- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sarnia—Lambton
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $118,419.33
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I am rising today to express my serious concerns about Bill C-50. This bill is called the sustainable jobs act, which is typical of what Liberals do. They pick a name that sounds good. Who does not like sustainable jobs? I like sustainable jobs. I think all Canadians want sustainable jobs. It sounds really good, but the problem is that in this bill there is no plan to create sustainable jobs. This is a plan to get a plan.
The bill outlines how the Liberals are going to put together a council. Based on past behaviour, I suggest that it would be highly paid Liberal insiders who will get these jobs and advise on what the plan ought to be. As to the timeline of when they are going to come up with what the plan ought to be, it be should by 2025, coincidentally just after the next election.
The Liberals do not have a plan. Nothing says there is no plan like a bill that is introduced to get a plan. That is the first thing.
The second thing is the Liberals have another role, a secretariat, that is going to do some coordination, with another highly paid Liberal insider when they get the plan. The problem is that is it; that is all. It is a plan to get a plan, with some principles that are motherhood and apple pie and that we would all agree on, such as well-paying jobs, caring about the environment and the need to respect labour, all of these good things. They are all motherhood and apple pie, but the bill does not have a specific action that is going to help.
On the other hand, it is going to hurt. The analysts of the government have said that Bill C-50 would kill 170,000 direct Canadian jobs, would displace 450,000 workers directly and indirectly working in the energy sector and would risk the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians across all provinces. The bill would destroy as many as 2.7 million jobs when there is not a single action in it to create any sustainable jobs at all. That is a problem.
The other thing is that it is going to cost a lot of money. Right now the energy sector provides 10% of Canada's GDP and pays over $20 billion in taxes to all levels of government every year. Last year, $48 billion in royalties and taxes were contributed by the energy sector. This bill purports to get rid of that by eliminating the sector.
We can look at other places in the world that have come up with a sustainable jobs plan and are starting to implement it, Scotland being one example. If we took the cost per person of its plan and did the equivalent thing here, it would cost $37.2 billion. The Liberals are taking away as much as $48 billion and adding a cost of another $37 billion. If we do the math, they are increasing by greater than $70 billion the loss to the Canadian economy.
I do not know why the Liberal government cannot learn the lesson when countless people can, like former Liberal John Manley, who said that when it runs these huge deficits, it is putting a foot on the inflationary gas pedal, which is causing the Bank of Canada to put its foot on the brake with higher interest rates. This raises the cost of mortgages. Canadians are suffering from coast to coast, so definitely not only is the bill not going to create jobs, but it will come with a huge cost.
It is not like this is the first time there has been an attack on oil and gas and the energy sector. This has been a continual theme from the time I got elected in 2015. Let us start with the tanker ban, Bill C-48, to keep Canadian oil from getting out there when everybody else's ships are out there full of oil. Then we had Bill C-55, which created marine protected areas so we could do no oil and gas development there. Then there was Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill, which was just called unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. All of these things were intended to be a war against creating oil and gas projects.
There is evidence. When the Liberals took power, there were 18 LNG projects on the books and there were four pipelines. Zero pipelines have been built and all the LNG projects but one are cancelled. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our friends in Germany were going to give us $59 billion to replace their Russian oil and coal with our green LNG. The Prime Minister said there was no business case, so Australia took that deal.
Then Japan came up with a similar deal and again we would not take the deal, so Saudi Arabia took it. Then came France and the Netherlands. There were all these opportunities for Canada to be a leader, supplanting higher-carbon fuels with our green LNG, the most responsibly produced product in the world with the best human rights record, but again the Liberal government refused. Instead, it is focused on its own ideology and things that it wants to do that continue to destroy the economy.
We can talk about the electric vehicle mandates. That was another great idea. Let us give away $31 billion to create 3,000 jobs. For those who can do the math, if we just gave each of those 3,000 people $10 million, they would never have to work again and there would not be any footprint. There is a total misunderstanding of how to create a growing economy.
