- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Niagara Falls
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 69%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $102,468.80
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, before budget 2023 was presented, our Conservative leader made three demands of it: one, that it end the war on work and lower taxes for workers; two, that it end inflationary deficits that are driving up the cost of goods; and three, that it remove gatekeepers to increase the building of homes in Canada. Sadly, none of these three Conservative demands were met, and for that reason I will not be supporting Bill C-47, the budget implementation act, 2023.
Simply put, all the budget will do is drive up the cost of the goods and interest and taxes paid by the fine residents in my riding, in the communities of Fort Erie, Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Canadians are struggling because of this incompetent Liberal government, which has become addicted to overspending.
Here are just a few quick statistics that will surprise those Canadians watching. Those who are watching should please make sure they are seated. I am not making this up.
After eight years, this Liberal Prime Minister has added more debt than all other prime ministers combined. Yes, that is since Confederation in 1867. Canada's federal debt for the 2023-24 fiscal year is projected to reach $1.22 trillion. If that is not jaw dropping, get this: That federal Liberal debt counts for nearly $81,000 per household in Canada. Budget 2023 simply provides no path to balancing Canada's budget projections.
The deficit for 2022-23 is up to $43 billion. That is only $6 billion less than what we will spend on health care this fiscal year. Even the government's own projections have changed since last November. In her fall economic statement, the Minister of Finance projected a $4.5-billion surplus for 2027-28, yet here we are six months later and this surplus has been completely erased. In its place, budget 2023 now projects a $14-billion deficit in 2027-28, with interest payments on our national debt reaching $50 billion.
These depressing figures make it hard to be hopeful for future generations of Canadians. They also highlight the degree of fiscal mismanagement by this Liberal Prime Minister and his government. For millions of Canadians, it is even more challenging to live through.
Many residents and families in my communities, especially seniors and new Canadians, are struggling mightily with the high cost of inflation on their shelter and groceries, and even higher federal taxes are being implemented. In fact, “Canada's Food Price Report 2023” predicts that a family of four will spend up to $1,065 more on food this year, which is $598 more than the $467 from the so-called grocery rebate they will receive. Members should not be fooled by the Liberal spin. This overhyped rebate is not actually a relief measure at all. It simply gives money back to Canadians that this government already clawed from them through its big tax hikes. This rebate will do nothing to solve the cost of living crisis.
On top of that, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has recently shown that the carbon tax will cost the average family between $402 and $847 in 2023, even after the rebates. Further, it is only going to get worse in the near future. By 2030, carbon taxes could add 50¢ per litre to the price of gasoline.
In addition to these fiscal troubles, I am also concerned about what is missing in budget 2023.
There is zero mention of the critically important wine sector support program. This program was designed by Wine Growers Canada and adopted by Agriculture Canada as a trade legal program to protect Canadian wineries from having to pay the expensive excise tax. This program expired last summer, and Canadian wineries, including those in the Niagara region and in my communities of Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls, badly need this program, or they risk potential job losses and closures.
In last year's budget, the government showed that it would be receiving $390 million by now taxing our wine sector. Where are those funds going? Our grape growers and wineries deserve answers from the government which created this mess through its introduction of the escalator clause on alcohol in 2017. Do not even get me going on the negative impact the escalator clause is causing to our sector.
However, this Liberal sleight of hand does not just apply to Canadian grapes and wine. It also touches upon the 2,800 tourism-related businesses and the 40,000 workers in the tourism sector in Niagara. In 2019, Niagara welcomed more than 13 million visitors and generated $2.4 billion in receipts as Canada's top leisure tourism destination.
As many members of this place will know, this week is National Tourism Week and the theme is “Canada: Powered by Tourism”. If members were to examine this budget and the government's commitment to tourism, they would be hard pressed to see its recognition for a sector that at one time reached $105 billion nationwide and was responsible for one in every 11 jobs created in Canada.
Throughout National Tourism Week, I have been meeting with many tourism stakeholders and receiving their feedback and reaction to budget 2023. In short, the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada is disappointed in the 2023 budget and the empty promises, the lack of funding and the money it has cost to build the federal growth strategy. In fact, it has told me its members are still waiting for the millions of dollars in funding that was promised to them and identified by the government in last year's budget.
I have also met with representatives of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, who expressed their concerns that despite improvements over the last 12 months, tourism businesses continue to struggle financially and are carrying significant debt loads. There is also an increasing sense of impatience and concern from the industry by the lack of commitment from the government to provide a firm timeline to introduce the highly anticipated, long-awaited and overdue federal tourism growth strategy.
I also want to note two concerns that I have flagged after reading budget 2023.
