- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Board of Internal Economy
House leader of the official opposition
- Conservative
- Regina—Qu'Appelle
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $172,932.98
- Government Page
- Mar/19/24 10:16:00 a.m.
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moved:
That, given that 70% of provinces and 70% of Canadians oppose the Prime Minister's 23% carbon tax hike on April 1, the House call on the NDP-Liberal coalition to immediately cancel this hike.
He said: Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost. While the Prime Minister wants to drive up the cost of literally everything, common-sense Conservatives are focused on axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime.
Today, we are going to focus on that first piece of it because, on April 1, the Prime Minister has a cruel April Fool's Day joke planned for Canadians. As if prices were not high enough already, the out-of-touch Prime Minister is going to raise the carbon tax by a staggering 23% in just a couple of weeks.
I know that I speak on behalf of all my Conservative colleagues when I say that we sympathize with the struggles hard-working Canadians are going through. We see it in our ridings. I have been in grocery stores where well-dressed people who look like they have jobs and have means go through the meat aisle, pick up a package of beef, stare agonizingly at it, and then put it back when they realize they just cannot afford it. That is what life is like after eight years of this Liberal government.
On April 1, those prices are going to go up, yet again. Common-sense Conservatives are fighting all week to spike the hike and to convince the Prime Minister and his NDP coalition partners to, at the very least, not raise it any more. The first thing we can do to help Canadians is to hold the line on this punitive tax and to not make it any worse.
I will deal with some myth-busting of the carbon tax. Do members remember when the Prime Minister promised that the carbon tax would do a few things? First of all, he said that it would be revenue neutral, that it would help Canada reach its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and that Canadians would be better off with it because of a rebate scheme he had developed.
At this point, I will remind the House that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry.
Those are the three pillars that the Prime Minister built his carbon tax on: revenue neutral, reduce emissions and help Canada reach its targets, and he would give out more than he would take in from Canadians. Let us bust all three of those myths.
First of all, it is not revenue neutral. The government keeps a sizable percentage of the carbon tax. In fact, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, or CFIB, estimates that the carbon tax alone costs small business $2.5 billion, which is $2.5 billion sucked right out of the economy, and those costs that those businesses have to pay gets passed on to consumers. The government keeps far more of what it collects than it gives out with the carbon tax. That myth is completely busted. That pillar has been completely demolished.
On emissions reductions, let us take a look at what experts say about the Liberal government's plan. It has not helped it hit a single emissions target. The Climate Change Performance Index ranks Canada 62 out of 67 spots. Canada has actually fallen several spots on that ranking under the Liberal government, after eight years of the Prime Minister. Canada now ranks behind countries like Kazakhstan, Algeria and Belarus. Those countries are doing better than Canada under this government. The environment commissioner said that this government was stacking failures on top of failures; that is the environment commissioner the Prime Minister appointed. His own environment watchdog has concluded that this government is stacking failure after failure. It is clearly not an environment plan; it is a tax plan.
Let us take a look at the impact it has on families, which is the third myth that somehow Canadians would be better off if they paid this tax. That has been completely shattered. We know that it adds to the cost of fuel, heating and groceries. Let us take a look at some specifics.
Starting April 1, the carbon tax will add 17¢ to every litre of gasoline and 21¢ to every litre of diesel. We are looking at staggering costs that Canadians just cannot afford. The food experts, the people who monitor the grocery industry and the price of groceries in the aisles, are saying that Canadians are going to have to pay an extra $700 in grocery prices this year, before the carbon tax hike is even factored in.
If we factor in all of the secondary costs, we can see the ridiculous rebate ruse that the Liberals are trying to sell Canadians. Somehow, magically, if people pay these higher carbon tax costs, the government will take the money, will swoosh it around in Ottawa, and then will spit it back out in various parts at various times, and somehow, Canadians will be better off. The only problem is that once one takes a look at that scheme, it falls apart almost instantly.
