- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Peterborough—Kawartha
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $106,196.43
- Government Page
- May/22/24 2:20:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today's report from Food Banks Canada is shocking, jaw-dropping and sad. Almost 44% of the population is spending more than 30% of their income on housing. The Liberal-NDP government is failing Canadians. When that much of one's income is going to housing, if one can even find housing, there is barely anything left for other necessities, like food.
Two million people a month are accessing food banks in Canada. One in three of those visitors is a child. Canadians are doing everything that is asked of them. They are going to work, and they are paying outrageous taxes, but they still cannot get ahead. Why? It is because the Prime Minister spends and then gaslights Canadians, telling them that Canada is not broken and that everything is great.
Canadians deserve housing and food they can afford. Conservatives will restore that grade from an F to an A, and we will bring it home so that everybody can afford to live.
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- May/6/24 6:31:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to put on the record that the best thing we can do for women is to give them financial autonomy and make life affordable so that they can make the choice to leave an abusive relationship. Under the Liberal-NDP government, domestic violence is up 72%.
The Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association has stated that the bill “will spend billions of dollars unnecessarily on drugs for people who already have coverage.” With a cost-of-living crisis, and an inflationary deficit where people cannot afford to live, is the hon. member okay with this wasteful spending?
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- Dec/5/23 5:18:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a true honour to stand in the House of Commons to speak on behalf of the best community in Canada, Peterborough—Kawartha.
After eight years of a Prime Minister who has recklessly spent taxpayer money, we have a cost of living crisis. If the economy does not work, then nothing works. Charities and social programs suffer, and everything we need to take care of our most vulnerable is no longer available.
Why are there tent cities across this country? Why are full-time employed nurses living in their cars? Why are seniors forced back to work? Why do we have the highest rate of food bank usage in history? Why are Canadians getting poorer? Why do we have the lowest GDP per capita growth rate since the Great Depression? It is because we have a Prime Minister who does not care about monetary policy. Those are his words, not mine.
This is basic Budgeting 101. Most kids can tell us that if we spend more money than we make, we are going to have a major problem. That is exactly what the Prime Minister has done. He did not understand what would happen if he borrowed gobs of money. He was warned many times, but, as we have seen over and over again, the Prime Minister refuses to listen to the people. He doubles down on policy that creates chaos and suffering. The Prime Minister promised everyone that interest rates would stay low for a long time.
Who remembers the exchange on CTV in 2020 with the Prime Minister? CTV's Glen McGregor said, “Future governments are going to have to carry that debt. The servicing costs on that are going to be very high.” The Prime Minister replied, “Sorry?” Glen McGregor responded, “The servicing cost on that debt that you are going to have to carry, that you're adding to right now. Right?” The Prime Minister said, “Interest rates are at historic lows, Glen.” Three years later, we are in a very serious situation.
The current housing minister is also on record telling Canadians that interest rates will stay low for a long time and not to worry. Surprise, just as Conservatives predicted, they did not; now we have chaos and suffering.
In order to understand how we got here, we need to understand why. What is the motivation of the Liberal-NDP government? It believes that government knows best and that it will take care of the people, that the people are not capable. Let us take the Liberals' favourite talking point, for example: child care. This is a classic example of a program that has created more losers than winners. The Liberals drove up inflation by overspending and borrowing gobs of money, which drove up the cost of living. What happened? That promised money to make child care more affordable became less valuable, because this is the cycle of overspending. Child care centres now need more and more money, because money is worth less. It is a vicious cycle, and we will never get out of debt. We will go further and further into debt.
Do members know that, right now, we are spending more on servicing our debt than we are on health care transfers in this country? It is wild that a government in charge of fiscal responsibility has not seen what it has been doing. It does not understand that when one spends more than one makes, one accrues debt. The government does not have money. It has Canadian taxpayers' money, and it can only make money by taxing people. That is what we have seen in this country. People's paycheques have decreased over and over again.
