the leadership required to bring about an expeditious resolution so the citizens of Ottawa can go about their normal lives? More than two years into the pandemic, this is what Canadians simply want: a return to their normal lives.
Let me be extremely clear. There is no question that vaccines are critically important in our fight against COVID and to help us get there. Canada's Conservatives have consistently taken this position throughout the pandemic. We have also encouraged all Canadians who are willing to get their shots. I am fully vaccinated, and I encourage everyone who can to get vaccinated as well. It is the best tool we have, but it is not the only tool. Leadership is about bringing Canadians together. It is about providing the assistance required so we can get to the recovery everyone wants so badly.
Since the early days of this pandemic, Canada's Conservatives have been strong proponents of both vaccines and rapid testing. While vaccines are now widely available, the unfortunate reality is that rapid testing devices are still rare to find and expensive to buy. The government will say Bill C-8 addresses this question specifically by allocating funds directly to this, but why has it taken two years? The increased use of rapid testing will offer early detection of COVID to help limit its spread, and it would also be an important health care tool to let vaccine-hesitant and unvaccinated Canadians carry on with their lives responsibly.
Speaking of those who are hesitant, I receive calls and emails every day asking why there is a delay in the approval of a traditional vaccine from Novavax. Many Canadians have said they are prepared to get vaccinated, but would prefer the protein-based vaccine as opposed to an mRNA vaccine, and that is their rightful choice. Over a year ago, the federal government purchased 52 million doses of Novavax. However, it has still not been approved by Health Canada. Meanwhile, the status of the $126-million Novavax plant production in Montreal remains in question. It disappoints me greatly that the Prime Minister and his Liberal government are delaying access to critical health care tools that can give all Canadians a greater freedom of choice, especially as it pertains to managing their personal health care and family well-being.
In fact, where are the additional resources the provinces have been asking for in terms of federal health transfers to address the issue of a lack of health care surge capacity? The provinces have been asking for over two years and now, and instead, today we are debating Bill C-8, an additional $70 billion in spending that does not tackle this question head-on. We are now two years into this pandemic and it is all too clear that the Liberal government has failed to ensure we have the tools necessary to not only respond to, but, more importantly, live with COVID so Canadians and the people of Niagara can get on with their lives.
Another federal failure in the pandemic response has been excessive government spending. Since the start of this pandemic, the federal government has brought in $176 billion in new spending that is unrelated to COVID-19. Overall, the national debt has now reached an astounding $1.2 trillion. The cost of government is ballooning the cost of living. More dollars are chasing fewer goods and that means higher prices. Spending more costs more. That is the inflation tax.
We are seeing that inflation tax in everything essential to Canadians, from food to fuel to housing. For example, the price of food is skyrocketing. The average family will pay nearly $1,000 extra on groceries in 2022. Rent is up 5%, chicken is up 6.2%, beef is up 11.9% and bacon is up 19.1%. The same price increases are being felt by Canadians on fuel. Gas prices have soared by 33%. This weekend alone, I saw one gas station in Niagara selling gas at $1.56 a litre. Natural gas prices have also shot up, by 19%.
Perhaps the worst has been seen in Canada's housing market. When the Prime Minister took power, the typical house cost $435,000. Now it costs $810,000. That is over 85% inflation in just six years. Last year, home inflation hit 25%, which The Canadian Real Estate Association's chief economist called the biggest gain of all time.
It has been two long and difficult years, and some say it still feels like March 2020, when the countrywide lockdowns first started. All Canadians deserve a federal government that is here to serve and protect its citizens and our nation's best interests. That means it does not matter what their political party is, where they live in the country, what faith they follow or what their vaccine status is. All Canadians deserve so much much better from their federal government than what we are getting now.
From the very beginning of COVID, the Liberal government was grossly unprepared for the pandemic, just as it is grossly unprepared to deal with the consequences and ramifications of its own vaccine policies that it is mandating on Canadians when alternative solutions and options exist. I mentioned this earlier: The duty of government and of everyone here is to work so that we can bring people together to find solutions in the best interests of all. Instead, we have a government in place that revels in wedge-issue politics, and the division that it brings has now manifested in the anger and frustrations we are witnessing today in Ottawa and across the country.
What we see happening outside the walls of this place today is a problem that can be directly linked back to the Liberal government's unpreparedness for the pandemic in the first place. Whether it was expired PPE stored in warehouses when the pandemic first hit, or the federal government deciding to ship good, usable PPE to China when our frontline health care workers desperately needed it here, or when we found out that the Liberal government decided to abandon the Global Public Health Intelligence Network just months before the pandemic hit, or the fact that many of our hospitals were already facing severe capacity limits before the first cases of coronavirus arrived or when the Liberal government decided to prorogue Parliament in the middle of a pandemic, all of the colossal failures add up to the frustrations Canadians are feeling today.
The weight of responsibility for this pandemic and Canada's response to it is on the federal government's shoulders. Vaccines and rapid tests should have been fully accessible by now to all Canadians. Our economy should be open and recovered from this pandemic by now. The provinces should have had additional resources to tackle the surge in capacity COVID brought. Workers should be back to work to help alleviate the severe labour shortages we are experiencing and to help strengthen our supply chains.
For two years, Canadians have done their part. Why has the government not done its part?
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