- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Edmonton—Wetaskiwin
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $178,671.82
- Government Page
- May/30/24 3:18:20 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, earlier today in question period, one of my Alberta colleagues, the member for Calgary Forest Lawn, in asking a question, used the phrase “anti-Alberta minister” in reference to the environment minister. You asked him to rephrase his question.
A simple Google search shows that, over the years, members of all four recognized parties in the House have used the phrase “anti-Alberta” or “anti-Quebec” in standing up for their constituents in ways that their constituents would expect them to stand up.
I think we are not better off in the House when the list of words we cannot use gets longer and longer. I think we suffer from a lack of clarity right now as we make efforts, as members of Parliament, to stand up for our constituents.
I would like some clarification on what language we can and cannot use because it seems to have changed significantly over the past several months.
163 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/22/24 11:44:51 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, you will notice that the member did not even try to answer my question. On page 3, the independent PBO states, “We incorporate estimates of the economic impact from the federal fuel charge into our calculation of net cost to provide a more complete picture of the overall impact on households”.
Taking into account that economic impact, the carbon tax clearly makes families in every province worse off. The report says that, in Alberta next year, families will pay almost $1,000 more than they get back in rebates, at a time when it costs more than ever for even the basics of life. How can any Alberta Liberal or NDP MP support this 23% tax increase?
121 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Mar/20/24 2:07:13 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” In that spirit, today I am going to pay tribute to two organizations making a fantastic impact across Canada.
First, March is Easter Seals Month and a great time to recognize the wonderful work that Easter Seals Canada has done for over 100 years in Canada. Easter Seals' vision is to “fully [enhance] the quality of life, well-being and independence of Canadians living with disabilities”, and they are consistently a leading and reliable partner in efforts to do just that.
Also in this Marvel-like universe of inclusion champions is Special Olympics Canada, which hosted its 2024 Winter Games in Calgary at the end of February. It was incredible to see thousands of athletes, volunteers and families descend on our province of Alberta for a week of intense competition, joyful celebration and powerful community engagement.
To all of the superheroes at Easter Seals and Special Olympics, I say thanks for the life-changing work they do every single day. They are truly unstoppable.
186 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Jun/5/23 9:09:57 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting debate tonight. There were a couple of things that I heard from the Liberals and the NDP, one of which I expected to hear a lot about and one which I did not.
What I did not expect was a couple of NDP members doing victory laps over the Alberta election results time and time again. As I watched the election results, I was struck by the fact that a Conservative government, having gone through a pandemic and a leadership change, unsurprisingly lost a couple of percentage points and formed a strong majority government.
The NDP may want to celebrate the fact that it gained about nine percentage points at the expense of the Alberta party, but hopefully all of us can hope for the very best for the Danielle Smith government in Alberta, because that would be really good for Albertans across the board. I, for one, congratulate that government and hope that it succeeds on behalf of all Albertans over the next four years of its very strong mandate.
What I expected to hear and have heard a lot of today, over and over again, is Liberal fearmongering about cuts that some potential Conservative government might threaten or initiate or whatever the case might be. It caused me to look back at history. It is important to look at where there have been cuts, because maybe we can learn from situations in the past when we have seen actual cuts. I had to go back a long way to find real cuts to health spending, social services spending, education spending and the transfers that fund those things.
I went back to 1993, 1994 and 1995, when we saw cuts at the very start of a newly elected Liberal government, but then it was astonishing to see the cut that occurred in 1995-96. In the 1995-96 Liberal budget, $18.4 billion was spent on health care, social services and education, and then in 1996-97, the very next year, we went from $18.4 billion to $14.7 billion, a reduction of almost $4 billion in important transfers for health, social services, education and those kinds of things. The next year, 1997-98, we went from $14.7 billion to $12.5 billion in those transfers.