Because I am the critic for families, children and social development, I want to read an open letter by ADCO, which is the Association of Day Care Operators of Ontario. It really explains the ideology behind the government and why it is so important to understand this. The letter says, “The framers of the program,” referring to the $10-a-day child care, “seem to have a strong preference for building a government-run child care system, even if it means parents with young children have to work more hours so that they can pay higher taxes to cover the costs. The assumption seems to be that all children are better off in government-managed institutionalized care and that all parents can and should be employed full-time.”
This out-of-control spending has caused chaos in every sector of our country. As I have said, when the economy does not work, nothing works. However, we have a finance minister and Prime Minister who continually gaslight Canadians and tell them that they have never had it so good. Canadians are not stupid, but they are miserable.
I want to read some messages that have come through to me:
Hi, Michelle...I'm a single mom of a 19 YO in college and a 15 YO in high school with no child support. I'm paying almost $1600 rent plus approx $1000 for utilities, car payment and insurances for a 3 bedroom townhouse in the “ghetto of Burlington”. As tenants move out, they are gutting the units, adding central air, stainless appliances and raising rents to over $2500. I work in healthcare and live basically cheque to cheque. I only buy groceries that are on sale or in the reduced bin. Thankfully I was gifted a large freezer and buy fresh items on sale and am able to freeze. I make a decent wage. I do not know how others do it making less than I do. Something needs to be done.
There is also this one:
We bought our house six years ago and we have a variable mortgage, so we are already feeling the effects of the higher interest rates. Over the last year and a half, our mortgage has gone from $3400 a month to $5000. My husband and I both work full-time and we have two young kids. We have had to rent our basement in order to afford our mortgage increase. If even one single month goes by that we don't get the rent income, we will not make our mortgage. If our mortgage continues to rise, even with the rent income, we won't make our mortgage. It is extremely scary. Every time the interest rate rises, I wait for the letter in the mail to tell me how much higher my mortgage is going to be. It's terrifying and quite literally taking away from the quality of life that I can offer to my children.
That is the message I cannot say loud enough in this House: Our children are feeling the consequences of this.
I recently gave a talk about basic politics to grade 5 students. They are 10 years old. We did a mock House of Commons. It was very fun to get these kids engaged in politics. I said, “Okay, we get to decide what issue you guys want to debate. We will take a vote and do the majority.”
Six kids raised their hand. Do members know what the number one issue was for every one of them? It was that everything is too pricey. They said their parents cannot afford gas, cannot afford food and cannot afford the mortgage.
This is the burden we put on our children when we do not put fiscal responsibility first and when we do not care about monetary policy. That is exactly what the Liberal Prime Minister has done, and it is hurting our most vulnerable. We can read any headline. Charities cannot make it happen anymore. Today is International Volunteer Day, but people cannot find volunteers because they cannot afford the gas to drive to volunteer. That is the reality of what we are living in this country.
We have put forth lots of solutions. I will be brief in what the solutions are, but the real solution has to come down to the fact that the government cannot tax the farmer who makes the food. Farmer Brown from Ontario phoned me this week. He said that he wanted me to tell the Prime Minister that the carbon tax will make everything cost more, that everything must go up in price. Whatever they spend to make the product, they have to get back when they sell it. Whatever amount the carbon tax is increased by, the price will have to go up that amount. They have to get that money back, and the only way to do that is to raise prices.
Farmer Brown gets it. Why does the Prime Minister not get it? We are long overdue for common sense, and Conservatives will bring it.
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- Oct/30/23 6:23:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting. One of the biggest problems we have in the House is that the Liberals often will say that they are spending their money. What is lost, so often forgotten, is that they do not have any money; they have taxpayers' money, and that is the reality. That is why there is record-high inflation. That is why there is a homelessness problem. There is reckless spending by a government and a Prime Minister that have never had to balance a budget. There is reckless spending by a Prime Minister who does not know that it is not his money.
I will share another little point that happened today in committee. The Auditor General's report said that the government spent $1.3 billion to reduce homelessness, but could not tell whether it had reduced it at all. Of that $1.3 billion, $708 million went to social distancing and masks. I am sorry, but when people live in a tent, they do not need those things; they need houses built.
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- Oct/18/23 3:08:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, over and over, the Liberal-NDP government promised interest rates would not go up, but after eight miserable years of the Prime Minister, Canadians know that is not true. Mortgage defaults and forced home sales are on the rise.
