- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Red Deer—Lacombe
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,499.79
- Government Page
- Apr/21/23 11:31:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. After years of inflationary spending by the government, Canadians cannot afford to put food on the table or to heat their homes, yet the Prime Minister was off jet-setting to Jamaica on yet another luxury vacation. This is just another example of a prime minister who cannot or will not try to understand the realities of hard-working Canadians.
When Canadians are choosing between heating and eating, the Prime Minister is choosing between Jamaica and the Bahamas. When will the out-of-touch Prime Minister realize that money does not grow on trees, not that his government is competent enough to plant any?
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- Nov/17/22 3:08:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Kay is 71 years old. She lives in a seniors' lodge, and the lodge just raised her rent because of inflation. Her OAS and GIS are now $100 short of what her monthly rent is. She has moved up several flights of stairs just to save $300 a month, but that deal is going to end soon. She volunteers at the lodge because she gets, as a reward, a glass of cranberry juice, which she needs for nourishment. She orders meals on wheels every second day for $6 because that is all she can afford.
When will the Liberals end their inflationary spending and cancel their cruel tax increases so Kay can once again afford to live in the country she helped build?
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her eloquent speech and articulate thoughts in the House this morning. She is exactly right.
The government is proposing to be the solution, but it is actually the problem. The problem can never be the solution. We are witnessing, coming out of COVID, the massive inflation-induced problems that Canadians are facing, making their paycheques shorter. There is more month now left than there is money on those paycheques. Canadians are struggling.
I am not talking about Canadians who have always or have typically struggled. I am talking about Canadians who just a few short years ago did not need the government to do anything at all for them. They were business owners. They were working in the private sector. They had the ability to earn a living and make their paycheques cover their cost of living, pay for their homes, pay for their energy, pay for their food, raise their children, put them through school and even save enough for their retirements.
These are Canadians who just want their government to provide them with the services only it can provide and get out of their way. This is the mentality of the people I represent in the constituency of Red Deer—Lacombe. This is why Alberta, my home province, is one of the lowest-taxed jurisdictions and one of the provinces in this Confederation that creates wealth in abundance, or at least it used to create wealth in abundance, for everybody to share in.
The problem is the philosophy of the current government. In its rush to make everybody equal, it is making everybody equally miserable. This is the problem with the philosophy of the socialist-bent NDP-Liberal coalition. It does not work. History has shown us throughout time that this kind of thinking only leads to everybody being worse off.
This bill specifically talks about rent and the dental program. The reason the government believes it needs to bring these things forward at this time is that my constituents who used to be able to pay for these things on their own, who used to have jobs where their employer made those payments or had a dental care plan, no longer find themselves in that calibre of employment anymore. That is because of the ideology of the current government across the way and its ideological attack on energy.
I want Canadians at home to realize that, if they take a look around their home, everything they have was either made from, brought to them by or manufactured with energy. When we attack that energy with things like a carbon tax, it underpins everything we do in our economy. The government's hell-bent position from the very first press release it issued was to rework the northern gateway and energy east pipelines and basically cancel those projects. The short-sightedness for cheap political gain of critical energy supplies, not only within Canada but around the world, is showing itself today.
The Chancellor of Germany was just here and our government was too dim-witted to even know that he came here asking for help in the way he could without embarrassing himself in front of his own people. What did our government say in response to our friend, our NATO ally and our economic trading partner? It basically gave him the bum's rush out of town and said we would have some renewables for him in three to five years. Meanwhile, the good people, our friends, our western liberal democracy philosophical allies are going to be left in the dark by the current government, which cannot see past the end of its nose in its ideological crusade against oil and natural gas. I think 14 to 18 LNG proposals were cancelled, shelved or tabled because of the current government. That is the legacy we have.
I want to get back to how that is relevant to the citizens of my province and the citizens I represent in the constituency of Red Deer—Lacombe. Central Alberta is a hub of the service industry of the oil and gas sector in Alberta. We have numerous pipeline companies, service rig companies, drilling rig companies. We even have, hopefully, a formerly Russian oligarch-owned steel pipe company that was providing services to the oil and gas sector. These were good-paying jobs.
