- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Lethbridge
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,565.29
- Government Page
- May/9/24 8:11:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this way of thinking put forward by the Liberal government is absurd. We have folks across Canada, about 96% of them, who are dependent on natural gas for heating, which is not exactly an option in this country.
I come from Alberta, and we need to heat our homes in the winter. I think most other places, if not all other places in this country, need to heat their homes in the middle of winter. I think that is just a basic necessity of human life. Further to that, I come from a riding that is largely rural. Getting on a city bus or transit train is not really an option, so they depend on being able to drive a vehicle in order to provide for themselves or to get from point A to point B. Further to that, the transportation of goods in this nation is reliant on transportation units, such as semis and trains.
If we continue to attach a carbon tax to these necessities, these things that are just a part of our way of life, it is not going to bring down carbon emissions; it has been in place for eight years now. It clearly—
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- Jun/5/23 2:16:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals want to blame emissions on the senior who simply wishes to visit her grandchildren or the farmer who takes the bounty off his field and turns it into finished goods to go on grocery store shelves. The Liberals would rather penalize the single mother who has to drive long hours to provide for her family than face the fact that it is neither making a difference for the environment nor, certainly, for Canadians. Adding insult to injury, the government is planning to up the tax by adding a second one on July 1. The Liberals sure know how to party, do they not?
Canadians cannot at all afford this, and they are calling for change. Seniors are delaying their retirement, students are using food banks at astronomical rates and half of all Canadians are reporting that they are close to bankruptcy. The answer to climate change is not more taxation but, rather, more technology. This means that Canadians are the solution rather than the problem. They are the way forward. They are the problem solvers; they are the innovators that this nation needs. It is time for the government to celebrate them as such.
On this side of the House, we are calling on the government to axe the tax.
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- Dec/2/22 11:36:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, here is the problem with that. Since the Liberals took power and imposed the carbon tax, emissions have actually gone up, not down. I do not know how those constituents are being helped by this, aside from paying a whole lot of money to get a whole lot of nothing.
A tax is not the answer. Canadians are the answer. They are the innovators. They are the problem-solvers. They are the solution makers. They are the ones who will get us out of this Liberal-made mess. Canadians are the ones we believe in.
Finally, when will you scrap your failed Liberal experiment, and give Canadians back control of their lives?
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- Oct/31/22 5:28:20 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I do love the number zero. Let us talk about the accomplishments in terms of protecting the environment in Canada. It is zero. Let us talk about the units of carbon that have been reduced in terms of emissions because of the Liberals' carbon tax. Wait, that number is zero as well. Shall I continue? I like the number zero as well.
The point is that the current policies that are being implemented by the government do not help to create a healthy environment for Canadians. Instead, they are punitive in nature. Canadians are paying through the roof. They are struggling. They deserve better.
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- Oct/31/22 5:17:36 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, the bill we have in front of us today, Bill S-5, has to do with environmental protection. It has to do with updating important documentation having to do with how we define toxins, which is long overdue. We know that; it has been mentioned here in the House before. It has been true since the 1990s. Unfortunately, though, the government across the way will claim that it wants to get the bill through quickly and that the Conservatives are stalling it, when the fact of the matter is that the Liberals have had five years to work on legislation and get it through the House. They have not taken that seriously. They have been slow.
Further to that, in the middle of those five years there were several elections, one of them called completely unnecessarily. Of course, that was in the fall of 2021 in the middle of a pandemic, when individuals were concerned for their health, safety and well-being. Interestingly enough, part of the bill has to do with health, which I will get to in just a moment, yet the Liberals decided that would be a good time to call an election.
Of course, elections have a way of stalling things. They have a way of putting aside legislation and making it so that it is no longer standing. It has to be called back once Parliament resumes, so here we are talking about Bill S-5. Again, it is something that has been in process for about five years. It did not need to be that way, but it was. Nevertheless, let us jump into the bill and discuss it.
There are a couple of things I want to draw attention to. Certainly there would be some new definitions brought about through this legislation, and I think overall my colleagues and I can agree to that. We see where there is some simplification achieved and we can get behind it. That said, there were many amendments made in the Senate before the bill came this way, which is the opposite of how things normally work, and we have some issues with those amendments. We will be looking to create some change around them to make sure Canadians are better advocated for going forward, but of course that will come at a later stage.