I mention those figures because, as a result of the spending during the reign of a fiscally incompetent Trudeau government, a government that ran 14 deficits in 15 years while it was in power, we saw a crisis in energy, a crisis in housing and a crisis in inflation. I do not know if that sounds familiar to anybody around here. There were 14 deficits in 15 years in the 1970s and 1980s, and that led to these devastating cuts in 1996-97 and 1997-98, going from $18.4 billion for health, social services and education to $12.5 billion two years later. That was a Liberal government dealing with the devastating effects a generation after another Liberal government, a Trudeau government, had absolutely zero idea of what to do to run an economy.
I fear that we are in the same boat now. We have heard Liberal speaker after Liberal speaker get up and ask how Conservatives can vote against this thing, and they will cherry-pick one thing, or be against this other thing. All of the things they talk about sound great, but I hearken back to the debate on May 1 in the House of Commons, and one comment, though there were many comments like this, struck me. The comment was in response to a question during question period from a Conservative member of Parliament. The Liberal finance minister, talking about the grocery rebate, said, “The grocery rebate is going to deliver support to 11 million low-income Canadians who need it.” How have we come to a place in 2023 when the finance minister is bragging about the fact that we have 11 million low-income Canadians who need support to buy groceries? How are we at that place in 2023?
We look at the government's own budget documents and we take a look at the numbers in these documents and we think about those important transfers we are talking about and other programs. The Canada health transfer is set to be, in 2023-24, $49.4 billion. Do members know that the projected cost to service the debt will be in the same year? It is $43.9 billion, so because of the fiscal incompetence, and there is no other way to say it, of the government that has been in power for eight years, we are going to spend as much in interest as we are going to spend on health care in this country as a federal government. There is no other way to say it: That is absolute incompetence.
When we take a look at the Liberal budget, one of the things that strike me is that they cut their deal with the NDP, and we hear the NDP talk about the different things that they were able to negotiate into this Liberal budget, but I will tell members one thing that was negotiated out of the Liberal budget.
This is the state of where we are. We in this place oftentimes can agree that there are certain things that need our attention. We might have different ideas on how we address those things, but we can agree there are certain things that require attention. One thing that we all agreed on during the last election campaign was the fact that there is a mental health crisis in this country. We all had different platform ideas that we put forward. We ran an election. Canadians looked at those promises we made, because we make promises in election campaigns, and I would think Canadians would expect us to keep those promises. Admittedly, we made promises that were different from those of the Liberals and the NDP on mental health, but we all had substantial promises in there.
The Liberals promised, on page 75 of their election platform, very clearly in a black-and-white five-year costed layout of their election platform, a $4.5-billion investment in mental health called the “Canada Mental Health Transfer”. That was something the Liberals promised. Every Liberal in this House went to doors during the election campaign and promised things to Canadians, many of whom would have been struggling with their mental health, especially as we were still in the midst of a pandemic. We were moving hopefully toward the end of it, but at that point in time people were obviously very significantly affected.
Canadians struggling with their mental health had a Liberal member of Parliament or a Liberal candidate go to their door and promise they were going to spend $4.5 billion on a Canada mental health transfer.
What happened next? Immediately the Liberals signed their deal with the NDP. No NDP member has actually yet taken credit for negotiating this out of their agreement, but clearly it must have been something that the NDP said. They must have said that they wanted to put NDP priorities on the agenda instead of the Canada mental health transfer. No one has talked about why that was negotiated out, but it is very clear that the Liberals have decided that this promise they made is no longer important and that there are other priorities, or, if it is still important to them, that they have come to a point where the fiscal situation is so bad that it was in their cabinet meetings.
I do not know if the leader of the NDP is in the Liberal cabinet meetings or if the House leader of the NDP is, but the Liberals had to go into these cabinet meetings. They had to have conversations and say that things are really tough here and that they had decided to fund some program, one of the many programs they are listing, but they were no longer going to be able to afford this thing they promised on page 75 in their election platform.