My first concern is on the commitment of spending $50 million on Destination Canada over three years, starting in 2023-24, and yet there is no detail on how these funds are to be allocated. If members were to look at the government estimates, they would see the Liberals have committed $111 million to Destination Canada this fiscal year. Are any of the $50 million pledged by the government included in that budget? If so, it is a bit disappointing, considering that $156 million was spent last year to attract major international conventions, conferences and events to Canada.
As well, what of the $108 million committed to the regional development agencies over three years starting in 2023-24 to support communities, small businesses and non-profit organizations in developing local tourism projects and events? Again the Liberals' sleight of hand is at work here. When we look at the line items provided in the budget for the three years, we see that the government only shows a total of $93 million being allocated. Where is the remaining $15 million? Is this money not being spent from last year's budget from the regional relief fund, or are some of those funds dedicated to indigenous tourism from last year now actually going to be counted for this year?
It is not good enough for the Minister of Tourism to tell the people of Canada's travel and tourism industry that they should simply be happy they were included in this year's budget. The bar needs to be set higher, especially when it comes to discussing an industry that was disadvantaged for nearly three years by the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal restrictions such as ArriveCAN that were implemented.
After eight years of this Liberal Prime Minister, the future of Canada's travel and tourism industry is at risk because of higher costs and taxes imposed by this reckless and expensive Liberal government. It is for those reasons and more that I will be voting against this legislation.
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- Feb/14/23 4:32:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when our Conservative leader first spoke before the fall economic statement was introduced last November, he made two very clear and simple demands on behalf of our Conservative Party.
First, we wanted the Liberal government to stop the taxes. This included cancelling all planned tax hikes and the tripling of the carbon tax. Fast-forward a few months to February, and it is clear that the current Liberal government is on track to do the exact opposite. Taxes went up on Canadians this past January, and this April it is only going to get worse.
Late last year, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation sounded the alarm about five incoming Liberal tax hikes in 2023. These hikes include increases that Canadians will see at the gas pumps, an alcohol escalator tax, increases to the Canada pension plan, hikes to employment insurance contributions and increases to payroll taxes for anyone making $40,000 or more this year.
This April 1, gasoline is set to go up by 14¢ per litre, and alcohol taxes are automatically set to rise by 6.3%. This is no cruel April Fool's joke. This is the damage done by bad Liberal fiscal policy. Locally, across Niagara, these taxes, particularly the alcohol escalator tax, will punish many wineries, craft breweries and distilleries, as well as anyone who enjoys consuming these wonderful Canadian-made products while visiting Niagara, which is the number one leisure tourism destination in all of Canada.
The second demand of our Conservative leader was for the Liberal government to stop the spending. Any new spending by Liberal ministers in the government must be matched by an equivalent savings. The government must cut wasteful spending and stop the inflationary deficits that drive up the cost of everything for Canadians. Again, fast-forward to this month, and the Liberals are failing to make good on this demand.
In fact, as time goes on, more and more wasteful and reckless Liberal spending is being uncovered. In the fall, there was the $6,000 luxurious hotel room that our Prime Minister stayed in for a one-night stay in Europe. Then, there was the $54 million wasted on the disastrous ArriveCAN app. Recently, the Auditor General blasted the CRA for its lack of rigour in trying to identify and recoup a minimum of $27.4 billion in suspected overpayments of emergency aid benefits, including $15.5 billion for the Canada emergency wage subsidy.
In response to the comment from the Auditor General, the government's own CRA commissioner had the gall to inform Canadians that “it wouldn't be worth the effort” to review and try to recover every dollar of the $15.5 billion in CEWS overpayments. That insufficient response from the CRA commissioner did not get by our Parliamentary Budget Officer, who recently said it was “a bit disconcerting when you hear that and the government is faced with a deficit.”
For these reasons and more, Conservatives are asking the House today to call on the Liberal government to cap spending, cut waste, fire high-priced consultants and eliminate inflationary deficits and taxes that have caused a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians.
Simply put, after eight years of the current Liberal government, Canadians pay more today for their goods and services and are getting less. Groceries, gas, home heating and more are getting more expensive by the day because of the reckless Liberal spending habits. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the cost of groceries is up almost 11%. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are skipping meals.
In Niagara, a recent report found that almost 39,000 people are being assisted by local food banks across the region. Those serving on the front lines are witnessing people struggling who have never struggled before. Under these deteriorating conditions, Canadians work harder to try to get ahead, but they take home less money because of higher costs for the things they need to buy and the higher taxes they will have to pay.
Just yesterday, in fact, we had new data provided by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, which reported that nearly four in 10 Canadians are now borrowing money to pay for groceries, shelter and other daily expenses. According to the report, “many Canadians are facing the biggest financial challenges of their lives. More are borrowing money to cover their day-to-day expenses, including by using high-cost loans.” It is no wonder Canadians feel like everything is broken and they have lost control. Many are falling behind, even as they try hard to get ahead.