Lindsay is one of hundreds who wrote to me to tell me about her skyrocketing mortgage rate. She is paying an extra $1,250 a month. She does not have an extra $1,250 a month.
The Prime Minister is just not worth the cost, so when will he stop his inflationary spending so Canadians like Lindsay can keep their home?
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- Sep/19/23 2:43:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, just two months ago the finance minister said, “Canada's plan to bring down inflation is working.” Clearly, the Liberals are experiencing inflation differently, because it is not going down; it is up again today. After eight years of the current Prime Minister, mortgage payments are up 151%, and Canadians are suffering. He is not worth the cost.
When will he admit that his inflationary spending is leaving Canadians homeless?
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Madam Speaker, hope is the glue that holds us together and allows us to go on when we think we cannot. It is a powerful force that has carried humans through the worst of times. In order to have hope, we must face reality. We must acknowledge the truth.
I ask everyone at home if they are happy with the cost of living. Are they happy with the rise of crime? Are they happy with the homelessness crisis? Are they happy with the addiction crisis? Are they happy with our country?
The truth is the government, which is currently the Liberal-NDP coalition, cannot give us anything it has not taken away from us. The government does not have any money. It has our hard-earned money, and every dollar it spends is our dollar earned.
The most important piece of legislation that is voted on in this House is the budget, which we are debating today. The budget tells Canadians where the priorities of the government are. The budget determines the future of our children and our grandchildren. The Liberal-NDP coalition has doubled government spending, yet nothing in this country is twice as good. In fact, it is twice as bad. Housing prices have doubled, rent has doubled and health care wait times for treatment have doubled.
The overdose rate in this country is 300% higher than when the Prime Minister took office. Each day, 22 people in this country die from an overdose. Do people know how much money is allocated in the Liberal budget for treatment and recovery? None. The Liberal Prime Minister continues to fund people to stay stuck where they are in their disease of addiction, rather than funding off-ramps to help them break free. Remember the 2021 election promise of $4.5 billion in a mental health transfer? The Liberals must have forgotten about it because it is nowhere to be found in the Liberal-NDP budget.
The truth is Canadians are suffering. There are many Canadians who make good money, almost $100,000 a year, yet these same people with full-time jobs are relying on food banks. Food banks across this country are reporting record high usage, the highest in history. We are a G7 country and middle-class Canadians are relying on food banks, so we can imagine how awful life must be for our most vulnerable, including seniors on fixed incomes.
Albert from my riding is a widowed senior on a fixed income. His gas bill tripled with the carbon tax, and he is angry and scared. How does the Prime Minister expect Albert to pay his bills?
People are suffering in a way that many have never experienced. Innocent people are being stabbed in broad daylight while onlookers video it, because, under the Prime Minister, there are no consequences in this country. Our bail system is broken and there is nothing in this budget to fix it.
In a cost-of-living crisis, we have forced women out of choice, like the choice to go back to work because they cannot access child care. Yes, the Liberals will tell people their $10-a-day child care has saved the nation. I can tell everyone with certainty the detail the Liberals left out is that only a select few can access it. This is another classic winners and losers Liberal bill. There are thousands of families left out because there are no spaces and there is no labour strategy to help with the labour shortage. Women cannot go to work because they cannot access child care and the wait-lists are years long.
One female child care operator wrote on a public forum this morning, “Why are so many child care providers closing? Well, I just filed my taxes and 56% of incoming funds went directly back into my program. They are closing because they cannot afford to stay open.” This is another anti-feminism Liberal bill.
Nine out of ten young people have given up the dream of ever owning a home. Many young people say they will never start a family because they do not think they can afford to bring a child into this world.
People are applying for medical assistance in dying because they cannot afford rent or food. Seniors are freezing because they cannot afford to turn on the heat. There is no accountability, there is no transparency and it has eroded trust in the government and leaders.
What is happening? How did we get here, and more importantly, how do we get out of this? We need hope but we need to face the facts to change the facts. It is time to acknowledge that what the Liberals are doing, what the Liberals have been doing, is not working.