I do not know what those conversations looked like; all I know from taking a look at the budget we are debating tonight and from taking a look at the numbers we are talking about tonight is that we are going to be in a situation where Liberal governments and this coalition, however long it lasts, are going to be having conversations like that, because they have come to a point where life is just not only unaffordable for Canadians but unaffordable for the government.
It becomes unsustainable at some point. It is just like when we were dealing with the results of Trudeau Liberal incompetence in the mid-nineties because the Trudeau government of the seventies and eighties had run up all of those deficits over all of those years. I fear we are going to be in the same situation moving forward. During questions and comments, I hope some Liberal will rise up and explain that maybe my concerns are somehow misplaced. Hopefully there will be some explanation and some understanding tonight of the situation we are in.
1548 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to speak today. I will be sharing my time with the hard-working member for Dufferin—Caledon.
This is a piece of legislation with good things in it that I think everybody in the House will support. It also has some things that speak to the importance of the committee system and getting a bill to committee so experts can weigh in and highlight any potential shortcomings, and any potential unintended consequences that may result from legislation that tries to do as much as this bill tries to do, which is not incredibly clear. I think even the government recognizes that because it brought forward this bill in June of last year, and this is the first time that we are actually debating it in the House.
On the front of things that we can all agree on in the House, the move to amend the Historic Sites and Monuments Act to include first nations, Inuit and Métis representation on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, is really important. That representation is a significant step and an important part of the legislation.
There are other things we might agree on. I think it is really important to preserve our heritage. It is really important to Canadians to have the ability to visit places of historical significance and learn from the stories that are told at those places. I would encourage all members of Parliament to visit as many of these places, while we have this opportunity to meet Canadians, as we can.
I am going to use this opportunity to speak to one such place that I would highly encourage members of Parliament, particularly members from the government, the NDP, and even the Bloc, to come and visit. It is listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places. This place is right in the heart of my constituency. In fact, it is about three minutes from where I grew up in the town of Devon and it is the Leduc No. 1 Discovery Well site.
I will read from the Canadian Register of Historic Places, for everyone's benefit, because I am sure that once folks hear this, they will learn some things and it will drive them to want to come to visit to learn some more. It says, “The heritage value of the Leduc No. 1 Discovery Well site lies in its association with the finding of massive petroleum deposits in Alberta and its connection to the dramatic social and economic transformation of the province in the second half of the twentieth century.”
I will break away from what the register says to point out that it also led to a “dramatic social and economic transformation” of the entire country. We all, and our kids and grandkids, for those of us who have kids and grandkids, have benefited from this, and future generations will also benefit from what happened in 1947 at the Leduc No. 1 Discovery Well site.
The Canadian Register of Historic Places goes on to say:
In the first half of the twentieth century, Canada was almost entirely dependent upon the United States for its oil supply. As Canada's industries were established and grew, the demand for domestic oil to power the country's economic engine grew. The Imperial Oil Company Ltd., founded in Ontario in 1880, began to explore for oil and gas deposits in Western Canada in the 1910s. For three decades, they were unsuccessful, drilling 133 dry wells in the region. On February 13, 1947, however, the Leduc No. 1 Discovery Well blew in to the delight of the spectators assembled for the occasion. The eruption of oil from Leduc No. 1 triggered extensive exploration for further petroleum deposits as seismic teams, geologists, and geophysicists fanned out across Alberta in search of “black gold.” Though the Leduc field was a major find, new fields with even larger petroleum reserves would be discovered in subsequent years.
Again, I will break away to speak to the relevance of this bill. I am guessing that for some members of the House, this is a new story, a story they had not heard before. It is a story that is absolutely critical to our history as a country, certainly to the history of my province and my region, and to our economic history, our economic story in Canada. If more members of Parliament maybe understood this story, took the time to visit parts of the country where maybe there would be a little bit of a different view on political issues, the issues that we discuss in here every day, maybe we would have better debates with more context than we have right now.
I will continue again. This is from the Canadian Registry of Historic Places, which this bill addresses and seeks to fine-tune in our approach to our Canadian history.