It comes as no surprise that the same reckless Liberal spending habits, which have played a big role in driving up inflation, have also caused our national debt to soar. Debt interest payments have become so big under the Liberals that the costs are projected to be larger than what the federal government spends on the budget for the Department of National Defence. We should remember that the next time we have to scramble our outdated and under-equipped CF-18s and watch the Americans shoot down airborne threats over our territory.
It is getting so bad that some former Liberals are finally starting to acknowledge it. One random Liberal is former finance minister Bill Morneau. He has said that the government probably spent too much during COVID. Meanwhile, former Liberal deputy prime minister and finance minister John Manley said that the Liberal Prime Minister's fiscal policy is making it harder to contain inflation.
There are direct consequences to the Liberal government's recklessly spending the cupboards bare. Will the government be able to live up to the expectations it set for its new federal tourism growth strategy? The tourism minister has spent the last several months asking the industry to think big on ideas to expedite economic recovery from the devastating impact of COVID-19, yet fear is now beginning to grow in the tourism community that the Liberal government is once again failing to understand that the industry is still in recovery mode. It appears that, once again, the Liberal government is setting itself up to over-promise and under-deliver. That is a great shame for tourism communities across the country, such as mine in Niagara, which welcomes visitors from around the world.
As well, what is to happen to the wine sector support program, which was put in place because of the Liberal government's ineptitude on trade policy? The two-year, $166-million program has ended, yet the industry has asked for it to be extended, and there have been no updates about its renewal. Last year's budget showed that the government would raise $390 million over five years in new revenue by now applying the excise tax to 100% Canadian-made wines. Where are those funds going?
For months, Conservatives have been warning the government that its out-of-control spending would lead to an increase in interest rates. The government responded by telling Canadians not to worry and to go ahead and take out big loans since interest rates would remain low for a long time and there would not be any negative consequences. Well, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 45% of variable rate mortgage holders now say they will have to sell or vacate their homes in less than nine months due to the current interest rate levels.
After eight years of the Liberal government, everything feels broken, and Canadians are having a harder time not only getting by, but simply hoping to try to get ahead. After eight years of this Liberal recklessness, Canadians have to work harder, work longer and even work multiple jobs just to take home less earnings and to get by.
Enough is enough. While Liberals are expecting Canadians to pay for their reckless spending habits, Canadians can count on Conservatives to provide them with the sound financial planning and path ahead when they elect us into government after the next federal election.
Canadians must realize that as the Liberals make more and more promises for a better tomorrow to distract us from the issues of today, none of the problems they have created, which Canadians now face, are getting fixed. Canadians need real solutions to these real problems that they are facing right now, and only a Conservative government can deliver on this for Canadians.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this place today to debate Bill C-19, an act to implement certain provisions of budget 2022.
I will say from the outset that I will be voting against this high-spending federal budget, which proposes to dig Canada deeper into debt and drive our deficits ever higher. It simply hurts and squeezes middle-class Canadians even more through the Liberals' inflationary policies, which have created a cost-of-living crisis for Canadians in this country and a competitiveness crisis for Canadian businesses.
The Liberals and NDP often rise in this chamber to claim that they have the backs of Canadians, but their actions, as demonstrated by this reckless budget, prove otherwise. They will argue that it helps Canadians, when in fact it does the exact opposite.
If people were hoping for a return to some form of fiscal responsibility in this most recent federal budget, I am sure they were as disappointed as I was when the Liberal government revealed its $452-billion spending plan on April 7. If there was any cut in this budget, it was in the size of the document itself, which went from 725 pages in last year's budget to 304 pages in budget 2022. Perhaps that is progress, but only for a Liberal, I would presume.
Let us think about this for a moment. Federal government spending is now 25% higher than it was prepandemic. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, each Canadian’s share of the national debt is now $31,700, and it is growing quickly.
It is clear throughout budget 2022 that the Prime Minister, his Minister of Finance and his NDP friends have failed to deliver on a plan that is fiscally responsible. Instead, they have added another $50 billion in uncontrolled borrowed spending. This will only fuel inflation and result in higher taxes, because one day these costs will have to be paid.
Despite all this new spending, there was very little support announced for our hardest-hit tourism sector. There is no mention of repayment extensions for CEBA or RRRF, and there was no extension to the tourism and hospitality recovery program, which ended already last month. These were key requests made to the government by the tourism industry to assist in its recovery, yet they were all rebuffed by a government committed to the talking point that it invested $1 billion in tourism. They fail to mention that this was in last year's budget, and it was still grossly insufficient given the economic toll the pandemic raged against this industry.