Then there is the clean electricity standard, another hugely divisive bill that was introduced by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, clearly not understanding that where the Liberals want to go with all the electric vehicles, electricity and the grid would require building the equivalent of 19 nuclear facilities, like the one from Bruce Power. They cannot build anything, so I do not know where they get the idea that they are going to be successful in achieving that.
At the same time, they are ignoring the fact that only 7% of the public even wants an electric vehicle because the technology is not there. No one wants to be trapped in a snowstorm at -30°C because the batteries do not work. They catch fire. In addition to that, they do not have a very long range. Instead, the government decided to pick a winner and loser with the battery plants that are being built.
Now Toyota has come out with a solid-state battery, with a 1,275-kilometre range, that works at -20°C and does not catch fire. That will make our technology obsolete, with $31 billion after the fact. Maybe the Liberal government needs a few more engineers so that it can actually make science-, fact- and data-based decisions, but that is not what is happening today.
The Liberals continue to move ahead with the carbon tax and the second carbon tax, putting punishment on the backs of Canadians and achieving nothing. Emissions have gone up under the government. At the 2005 level, we were at 732 megatonnes. We needed to get to 519 and now we are at 819. They are not achieving their targets and keep putting bills like this in place, talking about sustainability, the environment and creating jobs. They are not actually achieving that.
Sarnia—Lambton has a huge oil and gas sector, but it knows how to do a transition and is doing a transition. It is creating good-paying, sustainable jobs like the ones at Origin Materials, a net-zero plastics plant in my riding. My riding has one of the largest solar facilities in North America. There is a whole bio-innovation centre that is growing different kinds of bio-facilities that are all either carbon sinks or carbon-neutral. These are the kinds of actual solutions and actions we need. That is not what is in Bill C-50. It is a plan to get a plan with nothing else. For that reason, I will not be supporting Bill C-50.
1396 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to my colleague's private member's bill, Bill C-278, an act to prevent the imposition by the federal government of vaccination mandates for employment and travel.
This bill is an important chance to right some of the wrongs Canadians endured during the COVID-19 pandemic, including and especially the violations of their rights and freedoms.
Formally, the bill:amends the Financial Administration Act to provide that the Treasury Board may not require as a condition of employment in the federal public administration that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19. It also amends the Canada Labour Code to provide that regulations may not be made that require, as a term or condition of employment in or in connection with the operation of a federal work, undertaking or business, that a person receive a vaccine against COVID-19.
The bill also amends the Aeronautics Act, the Railway Safety Act and the Canada Shipping Act, 2001, to provide that no regulation, order or other instrument made under any of those acts to prevent the introduction or spread of COVID-19 may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting a person from boarding an aircraft, a train or a vessel solely on the ground that they have not received a vaccine against that disease.
This bill was initiated by our leader before it was taken up by my colleague, the hon. member for Niagara West.
The right to one's own medical choices is sacrosanct. The COVID-19 pandemic presented an unparalleled challenge to daily life for all Canadians across all areas of life and business. In its haste to ensure Canada was able to weather the pandemic as well as possible, the government of the day made some decisions that ultimately had serious negative effects on thousands of Canadians across the country.
The pandemic was undoubtedly a scary time for all, but instead of working with understanding and compassion, the Liberal government employed rhetoric that was cruel to its opponents. In particular, those who were hesitant to receive COVID-19 vaccines were made to be ridiculed and were discriminated against.
We now have the chance to take a sober second look at the outcome and aftermath of the pandemic. While it can be argued that the vaccines helped many, the way the government mandated their use in certain areas cannot be repeated. I am speaking about mandating vaccines as a requirement for employment and travel.
Particularly when it became clear that the vaccines were not a silver bullet and could not stop the spread of COVID-19 wholesale, the serious restrictions put on unvaccinated Canadians became unconscionable. In August 2021, the Liberal government mandated vaccination against COVID-19 for all federal public servants, employees in federally regulated transport industries and passengers on commercial air travel, interprovincial rail service and cruise ships. In all, more than 1.235 million employees were subjected to that mandate, more than 8% of the total number of workers in Canada. Those who could not or would not receive the vaccine and did not have an exemption were put on unpaid leave or fired.