It states:
The spectacular discovery of oil at Leduc in 1947 marked a watershed in Alberta's economic and social life. The find attracted massive American capital investment into the province and resulted in the creation of wells, refineries, and pipelines throughout the province. Oil exploration also uncovered another valuable resource under Alberta's surface—natural gas. The population boomed in subsequent decades as fortune-seekers—many of them well-educated professionals—flocked to Alberta to tap into the province's new-found wealth. New towns were established near oil fields and both Edmonton and Calgary grew dramatically. Edmonton became a service centre for the oil fields and home to numerous refineries, while Calgary developed into the administrative and managerial heartland of Alberta's burgeoning petrochemical industry. The tremendous wealth generated by the province's reserves of oil and gas also accelerated the demographic shift in Alberta from a rural to an urban population and funded the creation of universities and colleges, galleries and museums, and hospitals.
That is where the entry in the registry ends.
I would point out the last phrase, “funded the creation of universities and colleges, galleries and museums, and hospitals”. The funding accrued to the benefit of not just Albertans but also Canadians across the country through transfer programs, tax revenues and all the different economic mechanisms this country has established over the years. Some of these are widely supported and others widely debated among my constituents. There is no question that the health care system we enjoy today, our education system, our post-secondary education system and the social safety nets across this country, from coast to coast, in every province and every territory, are owed to a great extent to the benefit that has come from this one plot of land in the centre of Leduc County as recognized on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.
In closing, as we debate really important issues around the environment, health, immigration and all the different things that we debate day after day with an eye to making Canada better, I would encourage members of Parliament who have the opportunity to fly to Edmonton. It sounds like in the coming weeks, we will finally get direct flights into Edmonton again. I encourage members to take a 15-minute drive from the airport to visit this site of historic importance in Leduc County at Leduc No. 1.
This is what my Conservative colleague, the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent has done. I had an opportunity to host him at Leduc No. 1 at one point in time. I gave him a bit of a tour of the Canadian Energy Museum there. It was interesting because he came out and a tour bus pulled up. I was kind of excited, as a member of Parliament, to introduce my distinguished colleague from Quebec to the folks on the tour bus. Lo and behold, the folks got off the bus, and all their faces lit up as they saw this celebrity. It was a bus full of tourists from Quebec visiting Alberta. The member for Louis-Saint-Laurent was an absolute celebrity as he shook hands with every single person on that bus, and I grew to understand why this gentleman is such a legend in his riding and his home province of Quebec.
I have used my time to give one example of the potential benefits of this legislation if we get it right. I am really looking forward to looking at some of the potential challenges with the legislation at committee and hearing what experts from across the country have to say on some important parts of this bill.
1443 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, it is fitting that the member is talking about being heard. My constituency has 209,000 people. It is roughly the same size in population as P.E.I., which has four Liberal members of Parliament. It does not matter how hard I work or how hard my staff work. I can come in here and debate all day long. I could even debate as much as the hon. deputy House leader. Still, when it comes time for our voice to count, it is during votes, and my vote counts for one vote and the P.E.I. MPs' count for four Liberal votes every single time. We have a government that is presiding over a country less united than at almost any other time in our history.
I would love to hear the hon. member, from a neighbouring constituency, talk about the disaffection Albertans are feeling from their government, that absolute lack of being listened to, and the impact it is having on the people of our province.
171 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/20/22 10:33:44 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I want to commend the hon. member because it might be the first time I have heard a Liberal member mention Alberta in the House.
She has to recognize, first of all, that among my constituents, almost universally, the feedback we have gotten back has been opposed to the Emergencies Act. My staff tell me probably 95% of the feedback we have gotten has been people asking me to oppose the Emergencies Act. I would welcome any Liberal member of Parliament who wants to come out to Canada's most populous riding, Edmonton—Wetaskiwin. I would gladly give them a tour so they can actually talk to some of the people they too often completely ignore.
119 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