At a time when tourism recovery is still very much an aspiration for many and not yet a reality or certainty, the Liberal-NDP government, through this budget, has pulled the rug from under the feet of the tourism sector by not listening to its concerns and input on these important federal business support programs.
My riding of Niagara Falls, which includes the beautiful towns of Fort Erie and Niagara-on-the-Lake, is Canada's top leisure tourism destination. Before the pandemic, Canada’s national tourism industry generated $105 billion, which is 2% of our country’s GDP, and it employed one in 10 Canadians. Meanwhile, Niagara Falls alone contributed $2.4 billion in tourism receipts, and it employs nearly 40,000 workers in Niagara in our local tourism sector.
For tourism businesses in Niagara, the 2022 summer tourism season is its first real chance at recovery in two years. The sector, which will generate 75% of its income in the next four months, will be challenged to achieve recovery in 2022, specifically as a result of the government’s policies. By not listening to the concerns of the tourism sector, the government has essentially tied one hand behind the sector’s back by ending important relief programs, all while continuing to have in place restrictive travel mandates, which serve to depress visitors from travelling to Canada for business, to visit family or for vacation.
Instead of allowing tourism to do what it does best, which is to welcome visitors from throughout the world, the Liberal-NDP government has decided to double down on its efforts to hurt the Canadian tourism and travel sector. In fact, through budget 2022, the government is allocating an additional $25 million to support the disastrous ArriveCAN app at our international border crossings and ports of entry for travellers coming into Canada.
From a tourism perspective, which is so important to Niagara, it makes no sense that this is a funding priority of the government in this budget. Instead, the Conservatives are calling on the government to scrap this app. We did not need this app to travel or welcome tourists before the pandemic. Surely, we will not need it to travel or welcome tourists after the pandemic. As the world reopens from COVID, these questions and criticisms of ArriveCAN are important and necessary to highlight and press the government about.
It was astonishing to hear the recent testimony of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in the Senate yesterday. When asked if the finance minister's long-term deficit reduction plan was believable, he said it was not. To quote media reports from the Senate hearing, the Parliamentary Budget Officer stated, “I personally don’t believe it’s credible that there will be that level of spending restraint in the period from 2024 to 2027, given all the expenditures that remain to be implemented by the government over that period of time.” Well, I have a suggestion for the government. Perhaps it can save the $25 million it has allocated to the ArriveCAN app in this year’s budget, which will do nothing to help our tourism sector recover.
Another issue that is hampering the recovery of the Canadian tourism and travel sector is the massive backlogs at our local passport offices. Simply put, constituents of mine are experiencing nightmare conditions of service that are completely unacceptable. Obtaining a passport and renewing a passport are basic services that Canadians can rightly expect from their federal government as citizens and taxpayers, but the incompetence of the Liberal-NDP government has been laid bare by this example of mismanagement. This strong demand for Canadian passports and passport renewals as this pandemic ends was completely predictable, yet the government is clearly unprepared to deal with it, which again proves it does not have a plan to actually help Canadians or our travel and tourism sector, which my riding depends on.
Budget 2022 also raises far more questions than it provides answers for regarding businesses and workers in Canada’s wine industry, which is so important to Niagara and Niagara-on-the-Lake in my riding. First, this budget provides zero details about what the important trade legal excise exemption replacement program will look like. The expensive new excise tax will be hitting Canadian wineries on July 1, which is about three weeks away, just 22 days from now. Wineries across the country badly need to learn these program details so they can prepare and brace against the impact of this new tax.
Interestingly, while no program details have yet been revealed, the federal government does show it expects a revenue windfall, forecasted at $390 million over the next five years, after the excise exemption is repealed. How they arrived at this forecast is unexplained, and it does not indicate whether they expect the industry to grow, remain stable or contract as a result of this new expensive excise tax.
Then there is the question of the $34-million difference between the $101 million of federal support over two years promised in budget 2021 and the $135 million of departmental revenue forecasted for the first two years after the excise exemption is repealed. We know that the wine industry said the $101-million commitment in budget 2021 fell way short of what was needed to offset the costs of repealing the excise exemption in order to keep the industry whole as it is.
Will the federal government commit to returning to the wine industry the $34 million that it expects to generate in tax from the wine industry? Again, we do not know. The expensive new excise tax and all these unanswered questions risk future prosperity in Canada’s wine sector, which is so important to Niagara’s identity and economy.
Budget 2022 fails Canadians and fails Niagara. It proposes to grow the federal government even bigger, when the most basic of federal services, such as passport offices, are already failing and dysfunctional. More importantly, it fails to support our important tourism and wine sectors. For all these reasons and more, I will be opposing budget 2022.
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- 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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