- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Cypress Hills—Grasslands
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $112,746.42
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, it is fantastic to be able to rise once again on behalf of the great people of the province of Saskatchewan, particularly the people in the southwest corner, whom I have the privilege of representing.
Right off the top, I want to just talk about the month of May, which is MS Awareness Month. One of the big asks of the MS community, in particular by MS Canada, is to have the government fund $15 million towards research on the disease, as well as the prevention and repair side of things, for people who suffer with MS.
Normally, I do not get up to ask the government to spend more money, because we know the Liberals are fantastic at spending boatloads of money and accomplishing nothing with it. However, in this particular case, we know that there is over $3.4 billion in costs to the government and in lost wages by people who suffer from MS. A $15-million investment would actually result in a tremendous amount of savings for the government for the taxpayer. It would also result in a higher quality of life for people who suffer from MS.
I just wanted to start off my budget speech by mentioning that. If the Liberals were truly listening to what Canadians want and would like to see, this is something that they could have included in this budget to make sure that they are actually working to better the lives of people in Canada. Canada has the highest rates of people who suffer from MS in the world, with my wife being one of those people as well.
I could not help but notice in the budget that there is a very small amount listed for agriculture. In fact, I believe that agriculture is first mentioned on page 131 of the budget, and it continues for the next page and a half.
One of the issues in the budget concerns the livestock tax deferral. I just want to talk about that briefly, because a lot of ranchers in my riding have been dealing with droughtlike conditions for the last number of years, which is nothing new. We live in southwest Saskatchewan, a part of the country where rain has never been a feature. It is not something that we regularly get, so it is not new for us to have droughtlike conditions.
There is a government program called the livestock tax deferral. What happens is that the local RM has to declare a state of disaster. Then the government takes a look at the rainfall and the forage percentage over the year to see if it has fallen below 50%, I believe. There is quite a process involved in implementing or triggering the livestock tax deferral. Clarification around that would go a long way to help producers to have more certainty in their industry. An issue too, though, is that the livestock tax deferral can only be used for one year. We know that, in Saskatchewan, it sometimes takes more than one year for one's pasture to regenerate. A lot of producers and organizations, such as the Canadian Cattle Association and the Saskatchewan cattle association, are saying that allowing the livestock tax deferral to be used over a period of three years would actually be a lot more beneficial. It would allow for better environmental protection and for pastures to be able to regenerate.
My riding name is Cypress Hills—Grasslands. The “grasslands” part of the name comes from the fact that we have some of the largest amounts of still untouched native prairie grass in my part of the country. It has not been broken up. It has been grazed for years. Buffalo used to be the keystone species there; they have since been reintroduced to the grasslands. Cattle have done a tremendous job of being the keystone species in the grasslands.
For ranchers who have native prairie grass on their ranch, in their rotation, it is of huge value to them to be able to preserve that grass. When ranchers sell their herd, they will get the one-year livestock tax deferral. If they are forced to rebuy and to spend more on cattle to get them back on the land, there will be a degradation of that land. Having a three-year window would actually allow for the pasture to properly regenerate. Even if there is only a small amount of rainfall, that three-year time window would allow for better regeneration of the pasture. The environment would be taken care of in a way that would allow producers to purchase cattle, regraze the land once again and keep that keystone species on the land as well.
That is something that would happen with the livestock tax deferral. If the government were truly listening to the producer groups it mentions in the budget, then that is something it would actually be talking about and looking to implement. After nine years, it definitely has not done that.
One of the other parts about it, which actually took up about a page of the page and a half in that, is the government's commitment to starting consultations, once again, on interoperability. It is really funny that this is in there. I had the privilege to sponsor Bill C-294, which is an act to amend the Copyright Act for interoperability. There are many fantastic short-line manufacturers in Saskatchewan, and quite frankly all across this country, that make great agricultural products. They also make products for other industries, but I am going to focus on the agricultural side of it.
It is funny that this section is included in the “Affordable Groceries” section of the budget. The government is finally realizing that when agriculture is treated with respect and producers are allowed to grow food in the most economical way, if we let them have a choice, they will be able to grow food in a more efficient manner, which, in the long run, is going to have a positive impact on the price of groceries and hopefully lead to groceries being more affordable.
