So V ote

Context: House Hansard - 232 - Oct/16/23

Oct/26/23 3:01:13 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, this Liberal government is involved in so many scandals that even the Prime Minister cannot keep them straight. Yesterday, in response to an important question about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, he gave an answer related to the $54‑million ArriveCAN scandal. That is how bad things have gotten after eight years of this Liberal government's scandals, ethical breaches and wedge politics. Why should Canadians keep trusting a government that paid GC Strategies, a two-person firm, $11 million to develop the ArriveCAN app when the company had no IT expertise? Will the Prime Minister admit that he is not worth the cost?

107 words

All Topics

Oct/16/23 3:15:13 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, the past eight years of Liberal management have been nothing but one scandal after another. We just found out that the RCMP has launched a criminal investigation into ArriveCAN, which cost Canadians $54 million for nothing. Botler, a Montreal company, was the one that blew the whistle. A senior Liberal government official strongly advised Botler to work closely on an IT contract with the same company that worked on the ArriveCAN app. That company was GC Strategies, a two-person concern with no office and no IT skills. What Botler uncovered is similar to something seen in Quebec before. After eight years of sticking their heads in the sand, are the Liberals going to tell us who exactly is getting richer every time they award a contract?

130 words

All Topics

Nov/1/22 4:31:14 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to see the benefits of ArriveCAN when there were already tools that had been put in place by the provinces. People could have presented vaccination status documents at the border. Everything was already in place. There was no need to create another app, another expense and another layer of administration to basically achieve the same objectives.

61 words

All Topics

Nov/1/22 4:29:33 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I could give many examples to show how, when the government keeps racking up debt, it loses some the flexibility it has to offer real services to citizens. More importantly, it affects the ability of future generations to access government services because the price of that debt is going to keep growing. Our children and the children of all Canadians are the ones who are going to have to pay that debt. That is the big problem. I just want to say one thing. According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we are adding $6 million a day to the debt. That does not include the Prime Minister's $7,000-a-night hotel bill. It cost at least $14,000 for those two days.

127 words

All Topics

Nov/1/22 4:28:10 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question, which I am honoured to answer. I hope that one day, I or one of my colleagues will be lucky enough to answer the Bloc Québécois's questions every day. What we basically want is to put a stop to waste and spending associated with unnecessary programs and to replace the Liberal government, so that there will finally be responsible people on the other side to answer all of the Bloc's questions.

86 words

All Topics

Nov/1/22 4:26:32 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, since I got vaccinated, I had a piece of paper that I could have shown customs officers. That would have cost the price of a sheet of paper, and it would have allowed me to cross the border. Instead, everyone had to enter their information in the ArriveCAN app, otherwise they could not enter Canada. I had an app provided by the Quebec government that allowed me to show my proof of vaccination. Instead, the federal government wanted its own app, because it just had to get involved, or rather it wanted to reward good Liberal friends by handing out more valuable and juicy contracts. That is why the Auditor General needs to get to the bottom of everything pertaining to the ArriveCAN app.