I have good friends who have had multi-million dollar businesses. The way to get rid of a $10-million trucking company in Alberta is to vote Liberal and just wait a couple years. There is nothing left at the end of it. That is exactly the story, sadly, of some good friends of mine back in central Alberta. That is the misery that has been inflicted on the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Albertans who are victims of this policy.
Now the good people of Germany and the rest of the free world are being held hostage by dictator energy in places like Germany, Ukraine and Poland. These are our friends, and they are being held hostage by the ruinous imperialism of Vladimir Putin right now. They are being held economically hostage. Putin has used energy as a weapon.
We could be energy independent. We do not need to import a single drop of gas or oil into this country. As a matter of fact, we have the third-largest proven reserves of oil in the world, and we have trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under every province and territory in this country. We could be supplying our friends, neighbours, allies and like-minded citizens in liberal democracies. That is small-l liberal democracies, because today's Liberals are not liberals. We could be providing that energy, relief and security to our friends.
The reason my constituents do not have the buying power they used to have, the reason my constituents are now in the same boat that many other Canadians find themselves in is that they do not have the security of that job they used to have, that well-paying energy sector job, a job with a company that actually could provide a benefits plan for them. I watched it happen. It has been absolutely disastrous and absolutely ruinous.
The problem I go back to is the philosophical bent of the government, which cannot see past the end of its nose. We can look at the pipeline policies and the unfair application of these things. For example, the upstream and downstream emissions on oil and gas that is produced in Canada are not applied to oil that is imported into Canada. Why the double standard?
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- Apr/29/22 1:07:52 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, like my colleague from Perth—Wellington, this is my first opportunity to speak to Bill C-8 at any stage of this bill's process going through the House of Commons, and I appreciate the opportunity to actually have the ability to speak to Bill C-8 at least while I still have it under the guillotine of Motion No. 11.
I find it more than a bit strange that the Liberal leadership has managed to mismanage this House so much so that we are debating an act to implement provisions of the 2021 winter fiscal update two days after we voted on the 2022 budget. I suppose Liberal incompetence really should not be a surprise after all we have seen in the last six years.
The economic and fiscal update 2021 committed to add an additional $70 billion of spending that would do little more than continue to drive up inflation. The fiscal update also made it clear that the so-called fiscal guardrails that the government likes to reference when it abandons any semblance of a fiscal anchor are simply a communications tool and not actually something the government is committed to using to guide their economic decisions.
The need for stimulus right now is simply non-existent. The notion has been panned by the Parliamentary Budget Officer and virtually every reasonable private sector economist. Despite this, the government has committed to all kinds of unnecessary spending in the fiscal update, and now it has added even more in the 2022 budget with numerous costly campaign promises still waiting in the wings.
To make matters worse, much of this spending is not actually stimulus, because it would not do anything to stimulate the economy, attract investment or promote long-term, sustainable growth. Much of the government's proposed spending is simply about ideological goals. It has been using the excuse that interest rates are low, so the debt service payments will also be low. Well, the bill has already started to come due on this line of thinking.
The Bank of Canada has increased interest rates twice already in order to combat inflation that is in large part being driven by the government's out-of-control spending, most recently by a full half a percentage point, the single largest jump in more than two decades. The reality is that the Bank of Canada has been very clear that it is not even close to being done when it comes to raising rates. The Governor has said it will use the interest rate policy to return inflation to target and will do so forcefully if necessary.
The chief economist at BMO Capital Markets suggested there is a solid possibility that we can expect another half a percentage point increase in June of this year as well. We expect the rate to double at an absolute minimum, and the suggestion that it could triple or more is completely within the realm of possible.
That should give the Liberals and the NDP consideration to pause, and to think that the more money they spend, the more they drive up inflation, the higher the interest rate is going to go and, ultimately, the worse off Canadians would be. Unfortunately, it appears there is absolutely no foresight in the government. The focus is on the announcement and the photo-op. It is all style, with very little, if any, substance, and on giving the social media influencers on its payroll something to work with so they can go out and actually try to convince and mislead Canadians that it is accomplishing a lot, when in reality it is spending a lot with no results at all.