However, Bill C-294 was tabled over two years ago and still has not received royal assent. It did pass this House about a year ago now, and nothing has been done with it so far. In the 2023 budget, the government said it was going to start consultations then. It still has not done it. In 2024, it is once again committing to starting consultations, in June. It has a specific time frame in which it wants to start consultations, but given its previous track record of not doing it, we will wait and see what actually happens.
What would be even better is if Bill C-294 were able to get royal assent. My bill passed the House of Commons unanimously. When it went through committee stage, we were able to accept a friendly government amendment to the bill, which put it a bit more in line with some of the government's priorities but with the law as well. This is important because we want as much certainty as we can possibly get, even though we had done some legal work in the buildup to the bill. We accepted that friendly amendment. This is a bill that is non-controversial, but it is something that would get things done. It would have a whole-of-economy effect and impact.
If the government wants to go through consultations, I am going to make it even simpler. What the government can do is go back and read the report that was done by the government branch that used to be called Western Economic Diversification, which is now PrairiesCan. The government can go back and read the report, which was released in 2020, on this very issue. What it will find in that report is the economic impact that agricultural manufacturing has across the entire country. This is not just a southern Saskatchewan issue; this is a whole-of-Canada issue.
The government can read that report. It can see the dollar value assigned to it. It can see how every single province benefits from it. It is a nation-building exercise. It does not even have to do the consultations; that has already been done. The government department already did the report. The government can read it. The consultations are done.
We are counting on the Senate passing and giving royal assent to Bill C-294 as quickly as possible.
If the government wants to impact the price of groceries, what it could also do is have this House pass Bill C-234 in its original form. It came back from the Senate with a huge amendment that gutted the original intent of the bill, which was to put an exemption in place for all on-farm buildings for all types of fuel, which is important when we consider greenhouses, dairy barns, chicken barns and pig barns. There is a huge level of cost that goes into running those facilities with the carbon tax, so passing Bill C-234 in its original form would have a huge impact on the Canadian economy. It would have a huge impact on the price of food.
Removing the carbon tax in its entirety would be beneficial as well, when we look at the transportation costs and the costs to the grocery stores. It is a huge detriment, so scrapping the carbon tax altogether would also be of huge benefit, and I do not see any of that in the budget either.
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- Apr/9/24 11:52:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the principal reasons we oppose this is that the cost of this has a ripple-down impact. For the Town of Shaunavon back home, for example, with the carbon tax increase, it is going to cost the town $78,000. In order for the municipality to cover that off, it would have to raise taxes on ratepayers by at least 8% or 9%. There it is, another example of how the carbon tax continues to pile onto ratepayers more than just at the pumps, which is where the Bloc seems to think it only applies.
I want to know what the member thinks about that.
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- Feb/16/24 11:58:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister blew over 60 million taxpayer dollars for his arrive scam app in a corruption scandal that is looking worse day by day. His NDP-Liberal government is also going to force grocery, gas and home heating prices to go up on April 1 as it increases the carbon tax another 23%. After eight years of being scammed and robbed by the Prime Minister, Canadians know that he is not worth the cost or the corruption.
Why will he not just admit that his income redistribution scam is toast, and just axe the tax?
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- Dec/5/23 7:57:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, only this member would think that higher grocery bills are somehow a net benefit. Only this member would think that higher energy bills are a net benefit. I wonder how that goes over with the residents of Winnipeg North.
I was messaging a family friend earlier today, and they were telling me a story about their son, who has actually started out as a young producer; he is raising cattle. He has home heating oil in his house. We have heard so much about the government's vaunted home heating oil program, but guess what? Yes, we can get the heat pump, but heat pumps do not work in Saskatchewan because of how cold it gets in the winter, and the government knows that. This producer cannot afford to buy heating oil for his house, so he has to use electric heat. It is costing him over $400 a month just to use electric space heaters to heat his house, and it is not even that cold in Saskatchewan yet. However, the member opposite seems to think that this is just fine because there is a rebate out there that is going to exist and make everything all better and rosy, and that this young producer should just be happy for his rebate cheque. Who does the member think should actually pay for that? Is it this young producer?