126 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 116 - Oct/24/22

Nov/1/22 4:19:49 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of rising today to speak to the motion moved by the hon. member for Carleton and leader of the official opposition on the important issue of the Liberal government's wasteful spending. Rather than helping to combat the inflation crisis Canadians are experiencing, this government is fuelling inflation and making everyone's life more difficult. I would like to share some aspects of this motion with my colleagues. First, the member for Carleton believes that the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. That is a fact. The cost of groceries has gone up by 11.4% in a year. That is the largest increase in 40 years. That means that some items at the grocery store will cost up to 40% more. That also means that mothers and fathers will have difficult choices to make at the cash register. They may have to decide not to buy certain items that week even though the kids want them. They will have to tell their children that they can only afford to buy those things once a month because they have difficult choices to make. That is today's reality. The cost of living is sky-high. After having dropped, the price of gas is on the rise again. It is now almost $2 a litre in Quebec. For workers in regions like mine, who have to commute and travel close to 60 kilometres every day to get to work, this money is coming directly from their pockets. They can no longer use it to feed their families. That is another really problematic situation. Now we learn that this government has decided to add new taxes. It wants to triple the carbon tax, which will have an even more damaging effect on consumers across Canada. The Parliamentary Budget Officer told us that this government has torn through $500 billion in inflationary spending. That is half a trillion dollars. I never thought I would use that term in the House. Canada's debt is now $1 trillion. The government has spent half a trillion in the last two years. It claimed that this money was used to help people deal with COVID‑19, to send cheques to citizens, families and businesses. Yes, Conservatives supported those measures. However, we did not support spending 40% of that $500 billion, or $200 billion, on things that had absolutely nothing to do with COVID‑19. The government created new programs and new spending that ended up boosting inflation in Canada. As a result, the family I was talking about earlier will have a harder time putting food on the table at the end of the month. That is the reality. Members will recall the Prime Minister saying that interest rates would stay low for decades, that it was fine to borrow money, that the government would absorb those expenses on Canadians' behalf. Now Canadians are the ones who have to pay back their loans at interest rates that are higher than they have been in years. What do the Liberals have to say to those Canadians? Will they pay their bills? No, they will not, contrary to what the Prime Minister said during his inaugural speech in 2015. That is the reality. The third part of the motion says, “Canadians are now paying higher prices and higher interest rates as a result”. Yes, Canadians are paying higher interest rates. The government is going to pay higher interest rates. That means that a larger portion of the money that Canadians send to the government will be used to make interest payments because this government spent an incredible amount of money, money that it should not have spent, spending that could be described as wasteful, as in the case of the ArriveCAN app. Paying off this debt is going to cost more for everyone. That is the reality. The motion also says, “it is more important than ever for the government to respect taxpayer dollars and eliminate wasteful spending”. Who can be against that? If there is one person here who is against that sentiment let him or her rise immediately and explain how they can be against using taxpayer money better and eliminating wasteful spending. One of the best ways to do that is to investigate the government's wastefulness. If my colleagues support the motion, it would mean calling on the Auditor General of Canada to conduct a performance audit, including the payments, contracts and subcontracts for all aspects of the ArriveCAN app, and to prioritize this investigation. This app cost $54 million, when it could have cost $250,000. Certain invoices led us to believe that some companies had been hired. We heard about a $1-million contract awarded to a firm that candidly admitted to the newspapers that it never worked on the app. That is to say nothing of how useless the ArriveCAN app is. I will conclude my speech by saying that I urge all of my colleagues to support this motion.

851 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 110 - Oct/7/22

Oct/24/22 2:51:46 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, he is CBSA. He is the minister, so he is the one responsible for the ArriveCAN chaos. The Liberals are putting the lucrative contracts awarded to companies into quarantine. We want to know the details. The government paid $54 million to develop that app, which should have cost $250,000. Some 70 updates were needed for an app that never worked. The question is simple. Who are the other winners of the Liberal ArriveCAN lottery?

79 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 102 - Sep/26/22

Oct/7/22 11:46:41 a.m.
Watch

Madam Speaker, the app must have been created in order to line someone's pockets. Let us break it down: $54 million works out to one million hours for an engineer, a professional, at $50 an hour. That means 31,000 weeks of work, which is 596 years of work for one person, or 596 people working for one year to create the app. The facts speak for themselves. Someone pocketed a bunch of cash in this deal, but the Liberals refuse to say who that was. Was it friends of the Liberalist?

96 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 75 - May/19/22

Sep/26/22 2:38:45 p.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, it is not the first time. Nova Scotia Power and Premier Tim Houston have said that ArriveCAN created issues for American teams coming to help restore power. The victims of hurricane Fiona need to know that their government is there for them. Sadly, the Liberal government is flying by the seat of its pants once again when it should be taking action. Unbelievably, Fisheries and Oceans Canada told people not to harvest any lobsters washed up on the shore instead of worrying about those whose houses were swept away into the ocean. That happened, and it is unacceptable. Will the Prime Minister get his people in line and help those who have problems, who are facing challenges and just had a terrible weekend?