Thousands of Canadians were denied their rights to freedom of mobility. The charter grants them the freedom to enter and leave Canada, but for a period of almost three years, six million unvaccinated Canadians were trapped in their own country.
Certainly at the beginning of the pandemic, in the first three weeks, nobody knew what this was, how serious it was or what we should do. After three years, it was clear that people who were fully vaccinated, such as I am, could get and transmit COVID the same as the unvaccinated. All the members of this House, many of whom had COVID during this time, were busy flying back and forth and taking trains in the country, but the unvaccinated were unable to go anywhere. That was discrimination.
Thousands of Canadians were unable to see loved ones across the border. It was a situation I became well acquainted with in my border riding office. Families were split apart. Parents were unable to share custody of young children. Loved ones were unable to say goodbye to dying older parents on the basis of mandates not based on science.
I have people in my riding who are married to people who live just across the border. They were prevented from being with their spouses for years. This is just unacceptable.
Worse still, some workers who lost their jobs were ineligible for employment insurance benefits as of October 2021. Employment and Social Development Canada issued a notice at the time to enforce vaccine mandates to help them fill out records of employment, documents that are necessary in applying for the benefits. According to The Canadian Press, “The department said if an employee doesn't report to work or is suspended or terminated for refusing to comply with a vaccine mandate, the employer should indicate that they quit, took a leave of absence or were dismissed potentially disqualifying them from EI.” While indeed it is an employer's right to set the rules of conduct for their workplace, for the federal government to instruct the employer to deny employees Canadian government benefits they had paid into was wrong. How many Canadians suffered and how many families went without because of this direction?
The EI system is an insurance premium system. A person pays their premiums, qualifies with their hours and collects the benefit, yet at the same time that the government was handing out CERB cheques of $2,000 a month, it was preventing people who were terminated for not being vaccinated from getting any money at all.
Furthermore, a year ago in June, the government refused to repay employees who lost their jobs due to the mandate the first time. Reporting in the National Post at the time states: "The ... government says it will not repay any salary to federal public servants who were suspended since October because of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.” This was at the time the mandate was being lifted. This was after months of calls for the government to reverse the mandates, not only from me and my colleagues but also from the major public service unions, including PSAC, PIPSC and CAPE. All had filed policy grievances against the employer's vaccine mandate for federal bureaucrats. At the same time, many other countries had released and stopped their mandates, following the advice of the World Health Organization after it said they were not effective. It took the government much too long to reverse these policies after much harm had been done.
I must say that it was not just Conservatives who opposed these divisive policies that had been imposed by the Prime Minister and the government. A few Liberals even had the courage to call out the Prime Minister for his efforts to divide Canadians. The Liberal MP for Louis-Hébert said, "A decision was made to wedge, to divide, and to stigmatize," further saying, “I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions.” Even the former Liberal finance minister admitted that the Prime Minister used vaccines as a political wedge, saying, "I didn't see that as something that was helpful."
Today, millions of Canadians remain unvaccinated against COVID-19. We cannot allow the freedom of millions of people to make their personal medical decisions to ever be compromised again. We cannot discriminate against millions of people for their personal medical choices. We cannot stand in this House and say we stand up for Canadians while leaving out a significant portion of the population.
it is clear that this extreme restriction of freedoms must never happen again. Hopefully we will never see the like of another COVID-19 pandemic, but there could be other similar threats out there, and we need to be prepared. It cannot be our main line of defence against a pandemic to arbitrarily limit the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
This bill, Bill C-278, will help to ensure that. We must not limit employment or travel on the basis of vaccination. We must not limit the operations of our House of Commons or our federal public service or our important industries on the basis of vaccination; it must be down to the individual's choice.
I will share one example of something that happened in my riding of Sarnia—Lambton.
