- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Jan/29/24 8:29:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot I could say in response to that comment, just about the disastrous economic management of the government, about the pain Canadians are experiencing, about the higher costs we are seeing, about the challenges in terms of job growth and opportunity and about the lack of homes being built, but the core point here is that the question was not answered.
The question was about whether the public could actually see the contracts. The parliamentary secretary says they are doing great work; it is incredible. He says they got a great deal here; everything is standard procedure and everything is sunlight and roses. Let them show us their work, then. If the member is so confident in what the government has done, then the contracts should be made public.
The fact is that the Liberals were filibustering at committee to try to hide the contracts from the public. The NDP leader joined in and betrayed workers who want to see what is in the contracts, and the coalition stood together to try to bury the contracts. What is the government trying to hide?
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- Jan/29/24 8:21:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the NDP and the NDP leader have consistently betrayed workers. They came in here promising to stand up for Canadian workers and sold them down the river simply to please their Liberal coalition partners.
I am rising today to follow up on a question I asked about the disclosure of details on massive government subsidies relating to electric car battery subsidies. The government is spending $40 billion on these subsidies. We are talking about roughly $3,000 per Canadian family. Every single Canadian family is on the hook for thousands of dollars for these subsidies.
We have found out that a series of subsidies that were promised as creating opportunities for Canadian workers will actually be subsidizing foreign replacement workers. Foreign replacement workers will be brought in to work on these subsidized projects. Therefore, the $40 billion in subsidies from Canadian taxpayers, roughly $3,000 from every single Canadian family, to create jobs for Canadians are actually going to subsidize corporations paying foreign replacement workers.
After this information came to light, Conservatives had a modest proposal, which is that Canadians deserve to see the contracts that the NDP-Liberal government signed when offering these subsidies. Did it seek to include in those contracts protections for Canadian workers? Did it seek to guarantee a certain number of Canadian jobs? Did it seek to prevent foreign replacement workers from being brought in as part of these projects or did the contracts it negotiated allow for this kind of foreign replacement worker activity on these projects?
Whether one is for or against these subsidies, or for or against allowing foreign replacement workers, it seems reasonable to me that the people who actually paid for these projects, the taxpayers, should be able to see the contracts and know whether the government did an effective or ineffective job in negotiating for workers. We have an indication that it did not do an effective job because we know foreign replacement workers are being brought in as part of these heavily subsidized projects. Either way, Canadians should be able to see what is in these contracts.
We brought this issue to committee. Initially, the New Democrats said they sided with us. In fact, I think the leader of the NDP asked a question in the House requesting the release of these contracts. Then, after a mere two or three meetings of Liberal MP filibustering, the New Democrats flipped. They folded. They buckled under the Liberal pressure to continue a long line of situations of the NDP facilitating Liberal cover-ups. We would expect in a minority Parliament that we would be able to get the information we need, yet that has not happened. The NDP bailed on workers and chose its corrupt coalition cousins instead.
My question for the Liberals is this: What did they offer the NDP leader to get the NDP to betray workers once again and instead vote to hide these contracts? What did the Liberals offer the NDP, and why are they choosing secrecy over the protection of workers?
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- May/10/22 5:56:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it certainly has been an interesting day in the House of Commons, with the Bloc Québécois defending the idea of freedom of religion and conscience. I never thought I would see the day. Members were saying it was an offence that they had to spend 30 seconds listening to something they did not agree with. Imagine all the time I spend in this House hearing things I do not agree with.
Nonetheless, we are now on to debating something else, which is Motion No. 44. Just as, rhetorically at least, Bloc members were adopting the idea of freedom of religion or conscience, which is normally something we hear championed by Conservatives, we have a motion from a Liberal member that borrows considerably from the Conservative platform in the last election. On that basis, I am pleased to support it.
I would generally like to encourage members of the government, when they have private members' bills, to consider putting forward legislation that fixes the problems that are in place. Motions are a good way for the House to express itself on general issues. Implicit in this motion is an acknowledgement by the member of the government of the failure of the Liberal cabinet to actually move forward on addressing these issues in the seven years the Liberals have had up until now. There are significant problems that persist in our immigration system that have not been resolved.
Nonetheless, the ideas behind this motion are good ideas and ones that Conservatives are pleased to support. My understanding is that this motion will have the support of all members in the House, and I hope that it will then light a fire under the government to really confront some of the big and persistent challenges in the immigration system.
In particular, this motion calls on the government to put forward a plan that seeks to support a pathway to permanent residency for temporary foreign workers, recognizing, first of all, that people who come as temporary foreign workers often establish attachments here in Canada and develop Canadian connections and experience. Often, those who come here in temporary work positions are filling jobs that are not temporary jobs; they are filling jobs that are permanent. It does not make much sense, even from the perspective of the interest of Canadian employers or the Canadian economy, to have people come here temporarily to fill jobs that are in reality permanent jobs, and then perhaps get the benefit of Canadian connections and training, but then be forced to go back and be replaced in an ongoing way.