This also is not just about affordability now either, though that is certainly a vital component. With 53% of Canadians less than $200 from insolvency, the cost-of-living crisis we are currently experiencing cannot be overstated. As inflation drives up the costs of goods, ever smaller unanticipated issues are hitting Canadians hard. Some are one car repair away from insolvency.
As interest rates increase, it will become more and more expensive for Canadians to take out a loan, add debt to their credit card or put more on their line of credit to deal with these types of emergencies.
We also need to consider the generations to come, and the moral implications of the NDP-Liberal spending and how it will affect our children, our grandchildren and subsequent generations.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance described the housing affordability crisis in Canada as an “intergenerational injustice”. While the budget she has presented certainly did not seem to treat it like an issue of importance, it is good to know that at least somebody understands the words "intergenerational injustice”. What about the intergenerational injustice and impact of all of this spending, housing only being a small part of it?
We have an aging population. In fact, the census data that came out just yesterday from StatsCan showed that the working-age population in Canada has never been older and over 21% of the population is close to retirement, which is an all-time high. Between 2016 and 2021, the number of children under 15 grew at a pace six times slower than those over the age of 65.
Even with ambitious immigration, the NDP-Liberal government is creating the perfect storm that will absolutely devastate our society for future generations. We are going to have fewer people starting from a place of disadvantage being required to repay the debt the government is racking up through some unholy combination of either increased taxes or reduced services. Instead of pulling back, the Liberals are pushing expensive ideological pet projects and buying off the support of the New Democrats with programs that provinces are not even asking for and Canadians simply cannot afford. They are doing this to avoid any accountability or scrutiny for another four years.
How is this any less of an intergenerational injustice than the 100% increase in the average cost of a home, which has been what the current government has overseen in the last six years? It is not, but the elites in the Liberal Party are not worried about that, because they measure success by dollars out the door, not any outcomes whatsoever. When someone has a standing invitation to Davos they are not too worried about the future financial tremors that feel like seismic quakes to us poor lowly working-class Canadians.
Embracing fiscally responsible spending is not just an economic imperative; it is a moral one. Unfortunately, when it comes to the current government, those are the two areas—
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- Apr/26/22 1:43:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from the NDP for reminding us of the napkin budget brought in a few years ago. That was with the Liberals as well.
Unfortunately, the government treated this rationale as an opportunity to spend wildly and recklessly on policies that did nothing to support Canadians through the pandemic or that would help create sustainable economic growth in the future to help pay for their spending.
This budget continues this practice, with a deficit of $52.8 billion and no plan to reach a balanced budget. At the end of the 2014-15 fiscal year, the federal debt was just over $612 billion with a budgetary surplus of $1.9 billion.
Now, the federal debt is almost $1.2 trillion, and is anticipated to reach $1.3 trillion in the next couple of years. The cost to service our debt this year alone will be $26.9 billion. Inflation has reached a 31-year high, and we have just seen the largest rate hike in decades by the Bank of Canada: a full half a percentage point, bringing the overnight rate to 1% in order to deal with government spending-driven inflation. We know that the Bank of Canada will continue to aggressively raise interest rates, making this spending even less sustainable. In fact, one of the reasons why the Bank of Canada had to increase it so aggressively was because of this unsustainable spending, something the NDP-Liberals would realize if they were not all following the Prime Minister’s example and not thinking at all about monetary policy.
We are all aware of the devastating impact that inflation is having across Canada. Too many people who have been just getting by for the past couple of years, or even longer in some cases, now find themselves in a situation where they no longer can get by. Groceries, fuel and pretty much everything else we can think of is getting more expensive. Housing costs have skyrocketed, with the price of the average house doubling since the Prime Minister came into office and increasing 30% in the last year alone.