At the beginning of the pandemic, nurses were heroes on the front line. They wore their personal protective equipment and there were no vaccines. Then, subsequently, when the vaccines came forward, there was a vaccine mandate put in place. Even though all the nurses were wearing the same protective equipment and there was no science or evidence that there was any transmission and the unvaccinated ones were being tested every day, which gave even more of a guarantee, the unvaccinated ones were all fired. Four weeks after all the unvaccinated nurses left the facility, there was an outbreak of COVID-19 among the COVID-vaccinated nurses. What was accomplished was misery in many people's lives and nothing positive whatsoever.
It is time to replace the fear sowed by the Liberals with a new hope. We must take these lessons learned and enshrine them into law. We can have a Canada where personal medical choice is protected, a Canada with productive and profitable trade and travel. We can bring it home to your home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.
1611 words
- Hear! (2)
- Rabble! (11)
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/8/22 3:01:18 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health needs to get in line with the rest of the countries, all 55 of them, that have dropped all the mandates. He was informed the other day that Canadians who are unvaccinated can travel on ferries as long as the journey is less than 24 hours, so why are unvaccinated Canadians not able to travel on flights within Canada since they are all less than 24 hours? When is the Liberal government going to get rid of the mandates and get us back to prepandemic normal?
96 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/28/22 2:52:42 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, President Biden made exemptions to the vaccine mandates for truckers who drive solo and for companies with fewer than 100 employees. As part of the road map that the Prime Minister signed with the president, they agreed to match requirements at the border.
Will the Prime Minister look for that match to get exemptions for unvaccinated Canadian truckers in order that we can address the trucker shortage here in Canada?
72 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/4/22 10:49:31 a.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on Bill C-8 at report stage. I may also include some general comments, as I did not get a chance to speak to the bill when it was in the House earlier because the Liberals shut down debate on it.
Let me go through the different parts of the bill. As always, I am not here just to criticize the government; I like to make helpful suggestions as to what would be better or what should have been done as we go.
In the first part, there are some amendments to the Income Tax Act to put in place a few tax credits. I do not find these tax credits very objectionable, but I see there is one there to expand the travel component for northern residents who have to travel as part of their job. I want to bring to the attention of members that there is also a private member's bill to do this for tradespeople who are travelling as well, which is quite a good thing.
With respect to the tax credits in the bill, I want to talk a bit about the one for farmers to return fuel charge proceeds to give them a break. What I think would have been more helpful is for farmers to have been exempted from all the carbon tax increases that have happened over time. They do not get credit for the fact that most of them are growing crops that take CO2 out of the air. On the other hand, they are paying thousands of dollars in carbon tax. At a time when we as a government and Canadians in general are concerned about food inflation and the cost of everything is going up, certainly we could do more for farmers.
Also, many of them are still waiting for the compensation committed to them when the new North American free trade agreement, CUSMA, was put in place and supply-managed quotas were given up. In these times when the world is concerned about food security and food inflation, giving farmers the benefit of an exemption from the carbon tax and giving them the compensation they are due would be important.
With regard to the part 3 limitations with respect to paying back amounts owing under the COVID programs, the Conservatives supported the measures that were needed to get through the pandemic. However, we see that a lot of the problems with them, such as the GIS problem experienced by those people who also collected the CERB, are still not fixed. I think the government could have done a much better job in addressing those, but wrapping up these programs and making a plan to exit the pandemic and restore the economy is key.
There is money included to make support payments for COVID tests. The Conservatives were calling for rapid tests for quite a long time but, as with everything, the government has been very slow to deliver. The issue I have now is that the World Health Organization is saying all these travel restrictions, measures and mandates at the borders are no longer meaningful because omicron is so transmissible. It is everywhere, and people who are vaccinated can get COVID. Although at the time we were calling for rapid tests, now we are calling for the removal of these measures, especially at our borders, such as in Sarnia—Lambton, because they are really not doing anything to prevent the transmission and spread and are a burden and a barrier to trade and tourism, which are areas we want to see restored in the fall economic document. We want to get back to creating jobs and get tourism going, and these things will require the elimination of these mandates, which is what is being called for by the World Health Organization. We see many other countries and provinces dropping these measures, as is appropriate.