125 words

All Topics

Context: House Hansard - 11 - Dec/6/21

May/19/22 10:41:19 a.m.
Watch

Mr. Speaker, I salute my colleague, who does incredible work on her transport file. She speaks on behalf of thousands of Canadian travellers who are asking themselves a lot of questions about why the federal government truly wants to maintain the health measures in airports and at land borders. We have a lot of questions. We have been asking for evidence and documentation from the beginning and have been calling on the Minister of Health to table any advice in the House that he has received telling him to maintain the restrictions. We are unfortunately not hearing anything from the government, which has no justification for maintaining the many health measures that are no longer required here in Canada. The government is not listening to experts, who are saying that we must now start thinking about transitioning back to prepandemic times. Like always, the Prime Minister and his government are doing nothing, which is the main reason our airports have been plunged into chaos—not to mention the chaos with immigration services at Service Canada and with every single public service that the Liberal government has its hand in. The government cannot deliver. What we have seen at airports in recent days and weeks is particularly concerning: long delays, endless lineups, never-ending processing delays, bottlenecks and missed flights. People are missing their flights while others have to wait for hours on an aircraft before being able to disembark. That is the new reality. If we let the Liberals continue, this will unfortunately be the new Liberal standard at Canadian airports. This spring, Toronto's Pearson Airport even advised passengers departing for other countries to arrive a minimum of three hours before their flight to make sure they do not miss it. For some travellers, that is longer than the duration of the flight itself. That is completely unacceptable, but that is what the government has unfortunately brought us to. I remind members, as did my colleague, that for months, the United States and the main allies of the European Union have been gradually eliminating the restrictive health measures imposed on passengers. They are even talking about eliminating the requirement to wear a mask during flights and in airports, among other things. The situation is evolving everywhere else, but, here, in Canada, we remain attached to measures that the government was late in implementing at the start, and we should remember that. In fact, when the time came to protect people, the government was slow to act. Now, however, the time has come to realize that the measures adopted, such as vaccination—which had a lot of uptake—and mask wearing have had the desired effect and we have begun another stage. However, the government is not moving forward. It is sitting back, to put it mildly, and prefers to wait for everything to sort itself out, just like the budgets. The Prime Minister has previously stated that the budgets would balance themselves. However, the pandemic is not going to resolve itself, and people's freedom to resume their activities and the life they lived before the pandemic will not return by itself either. Tourists arriving in Canada, foreigners and business people are extremely disappointed when they arrive in our country and have to face extreme delays at the airports because of the government's inaction. Then there is the infamous ArriveCAN application, which asks them to answer personal public health questions and complicates their arrival. On that topic, let me tell you about something that happened in my riding, not at an airport. These situations happen to real people who want to travel. My riding, Mégantic—L'Érable, borders the United States and includes a border crossing. A man from Lac‑Mégantic came to our office to get the infamous ArriveCAN receipt that border officers at the Woburn crossing asked him to obtain. However, he did not have his passport with him and was forced to come back to the office, the first unnecessary step. Mr. Paré, who is 85 and does not have a smart phone or a computer at home, also had to come to our office. We had to open an account for him and fill out the ArriveCAN papers so that he could travel from one side of the border to the other. If we had not helped him out, he would not have been able to go see his relative, who lives 15 or 20 minutes away on the other side of the border. That is the reality. At 85, will he have to buy a computer and a smart phone? No, he will not. He came back to our office to get his paperwork filled out to be able to cross the border again. That is the reality. The government is not considering that reality, what Canadians have to go through. It is unacceptable how disconnected this government is from reality. Their many measures, now unnecessary, are causing delays and inconvenience to Canadians, particularly at airports. Who is affected by them and who is suffering? Travellers, tourists, business people, that is who. Plus, it is easy to forget, but the people working at airports have to endure the wrath and anger of the public, of everyone who is kept waiting. They have to enforce the rules that this government is imposing, even though they know full well this should not be the case. That is the reality. As we know, the last two years have been very hard on the airline and tourism industries. Both have suffered greatly from the pandemic as they were among the hardest hit. For the past two years, my Conservative colleagues and I have been staunch defenders of these two sectors that are vital to our economy, especially because they are also vital to Canada's economic recovery. Unfortunately, once again, the Liberals seem to be completely blind to this reality and to all the damage they are doing now, which will have long-term consequences. The Liberals, with their harmful policies and their usual who-cares attitude, are a real threat to the Canadian tourism industry. Something has to be done before this Liberal government completely destroys Canada's reputation as an international tourism destination of choice and as an investment destination for business people. In 2019 and 2020, before the pandemic, it took about 15 to 30 seconds for a Canada border services officer to process an international passenger on arrival. Now, health questions and COVID‑19 measures have increased to the point that processing takes two to four times longer. Sometimes it can take as long as two minutes. If we multiply two minutes by thousands of people, that makes for endless wait times and people complaining and dreading having to travel by plane. Instead of accepting full responsibility for this, the Minister of Transport chose to blame delays at various entry points on out-of-practice travellers. That is how the Liberals always operate. When they do not have an answer or a solution, they find someone else to blame. This time, they are pointing the finger at travellers, the people receiving services from this government. I hope members of the House will send a clear message to the Liberal government that enough is enough. We have to do what other countries around the world are doing. Those countries have experts and scientists too, and they understand that we need to get back to a more normal prepandemic period for everyone. I encourage all my colleagues to vote in favour of this motion. In particular, I encourage the Liberal government to show us why this motion should not be adopted. The Liberals will not be able to do that because they like chaos and they like not being able to deliver services.

1310 words

All Topics