For today, I wish to speak to a part in the preamble of the bill. The preamble of the bill says that it is committed to prioritizing a healthy environment and that this is a right Canadians should have guaranteed for them. Here is the thing. First off, instead of putting this in the preamble, it should have been in the body of the legislation if it is going to have teeth, because we know that when it comes to courts of law, a judge does not make a decision based on a preamble; a judge makes a decision based on what is in the actual bill. If the current government is looking to truly be held accountable in making sure Canadians enjoy a healthy environment, it should have the courage to put this into the main component of the bill rather than in the preamble. Putting it in the preamble is simply another nicety, another platitude.
Speaking of that, we already have many examples. Let us look at the carbon tax, for example. With the carbon tax, there is a lot of fluffy language with regard to how the it is somehow making a difference or will make a difference, yet when we look at the actual facts, we see carbon emissions have not been reduced in our country. Actually, they have increased, so we have to ask this question: Why is there a carbon tax? We do not know, yet it continues to be in place. In fact, it is not just to be maintained but is actually increasing year over year every single April 1. That is April Fool's Day, but no one is really laughing because it is expensive to pay the carbon tax.
Canadians are reasonable people, and I think they can get behind something, even if it penalizes them a bit, if they know it is going to make a measurable or meaningful difference for them. However, the fact of the matter is that we have a report from the commissioner of the environment that says the current government has been given a failing grade on its environmental goals or objectives. It has not met any of them. This is coming out of reports that are at arm's length. I did not make this up.
Here is the government using platitudes, niceties and language that appears to do something but actually does nothing. Therefore, here we are again. We have this piece of legislation and in the preamble is this commitment to a healthy environment. However, the courage is lacking to give it teeth and to ensure that it happens.
Let us talk about that. If we were to truly define this vague term “healthy environment”, what might that look like in Canada? What might Canadians be able to anticipate if we were to create a healthy environment? Perhaps it would mean that we take a look not only at the thing but also at the context. For example, with plastics, those opposite me would like to put out language, and have put out language, that demonizes plastics.
However, to consider plastics in context, let us look at plastics in the way that they were used during the pandemic. During the pandemic, they were used to cover instruments in hospitals. Today they are used to cover instruments in hospitals. They are used for equipment in hospitals. They are used in daily practice to ensure that people are kept healthy. In a hospital are they toxic?
Further, during the pandemic when people were given plastic forks or plastic spoons because they could not eat in a restaurant but still needed to consume food, was that toxic? Perhaps it is, but maybe there needs to be a further conversation around context. Perhaps it is not adequate to demonize something altogether without considering time and place.
Furthermore, let us talk about a healthy environment and LNG or liquefied natural gas. Let us talk about, if we were to move entirely over to LNG and off of coal, the incredible difference it would make in terms of creating a healthy, vibrant Canada. However, the members opposite do not want to talk about that because to them oil and gas is bad. We would rather turn a blind eye to the truth that we continue to use coal because to talk about that is inconvenient. We do not want to talk about that.
We want to talk about all this greenism over here, all these plans over here and all this nice language that we have over here. Look over here at the shiny item. However, we do not actually want to acknowledge the truth, which is to say we have something incredible called LNG. We could use it to get off coal, clean up the environment and contribute to health.
Here is another one. The government wants to impose a carbon tax and it is tripling by 2030. That will have a huge impact on Canadians. The government has said that this is going to make a meaningful difference. We have already discovered that it has not and it will not.
Meanwhile, if we were to develop oil and gas in our country, to get pipelines into the ground and to get product to market, that would be a huge help in creating a healthy environment. Do members want to know how? The growing demand would then be met domestically, rather than having to bring it in from Saudi Arabia or Russia.
Let us talk about Saudi Arabia or Russia for a moment. There are no environmental standards. There are no human rights standards. Instead, the current government is deciding to ship in blood oil because the demand for fossil fuels is not going anywhere. It only continues to grow. Is that contributing to a healthy environment? We will just bring all the blood oil over from Saudi Arabia. Let us continue to fund Putin and his war machine against Ukraine. Is that a healthy environment?
I look forward to the government giving a definition to what it means by the right to a healthy environment. It certainly should be a lot broader than the niceties or the platitudes that it uses to describe its carbon tax.
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