I mentioned the synergy, so to speak, between this motion and things that Conservatives put forward in the last platform. I want to note that our platform said we would:
...create pathways to permanence for those already living and working in Canada, so long as they are prepared to work hard, contribute to the growth and productivity of Canada, and strengthen our democracy. It does not make sense to attract the best and brightest, provide them training and knowledge, and then force these people—with all their potential—to leave.
I am very pleased that we were able to put that forward. I want to add as well that when Conservative parties put forward ideas in a general election, very often those ideas do not just come through the platform development process but come from our member-driven policy declaration, and our Conservative policy declaration calls on the party in government to “examine ways to facilitate the transition of foreign workers from temporary to permanent status”.
These are ideas that really came from the membership of the Conservative Party in terms of supporting these pathways to permanence. They were supported in our platform, and now they are in a private member's motion proposed by a Liberal member. Clearly, there is no monopoly on good ideas.
More broadly, we need to recognize that there are some significant challenges in our immigration system. The biggest challenges I hear about in my office are the challenges around backlogs and the significant delays that people have to deal with in making applications for things that are so fundamental for themselves, their lives and their families. The delays cause increased hardship, increased cost and all kinds of different challenges.
I want to use this opportunity as well today to call on the government to do more and to work with us to address the issue of backlogs in our immigration system. One example is that those seeking to privately sponsor vulnerable refugees must often wait up to three years. I know of community groups, faith groups and others that are looking to sponsor vulnerable refugees and are stuck providing financial support to people who are in another country, perhaps in a refugee camp or in a vulnerable situation. They are providing financial support to them overseas while they are in that vulnerable situation for three years, until they are able to come to Canada and begin the transition to a permanent life here in Canada.
It is only because of the backlog. It is only because of bureaucratic delays. If only they could come here right away, begin a life here in Canada and begin that transition, it would actually be less costly for those involved in private sponsorship, and it would be so much more beneficial, from a safety and security perspective, for the family. We have people waiting very long periods of time to be reunited with family members. It is hard for me to imagine needing to be away from my spouse for months and months on end simply because of bureaucratic delays.
We also have delays, by the way, in people's access to citizenship. This is important because it impacts people's ability to participate in our democratic life. Someone might have been in Canada for long enough to be eligible for citizenship. One of the Liberals' first acts with respect to immigration was reducing the amount of time that a person has to be in Canada before they apply for citizenship, yet they have extended the amount of time, in the form of this backlog, that it takes for people to actually get that citizenship.
We have an election campaign here in Ontario right now, and a motion was put forward on this issue at the immigration committee by the member for Dufferin—Caledon, recognizing that the significant delays in citizenship processing applications are effectively disenfranchising people. These are people who might want to vote in this election and might have applied. They are in a queue waiting for the processing of their application.
Given the significant impacts of delays and backlogs, we put forward some ideas in the last election on how to address these. One of them, for instance, was to allow people to pay money for expedited processing, effectively allowing the process to speed up by increasing capacity. We need to see an expansion of capacity in processing, and people who are waiting a long time for a spouse or family member to come might be willing to invest in that system of processing. It is one possible solution that we had put forward. We also proposed other solutions to make the system more efficient, such as doing efficiency reviews of how that process happens.
Here is another way we could address the problem of backlogs: Let the people who are on unpaid leave because of their personal vaccination choices come back to work. It does not seem that difficult. If the government says it is putting people on unpaid leave because of their personal vaccination status, even if they are working from home, it would be absurd to assume that this does not have some effect on government services. Unless some of these folks were doing absolutely nothing, putting them on leave has an impact on the government services that are available.
That will have an impact across the board. It will impact the various services that Canadians receive, and one of them is immigration. We have this huge demand for passports. We also have this huge demand from people who want applications for family sponsorship, refugee sponsorship and other things processed. However, it is so important, for an ideological reason, for the government to put people on unpaid leave, take them out of the workforce when they are working on those issues and force them not to participate in this work even if they are at home. This is another issue of the backlog.
We need an immigration system that works well and works efficiently. I know in general that the Liberals have this philosophy of big government. They want government to be doing more and more things and to be involved in more and more areas of our economy. However, even in areas that are core to government responsibility, they do not do very well. Immigration is a core government responsibility. No one is suggesting that anyone but government should do the processing part of immigration applications, yet it is not able to do this well. As we have seen in many cases, such as the situation in Afghanistan and in some of the other aspects of immigration, the government is not able to deliver.
One of the other issues that we have taken up at the immigration committee is the situation in Ukraine. The Conservatives have been united with the other opposition parties in calling for the government to have visa-free travel for people coming from Ukraine. We put forward a motion on that and it passed at committee and passed in the House. The government opposed it and has not acted on it.
I commend the member for Surrey Centre for having adopted one Conservative idea in this motion. I want to encourage him to adopt more Conservative ideas on immigration. Members of this party have put forward so many good ideas.
Motion No. 44 is a great start. I am proud to support it, and I would invite other members of the Liberal caucus to take up more of these great Conservative solutions that we are putting forward.
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