The current Liberal government is so far down a rabbit hole, it does not know how to get out. Instead of acknowledging the suffering it has created, its members double down on their failed policies. Every day in this House of Commons during question period, a Liberal MP or minister tells Canadians how great things are and what a great job they are doing, and it is simply insulting to Canadians who are barely getting by.
The New Democrats are just as guilty. They too have failed to acknowledge that their coalition is not helping Canadians, but it is hurting them.
Social programs rely on a healthy economy in order to secure sustainable funding. The government has run up the highest ever debt. Yes, the Prime Minister has accumulated more debt than all other prime ministers combined. Canada's debt is $1.18 trillion. That is a pretty tough number to imagine. There is $44 billion spent on interest. Just for comparison, the government spends $24 billion on EI and $25 billion on the Canada child benefit. That means the Liberal government spends almost double the amount servicing its debt compared to supporting social programs to support Canadians.
The current Liberal government is hurting Canadians, and it has no intention of stopping.
It is important to try different approaches, but it is also important to recognize when those approaches are not working.
We tried safe drug supply, and more people are dying and living on the street. We tried spending more, and now life is unaffordable. We tried to be soft of crime, and now violent crime is up almost 40% under this Trudeau government—
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Mr. Speaker, I really enjoy working with my hon. colleague on the status of women committee.
My question is on a lot of what she spoke about and what we work for at the status of women committee in particular. In the fall economic statement, the words “mental health” were only mentioned three times. The Liberal government continues to say that it cares, but its actions show the complete opposite. It continues to solve problems with the problem of inflationary spending.
I am curious to know her thoughts on that aspect of the fall economic statement.
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- Oct/20/22 8:48:36 p.m.
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Madam Chair, what we do on this side of the House is make sure money is spent well. We know where money should go. When we have an app that should have cost less than $250,000 and it cost $54 million and the government does not even know where it is, that is what we are talking about when we talk about fiscal constraint.
There is so much wasted money, and money is a sliver of the piece of the pie. One needs political will, a strategy and a plan. It is absolutely insulting for the member to say that when there is so much wasteful spending. That is not what we are talking about. There is a promised budget of $4.5 billion from the Liberal government and we have not seen it.
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Mr. Speaker, again, we are here to discuss Bill C-30 and a one-time tax rebate that is going to cost Canadians even more money. Spending more money rather than investing in our country is not going to be the solution we need.
Right now in my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha, people are ready to build houses. They are ready to help with the housing crisis, yet they have to wait months, sometimes years, because of the administrative, bureaucratic nonsense that prevents people from achieving what they need to do. The government needs to get out of the people's way, let them achieve their work and let them earn their paycheques, not tax them.
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Madam Speaker, I want to start by saying to everyone, my family, friends and constituents, happy Valentine's Day.
Today I am standing in the House of Commons to discuss and defend the position of my party in regard to Bill C-10. For people watching who may or may not know what Bill C-10 is, I am going to read it. It is an act allowing the Minister of Health to make payments totalling $2.5 billion for rapid tests to the provinces. I am just going to read the two paragraphs.
Under the heading “Payments out of C.R.F. ”, it states:
The Minister of Health may make payments, the total of which may not exceed $2.5 billion, out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for any expenses incurred on or after January 1, 2022 in relation to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests.
Under the heading “Transfers”, it states:
The Minister of Health may transfer to any province or territory, or to any body or person in Canada, any coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) tests or instruments used in relation to those tests acquired by Her Majesty in right of Canada on or after April 1, 2021.
I am not an economist, but I do know that spending money we do not have for tests that we needed two years ago is not an investment; it is a waste. How can the government ask taxpayers to spend $2.5 billion with only two paragraphs to back it up? When my tween daughter was 12 years old and wanted her first iPhone, we asked her to write a three-page essay on why she wanted it and needed it and what she would be contributing as a result of it. We asked for three pages. This bill is two paragraphs long and the government wants to expedite this motion without any debate to spend $2.5 billion.