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Mr. Speaker, one thing we heard at committee recently was that workers in the traditional energy sector have jobs that pay really well. Compare that to the jobs that will be and currently are created by green tech companies, whether in wind, solar or otherwise. On average, they pay about 36% less than what a traditional oil and gas worker earns. If this is a just transition would transfer people from job to job, does the member see anything in the bill that would ensure that the worker who is making money in oil and gas is going to be making the same amount when they are transitioned to a different job?
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Madam Speaker, obviously I support livable wages. I also support an economy where people can afford to live without having to be massively topped up and subsidized by the government. People should be able to have paycheques that actually reward them for the work they are doing.
I also said in my speech, though, that mothers or stay-at-home fathers, and it does not matter which one, are working 24-7 parenting. Whether it is the mother or the father, it is a 24-7 job. I know that my kids, when they wake up with a fever or something like that, are not calling for dad; they are calling for mom. Moms are on call 24-7. It is the hardest but most rewarding job there can be on this earth, and the government fails to recognize that.
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- Apr/27/23 9:52:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after eight years, what we continue to see is the Liberals spending record amounts of money to accomplish so little. They value and rate their success by how much they spend, not by how much they have been able to accomplish. They can spend all the money they want on housing, but they have not been able to properly develop housing in this country because they cannot get out of the way to allow developers to get to doing what they do best, which is to build housing for people.
Volkswagen has a lot of money. It could invest in building this battery project without the government dumping $13 billion into it, which my great-grandkids, quite frankly, will be paying for. The Liberals are not spending their money. They are spending the money of my great-grandkids. That is whose money is at stake here. They need to remember that because without taxpayers they do not have any money to spend.
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Madam Speaker, our party is not beholden to Facebook, and we are not beholden to Google. We do not take our marching orders from big corporations like that. We are not listening to special-interest lobby groups and informing our policy decisions based on that. Too often, we see that from the Liberal side of the aisle.
As I outlined in my speech, this is talking about our small-town news and print media. Quite often they are the best at providing the most up-to-date local, relevant information that people want to see and hear. They do appropriate and proper journalism.
What we are seeing from many of these large organizations is basically government-subsidized opinions. That is not what Canadian taxpayers want. What they want is to see better respect for the taxpayer dollar, but also to have media outlets that are going to provide them with true, accurate and reliable journalism. That is what our small-town papers do. They are the ones that are going to be left out, and the bill would do nothing to help those people.
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Madam Speaker, that right there indicates everything that is wrong with these time allocation issues, and particularly with these bills the Liberals are ramming through. With this one in particular, the cost of living elements they are talking about are going to cost the taxpayer over $11 billion. Many of the measures are one-time or maybe two-time handouts. These are things that are going to further drive up inflation, because we have to borrow this money in order to be able to hand it out to Canadians. The Liberals continue to run these deficit budgets, and these plans are driving it up.
That is why we want to debate these bills for an adequate amount of time. It is because there are many great ideas we have on this side, and I am sure the other opposition parties have many great ideas they want to get communicated across, but when the government limits debate, that cannot happen.
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Mr. Speaker, I was just going through some numbers I received from the Library of Parliament on tax revenue to the Government of Canada from the oil and gas sector. Back in 2019, it was as high as $807 million. When we talk about oil and gas companies bringing in record profits, we know the government is also bringing in record taxes from the oil and gas sector.
The member talked about his dental care bill. If they succeed in killing off the oil and gas sector, where are they going to get the money to pay for their programs? These are programs such as the dental care bill, which has passed through the House of Commons, and which has a much larger bill than the tax revenue from the oil and gas companies.
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- Nov/1/22 3:19:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to this great opposition day motion and I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for moving it.
Many different things have happened over the last two or three years and that has brought us to where we are today, with a very particular focus on the ArriveCAN app. We need to show respect for taxpayer dollars, which is more fundamentally based on respect for the rights of our fellow Canadians.
An essential part of Parliament's role is to hold the government accountable for its spending along with its policy decisions regardless of the party that is in power. That is exactly what the motion calls for, nothing more. Hopefully all members from all parties in the House can agree with that idea, including Liberals who sit on the government side. We will have to wait and see the result of the vote, because the issue in question has to do with the controversial arrive scam app.