Young Canadians, who have seen their dream of home ownership evaporate under the government, were hoping for some sort of inspired measure in this budget: something that showed the NDP-Liberal coalition understood the issue and was actually trying to fix it. Instead of hope, the government doubled down on more of the same failed policies that have not helped young people get homes in the past six years. Nothing in the budget will help get homes built this year. In fact, the solution that the coalition government has put forward seems to be a plan to increase the size of the bureaucracy, not the supply of houses.
The budget almost acknowledges that the government is not even trying to help young people get into their own homes. Instead of a serious plan to cut red tape, cut costs and build homes, the government decided that a multi-generational home renovation tax credit was the way to go. Families are the cornerstone of our society, and supporting our loved ones as they age or when they are facing hard times is admirable. I am sure we would do it for our families, and most Canadians would want to do the same if they were able to do so. However, considering the housing crisis, this tax credit, which gives up to $7,500 for renovations to make a secondary suite, is not a nice social policy to help support strong families. It is an admission of failure by the NDP-Liberals.
It is an admission that they are going to give up on helping to get young people out of their parents’ basements and put them into their own homes. The government is telling young people that instead of trying to fix the mess it created and helping to get them into homes, it is going to help families fix up basement suites so that they feel like their own places.
Young Canadians want the pride of home ownership and the ability to build some equity, and they want to have the autonomy that comes with living on their own or with their partner or spouse. They do not want the government to help put a shower in the half-bath in mom and dad's basement and call it a day. Without a meaningful plan to increase supply, bring prices to a reasonable level and help new people enter the housing market, that is exactly how this tax credit is going to be interpreted by Canadians, and who could possibly blame them?
Another thing that was in this budget is the expected increase in the amount of equalization payments. Members will recall that in 2018, Bill “no more”, I mean Bill Morneau, quietly locked in the equalization formula until 2024 with virtually no consultation.
The Liberal government members of the day did not really care that Alberta and other western provinces were going through hard times; they just saw my whole province as a piggy bank that they were willing to shake every last dime out of while they could. After all these years of Liberals taking from that piggy bank without putting anything back in, there is not much left to give, but that will not stop the NDP-Liberal coalition from trying, and if that means smashing the bank open, they are going to be quite all right with that.
The feeling that the government does not understand Alberta or that it is actively trying to dismantle its economy and way of life is not new. Some held out hope that, with the finance minister being at least born in Alberta and the associate finance minister representing an Edmonton riding, there could have been some sort of consideration given to our province, but that certainly was not the case with this budget.
The attack on the energy sector continues, with the NDP-Liberal government doubling down on the plan to phase out the oil and gas sector. With this budget, the government will no longer allow the use of flow-through shares for the oil and gas industries, so smaller firms that rely on this important tool will find it that much harder. The government has asked them to reduce their emissions and navigate an ever more complicated regulatory system, and at the same time the Liberal-NDP government is working to ensure that oil and gas companies do not have the resources that they will need to accomplish either of those goals.
The budget did include, however, a tax credit for carbon capture and storage, but unfortunately it is deeply flawed. The budget suggests that there is a credit for carbon capture, utilization and storage, which means that the recovered oil can also be utilized, but in the case of the energy sector in my province, that is simply not true. The tax credit specifically rules out enhanced oil recovery, where the carbon that is being sequestered can be pumped back into the well to be permanently sequestered and in the process help extract oil that is at the bottom, which otherwise can no longer be accessed. This technology creates the lowest-emission oil possible and allows for wells to be fully utilized, resulting in jobs and royalties, and the CO2 is still sequestered.
Enhanced oil recovery sequestration is already taking place. There is already a process, a regulatory regime, and there are businesses operating in this space. In my riding, enhanced energy has used this method to sequester CO2 and recover the cleanest oil in North America. A year ago, they announced that they had reached the monumental milestone of sequestering one million tonnes of CO2, an equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road.
If anyone is puzzled by the fact that the government is against this technology, so is absolutely everybody in Alberta. If the NDP and the Liberals want to see emissions reduced, they need to put their ideology aside, support the oil and gas sector and support CCUS.
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