- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Mar/18/24 3:05:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the arrive scam scandal has made clear again that the NDP-Liberal government and the Prime Minister are not worth the cost or the corruption.
Liberals gave GC Strategies $20 million for arrive scam alone. Last week, Kristian Firth from GC Strategies revealed that he got at least $2,600 per hour for subcontracting. Canadians are struggling to put food on the table and Liberals are giving well-connected consultants multi-millions at $2,600 per hour.
I have a simple question: Do Liberals believe that $2,600 per hour was a reasonable rate?
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- Jun/5/23 3:53:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize for that and I apologize to the interpreters.
Canadians are struggling because of increasing costs, and these costs are the result of a failed fiscal policy from the current government. We listen to the way the government talks about spending, and whenever things go wrong, it is not the Liberals' fault. Whenever the Liberals are spending money, they have no sense of the source of where that money comes from. We hear members of the government, ministers and other members, say that costs are high and things are challenging. It is as though when bad things are happening, they wonder, “How did this happen? We have been in power for eight years and costs are going up; surely it has no relationship to the policies we have pursued.”
It is actually very clear to Canadians that there is a direct, causal link between the decisions the government has made and the pain Canadians are experiencing. It is the Liberals' policy to increase taxes, especially in the area of the carbon tax. We actually just had a vote on what is, in effect, a second carbon tax that the Liberals want to impose. Not only do they want to triple the existing carbon tax, but they also have a second carbon tax in mind. They are constantly lying awake at night trying to think of creative new ways of taxing Canadians. The result is that Canadians are paying more. They are paying more to the government, but also, as government spending continues to grow and in even greater proportions outstrip the amount we are seeing in terms of tax increases, we are seeing rising prices driven by inflation and by more money chasing fewer goods.
All of this was in the Conservatives' dissenting report for the public accounts committee. Conservatives have called for tax relief for Canadians. We have called for more freedom for removing the gatekeepers, for eliminating the carbon tax, for not imposing a second carbon tax, for not having a tax on a tax and other such attacks on Canadians' efforts to live an affordable, prosperous life.
There are some other things I will share from the discussions we had around the study of the public accounts at the public accounts committee. It was interesting to me to note that there are instances where the government has provided loan forgiveness to various corporations. They could be very large and profitable corporations that have benefited from loans from the government, to which the government says it is going to forgive those loans, so, effectively, those loans turn into a subsidy. Therefore, as part of the public accounts discussion, we asked whether the government would be willing to provide the names of those companies and to release information about who is benefiting from a corporate subsidy. It seems to me to be a common sense proposition that, at the very least, if a large profitable corporation is benefiting from a federal government subsidy in the form of debt forgiveness, that is, the stakeholders took a loan they were supposed to pay back and did not pay back, and the government says they do not have to pay it back, then at that point, they should have to tell not only the government; Canadians should also be able to know that the company benefited from a public subsidy.
Many people would want to ask questions, and the company operators should be expected to provide some kind of explanation. Corporate welfare should not be something that is provided in secret. Maybe it should not be something that is provided at all, but certainly it is not something that should be provided in secret. Therefore, we asked, as part of the public accounts committee process, whether more information could be given with respect to which companies are benefiting from such loan forgiveness. That information was not forthcoming.
We have asked for similar information through Order Paper questions as well, by the way. Some points were raised earlier today about the government's not answering Order Paper questions and that it provides what are very clearly non-answers to Order Paper questions. Answers are supposed to provide information. Again we see, in the public accounts committee, in responses to Order Paper questions and in other areas, this decline in terms of the willingness of the government to provide information in general in response to queries from members of Parliament, committees, the public and journalists, etc.
However, as I say, the main thrust of our dissenting report is about the fact that life has become more expensive. It has been eight years under this Prime Minister. Everything feels broken. Costs are up. Rent, housing and food are up and the government members want to behave as if it is not their fault and it is all some accident, as if to say, “How terrible that bad things keep happening to the country while we are in charge” and “What terrible fate we have.”
That is obviously not the case. The Liberal government is pursuing policies that are making life less affordable. It is piling taxes on taxes. It has the second carbon tax, in addition to the tripling of the first. Inflation is up because of government spending. We have seen the accumulation of more debt under the Prime Minister than in the entire history of the country up until this point.
It is clear that the Liberals are not working. Their policies are not working. They are not making life better for Canadians. They are not making life better for the middle class and those working hard to join it.
That is why we need an alternative policy prescription that recognizes the creativity, potential and creative genuis in every individual, and that seeks to harness that creativity to create more space and opportunity for individuals to go out and pursue their own ideas without the kinds of impediments that we are constantly seeing from the Liberal government. We need to unleash the creative potential of Canada by removing the gatekeepers and the barriers, and that includes reducing the regulatory burden on Canadians and lowering taxes. That is why we have put forward concrete policy proposals that move us toward—
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- Oct/28/22 11:43:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, they also made sure they found a hotel in London that cost $6,000 a night. I am seriously trying to imagine what they could get for $6,000 a night. It must have been an incredible time.
Did champagne come out of the faucet, or was he busy planning his leadership campaign? Did the bill include the cost of bail for the Minister of Environment? I am sure it was such a wild time that Bill Morneau could have written a whole book about it. Could the House know once and for all, if any sleeping took place, who slept at the $6,000-a-night hotel room?
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Madam Speaker, I have already identified a number of areas of spending that I think are not only not necessary but actually make Canadians worse off. It is a reasonable principle to have dollar for dollar to be able to identify those areas while talking about spending increases.
Just to zero in specifically on the Green Party's emphasis on defence spending, it kind of misses the reality of what is happening in the world right now to pretend that a greater focus on national defence is not necessary. We have the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Canada has been significantly involved in sending weapons to that. We think they should be doing more, in terms of sending support to Ukraine.
However, to pretend that we could do these things, which I think are required for basic justice and our security, without thinking about the cost is a bit naive. The threats we face, and the emerging threats we face, are very significant. I know there are some members who, for philosophical or ideological reasons, are against more spending on defence, but there are realities we face in the word today, and members need to take stock of those realities and acknowledge that, if we are going to be in solidarity with Ukraine, if we are going to protect our security, and if we are going to secure our own Arctic, those things do involve costs, and we have to live up to our obligations.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting to hear my friend across the way talk a great deal about housing, but not in any way talk about the problem of supply. The main reason we have such high housing prices in this country is there is a greater need for homes than is met by the current supply, and all of his proposals involve creating more challenges and barriers for investors.
An alternative option is to create incentives to make it easier for investors to invest in new home construction and to encourage those investments, because while there are many people who want to invest in housing, there are so many barriers in place that make it hard to bring new construction online. Those barriers are not just at the federal level; a great number of those barriers are in place at all levels.
How can we address the housing challenges and costs if we do not address the supply problem? If we do address the supply problem, does it not make everything so much easier afterward?
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