The motion calls for the Auditor General to conduct a performance audit, and that is something different from the House expressing our approval or disapproval toward a specific government policy. It is not even a committee study. Instead, this would be an independent review that would take the issue away from partisan debates between the government and the opposition.
It would address the need for some necessary accountability, though, because we cannot pretend that nothing really happened with the ArriveCAN app over the last two years. If government members are truly confident that they have made the right decisions along the way, then they should have no problem supporting the motion. In the end, it would prove their case with no problem, and I hope that point has been clearly understood.
We are here today, one month after the government eventually decided to drop the mandatory use of the ArriveCAN app, but that alone does not mean all issues have been resolved. We do not have the whole story, and many of the questions that Canadians have are left unanswered.
Why did the federal government mandate it in the first place? Why were Canadian citizens required to download and use an app to enter their own country? Why was there a lack of accommodation or flexibility? Why did it take so long for the government to finally drop the mandate? Why did it cost $54 million to create, when it has since been shown that it could have been made for as low as $250,000. It was originally projected to cost only $80,000. Who exactly benefited or profited from paying out all of these millions of dollars? This is what all members need to know on behalf of their constituents all across the country.
While we are having this debate, we also cannot forget all the impacts this mandated app has had on Canadians. The government has tried to claim that this was somehow about vaccination, to turn the issue against those who did not receive COVID vaccines. The reality is that we saw how this mandate affected different people regardless of their medical status. ArriveCAN took it a step beyond the other problems involved with vaccine mandates for work and travel. It created yet another barrier for new groups of people in our society, which relates to the technology used.
If the Liberals want to defend this decision by making it all about vaccines, then they are at least revealing part of the unfortunate truth by saying so. They have essentially admitted that their intention was to punish the unvaccinated, which came with the suggestion to the wider public that doing so would stop transmission. This might have worked to scapegoat and divide people during and after a snap election, but the mandate did not do what they said it would do. Of course, it is true that the app was clearly part of a broader policy that undermined and violated Canadians' right to medical privacy. What was the result?
Although the Prime Minister might not understand this fact, regular people have many reasons to travel besides taking luxurious vacations. These mandates devastated careers and relationships for people. Some of them were unvaccinated, while others did not disclose that they were vaccinated for privacy reasons, because that was the issue at stake. The government chose to keep it in place while it became more apparent over time that its excuse for it was flawed.
Again, the ArriveCAN requirement took all this to a new level. It made the situation more complicated and nonsensical. Some people could show their papers, but their personal circumstances did not allow for them to use ArriveCAN. Some did not have the right technology. Some just simply were not able to use it or maybe did not have ready access to it for practical reasons. In a lot of cases, we are talking about seniors or minorities who found that their government had added an arbitrary barrier under the vaccine mandate.
These are our fellow Canadians who live in my riding and in every other riding, including those belonging to Liberal members, and I am sure they have heard similar stories from constituents as I have.
For example, I had someone reach out to me by phone from one of the many Hutterite colonies. They do not use technology, do not have access to computers and their options for other access are limited. However, this individual was vaccinated and crossed the border into the United States, but upon returning to Canada was forced to quarantine simply because he was not using the ArriveCAN app and did not have the means to even have the app in the first place. It did not make any sense to him, and I agreed with him.
There are also a number of seniors in a similar situation who were forced to quarantine, even though they could otherwise prove their vaccination status under the rules. This had consequences that were more than a mere inconvenience. People were confined to their homes.
In the case of the constituent I mentioned, the community's lifestyle is based on agriculture and food production. This would have disrupted his ability to contribute to the important type of work that needs to get done. In fact, this constituent was down in the States getting the parts he needed for his agricultural machinery, his agricultural implements, to be able to perform what the government at the time had deemed to be an essential service, but he was told that he had to go home for 14 days anyway.
Farmers know they cannot afford to lose up to two weeks of valuable time. Their work, as we all know, is isolated by nature. There is one person driving a machine. Ranchers are out checking their cattle and herds. There is zero risk to the communities around them. This is another example of how the Liberals have zero understanding of what life is like in rural Canada.