We are almost at a trillion dollars in debt. People with good jobs cannot afford houses. We have a homeless crisis. I paid $1.58 at the pump for gas. This is not a small amount of money. We cannot just expedite this. To reiterate, we are not spending the government's money. We are spending the taxpayers' money, so we need to make sure we are having an adequate debate to spend such an astronomical amount of money that should have been invested two years ago. We are not in the same space we were in two years ago.
The chief public health officer, Dr. Tam, has stated that we need a more sustainable way to deal with the pandemic. How is spending money on tests that we needed two years ago sustainable? I think we can agree as a House that the response to COVID-19 is fluid. I think there is an agreed motion here in the House that we are doing the best we can to keep Canadians safe. Where we differ is in the execution.
In order to take control of something that is ever changing, one must be tactful and thoughtful in their approach. There are outdated travel advisories, punitive restrictions and quarantines, federal vaccine mandates and now 2.5 billion taxpayer dollars being spent on tests that might be obsolete by the time they arrive.
If COVID-19 reminded our country of anything, it is that we have a very stressed and delicate health care system. Our front-line workers, health care workers, are exhausted. They are burnt out. I witnessed first-hand the extreme negligence of patient care in the hospital.
My mother was rushed to the hospital in July 2021 only to wait hours in a hall to be seen. She was not offered any pain medication. She was not offered any water. No one even came to see her. Why are we talking about spending money on tests when we need to be talking about solving the problem? She waited in the hall as nurses and staff tended to patients who had overdosed. Just last week we talked about the opioid crisis in this country. Where is the money for that?
Do members know how excruciating it is to know that their family member needs their help? They could give it to them. I could get my mom a glass of water and fluff her pillow, but I was not allowed in because of the restrictions, so I had to harass the charge nurse by calling repeatedly and asking for help.
I have had so many health care workers reach out to me in their own state of mental health crisis. They go to bed at night and cannot sleep, because they know they do not have the resources to take care of their patients. When are we going to have an honest dialogue about where the money needs to go and where we need to invest it? The reality of this whole situation of these traumatic lockdowns and these traumatic restrictions is that we did not have a health care system capable of managing COVID patients.
Why are we not having that discussion? Why are we not investing $2.5 billion in that? If our hospitals could manage these patients, we would not be here. We need to recruit more health care workers. We need to offer recovery centres to help those struggling with addiction and mental health. We need to offload the hospitals from the opioid crisis.
The Liberals want to expedite this bill, meaning it would not go to committee. Why is that? My constituents and Canadians deserve to know who would be profiting from these tests. Where would the money be going? We need to hear from more experts before expediting such a gross amount of taxpayers' money.
I recently spoke with a small business owner. She told me a story of one of her employees who decided to do a test on her break, because she had been around somebody who thought they had COVID. She did the test and it came back positive. She was asymptomatic and she had to be sent home for five days. That small business owner is already struggling to recover and now she has to make up for that.
Was that testing necessary? We need more experts in to talk about this. We need to have honest discussions about when to test and why to test. Absolutely we need to have testing, but we need to have a lot more discussion before we decide to spend $2.5 billion on testing that may or may not be effective in helping this crisis.
I spoke with a constituent who had to stay home with his toddler, because someone at the day care centre tested positive. He does not get paid when he stays at home. Who is going to make up that money?
We need so much more research. We need to invest in research to prevent COVID and any other virus that is going to happen again. There is so much opportunity for prevention. We are always reacting and never looking at prevention or a long-term vision for solutions. There are amazing people doing amazing research. Why are we not investing in that? Why are we not learning from that?
My question rests. Where is the scientific evidence to support the need for rapid testing for fully vaccinated Canadians? Would this funding not be better spent on our health care system and our mental health care system? Why is this not being prioritized? It took two months for the government to come back to Parliament. Everything it has done has been late. Timing is everything when we are trying to solve a problem. Timing matters, and the government is offering the wrong solution at the wrong time.
Let us look bigger. Let us help people. Where is the research on the long-term mental health, social and economic impacts of these lockdowns? How do we know that? We do not. Where is the research on masking kids and speech development? Why are we not investing in that? It is time for the Liberal government to be transparent and honest with Canadians.
We are a democracy. Let us act like it.
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