Part 7 talks about amendments to the Employment Insurance Act to address benefit periods for seasonal workers. While I think that is very good, I do not understand why some of the things we have been hearing about now for two years have not been addressed. An example is that people who were not quite ready to go on maternity benefits during the pandemic had to give up their jobs. We heard questions in the House this week on that issue. I would say that this issue is a priority.
The other thing that needs to be fixed is this: Federal mandates and mandates in other areas meant that people who would not take the vaccine were fired from their jobs and were not allowed to collect employment insurance.
This makes no sense at all. Under the employment insurance system, people pay a premium into it and they receive the benefit. The discrimination that prevented these people from collecting what they were qualified to receive from the system that they had paid into needed to be fixed.
Among other issues that we have seen, there is the discussion about the tax on vacant housing. We have heard members say that it is not the government's jurisdiction, but I would argue that it is not even going to work. The problem we are trying to fix is the affordable housing crisis in this country. That is simply a problem of supply and demand. Solutions that provide a minor amount of tax are really not going to drive the kind of behaviour we need to see.
In my own riding of Sarnia—Lambton, we have made quite a comprehensive plan, recognizing that we do not want to just tax vacant buildings but convert them into affordable housing. That is the kind of initiative that the government should be presenting and participating in with municipalities. If the measure the government put in place here was going to put a larger tax on vacancies and give that money back to the municipalities to address the affordable housing crisis in their ridings, that would have been far better.
In addition, the money is just not flowing fast enough. Certainly, we are coming along with our plan. We recognize that we have a lot of foreign students, so we need a residence built and we need some government support there. There are a number of issues that we could have addressed to deal with the supply.
The other thing is to keep foreign buyers out of the market. I have been speaking about this for two years. I know this aspect was raised at committee, and the government even had it in their platform. It just boggles the mind that it takes so long to put something in place that makes sense to all parties in the House.
The other reality we are concerned right now is food inflation. There are so many different factors at play, but one of them is the supply chain. We have certainly seen supply chain disruptions. I am concerned about the potential rail strike that we may see as early as in the next week or two, which will further disrupt the supply chain. This is going to be a big deal. Where is the government plan? We have distribution by rail and we have distribution by truck and we have distribution that comes through our ports, but there is really no comprehensive plan to protect and expand those distributions to impact on food security.
At the same time, in the middle of this pandemic, the government continues to increase the carbon tax. The carbon tax has done nothing to reduce our emissions in Canada. Emissions reductions in Canada have come from the technologies that we implemented and from actions we have taken to actually reduce the footprint. The carbon tax has done nothing but drive the price up for the people who could least afford it. I think it is obscene that the government is going to once again raise the price when we see people living on a fixed income and seniors being in such a tough spot.
When this bill came out, I expected that it would reflect some of the things that were in the fall economic statement, which started off by saying that it would protect our recovery by finishing the fight against COVID. Where is the plan from the government to finish the fight against COVID, to exit the pandemic and restore the economy? Let us get rid of these mandates. The World Health Organization is calling for it and other countries are doing it. We see the provinces returning to normal. We need to do the same. We need the government to take a role in putting forward a plan. Canadians are looking for that.
We have a lot of work to do to rebuild our economy and restore lost jobs. I, for one, would work together with all parties in this House to make that happen for a better Canada.
1497 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/20/22 11:03:20 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, although I very much disagree. Clearly, he has read the charter, but there are three million Canadians whose charter rights to freely leave and enter the country are being violated by the Liberal government's vaccine mandates, not to mention the privacy violations, the discrimination of unvaccinated people collecting EI, and the like.
That said, my colleague is proposing that the reason the emergency measures act is needed is to remove this blockade in Ottawa, because all of the other things were removed with the existing provincial and police resources. However, the member for Windsor West has said he needs three more things, $10 million, a plan to remove barriers and a safe border task force, all of which can be done without the emergency measures act.
I am concerned when I see bank accounts being frozen. The Minister of Justice said he is going to expand that to people who have pro-Trump ideas, and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance said she would like to see those put permanently in place. If this is really just about the blockade, will the member rescind this act now that the blockades—
203 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