Then it somehow got worse. Not only was the app intrusive, but it also had glitches. If people complied and used ArriveCAN, they still were not safe. There were people who were able and willing to use the app but who were still wrongly identified for quarantine time anyway. At one time, the Canada Border Services Agency said that these incorrect notifications went out to over 10,000 people. This is a disaster that was as embarrassing as it was confusing. It went right along with the government's failure to provide Canadians with passports and with notoriously bad flight disruptions at our airports, but the Liberals dragged it on nonetheless despite the calls to end it from border communities, tourism groups, border guard unions and the public. By the time they dropped this restriction, the travel season was all but over.
My riding is along the border we share with the United States, and tourism is an important part of our local economy. It also happens to be a rural area, which adds its own limitations to the situation. From that perspective, I can assure everyone there was real damage done to these communities because of these misguided policies. What makes it worse is we knew from common sense that the extra burden and impracticality for tourism, agriculture and other local industries was not necessary.
There were all kinds of Canadians who paid a price for the Prime Minister and the Liberal government to save face or score political points. Fortunately, the Liberals could not ignore the mounting pressure any longer and dropped the requirements at the border, which was the right thing to do. There are still some challenges remaining for our citizens and border communities. One such example is that the hours of operation still have not returned to normal.
A constituent of mine had a two-hour trip to make to the U.S. and back to get his cattle to the vet. It turned into a 14-hour trip because he was not allowed to come back over the border. There are regulations in this country that limit how long animals can be in a trailer, and this simple decision put him at risk. He had to spend even more time on the road away from home, risking the health of his animals as he was travelling.
Canadians can once again fully exercise the spirit of their charter right to remain in, enter or leave Canada. We also no longer restrict international travellers from coming here, but the United States still has a vaccine mandate at their border for our citizens. That is their decision to make. Our government obviously cannot make it for them. However, does the Prime Minister care to advocate and stand up for the same Canadians he has demonized and marginalized over the past two years?
The Liberals have not acknowledged what they did wrong. There has not yet been an expression of regret or apology. One way for them to show some goodwill would be to support this motion. There are a lot of strong opinions on these issues both inside and outside of Parliament, but if we at least agree to this, we could start to focus on getting more of the facts involved with a divisive policy.
That is something the Auditor General could provide. We could get a better idea of what happened and learn to do better in the future. Canadians could see some unity and leadership across party lines in this place. Hopefully, this would set a good example and help to heal the divisions we have in this country.
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- Oct/27/22 2:11:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians cannot afford the cost of living, and this week they have been hit with another devastating interest rate hike. That is the result of a Prime Minister who does not think about monetary policy and has added more to the national debt than all other prime ministers combined. While Canadians make sacrifices, the Liberals are blowing taxpayers' dollars on themselves and their elitist friends.
Most recently, we learned about the Prime Minister’s luxurious trip to London. He saw it as an opportunity to spend $400,000, which included a $6,000 hotel suite for one night.
It is not surprising. Year after year, the Liberals have not missed a chance to waste Canadians’ money. The WE scandal gave half a billion to a company that lined the pockets of the Prime Minister’s family. It cost $54 million to create the intrusive and glitchy arrive scam app, when it could have been made for $250,000. Former Liberal MP Frank Baylis’s company was part of a $237-million contract for ventilators that were not even used.
The Liberals have a record full of wasteful spending. It is unacceptable and it needs to stop.
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Mr. Speaker, as somebody who used to receive GST cheques, I understand how important it is to get that relief back. It is money that people paid and should get back, especially when they are below a certain income threshold.
It is a one-time payment, though. While getting people's money back into their hands is always a good principle, I wonder if the NDP would support increasing the GST payments in the longer term, so that rather than making a one-time payment, it would increase the amount of the GST rebates that people are receiving.
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- Sep/28/22 2:58:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if EI is not in fact a tax, maybe the minister wants to update the government website.
More taxes mean Canadians have less money to pay their bills. The carbon tax has already increased the price of gas and groceries, which have just driven up inflation. Soon people will have to take home less pay while trying to cover these higher costs.
The Liberals try to sell that as taking care of people, yet the finance minister had to admit that higher payroll tax gives the government another $2.5 billion from workers' paycheques. It is time to quit the excuses.
Will the government end its planned tax hikes on Canadian paycheques?
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