What the Liberals did was something very tricky. It was very clever, but very tricky. They designed the carbon tax rebate to only capture the direct costs, which is only what someone sees as the carbon tax on a bill, whether it is filling up one's car with gas or paying one's home heating bill. One will only see that line item cost. That is the only thing that the rebate scheme factors in. However, what it does not factor in is how all those costs in the economy get passed on to consumers. We pay that higher carbon tax every time we buy something that had to be grown or manufactured, that had to be transported, that had to be cooled or refrigerated or that had to be warmed or heated. Any time a retailer has to pay the carbon tax on their heating bills or on their utility bills, all of that gets cascaded on, and consumers and Canadians pay for that.
The rebate scheme captures absolutely none of that, but do not take my word for it. I know many Canadians might say that the Liberals have a tale to tell and that the Conservatives have their perspectives. Let us look at what independent experts say about this part of the carbon tax plan.
The Prime Minister's own budget watchdog, the independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer, did this analysis and went through all of the numbers. He broke Canadian families into various groups that he calls quintiles. Basically, he took all Canadian wage earners and divided them up into different groups based on their income levels. This is based on income earners who are the middle group; these are middle-class Canadians who are average, middle-income earners. In Alberta, they would be $1,400 worse off, and in Saskatchewan, they would be $929 worse off once the carbon tax is fully implemented. In Manitoba, they would be $1,000 worse off. In Ontario, they would be $1,200 worse off. Nova Scotians would be $1,100 worse off. Prince Edward Islanders would be another $1,100 worse off. For the people in Newfoundland and Labrador, they would $680 worse off, even after the rebate scheme. We are talking about average middle-class Canadians.
If we look at one income bracket just below that group, they are still worse off too. They are not better off. These families are still paying more in the rebate, but that middle group is significant. That is almost $100 a month that Canadian families just simply cannot afford. They cannot afford groceries, cannot afford to keep the heat on and cannot afford to pay higher costs through the carbon tax. Again, these are the independent analyses of the Prime Minister's own budget watchdog.
The final point I will make is the role the carbon tax plays in inflation. The government tries to say that the carbon tax is not a significant driver of inflation. Let us look at what the Bank of Canada governor himself said. I am just going to quote very briefly from committee evidence, and then I will yield the floor.
Mr. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, told the committee that eliminating the carbon tax would drop inflation by 0.6 percentage points. My colleague from Northumberland asked him to clarify because 0.6% might not sound like a lot. However, when inflation is at 3.8%, with the target of 2%, and if the Bank of Canada can start cutting interest rates once inflation gets closer to the target, that means 0.6% is about a third of the 1.8% that Canada has to eliminate in inflation to get back down to the target so that interest rates can come down. In other words, the carbon tax is responsible for about a third of the extra inflation that is plaguing Canadians and is forcing the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates high. If the government eliminated the carbon tax, it would be one-third of the way to getting inflation back down to the target, which means interest rates and prices can come down.
This week, Conservatives are going to stand with the 70% of Canadians who oppose this carbon tax hike and the 70% of premiers who oppose the carbon tax hike. We are going to fight to spike the hike so we can axe the tax.
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- Feb/26/24 12:49:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, common-sense Conservatives are focused on axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime, while the Liberal Prime Minister proves day in and day out that he is not worth the cost or the corruption.
What we are seeing today is a perfect example of how the government is focused on the wrong things. While the Conservatives are putting forward tangible and practical measures that will lower costs, bring interest rates down, get homes built around the country and put dangerous criminals behind bars, the Liberal government is focused on the Standing Orders of the House of Commons.
Canadians are going to food banks in record numbers. People have moved away from home and have found jobs. They are now finding themselves having to renew their mortgages and are being forced to move back with their parents. Communities once safe and secure, where people would go to bed at night without locking their doors, are now investing in security cameras and other measures because their neighbourhoods have become so dangerous. All of this is going on in Canada, while the Prime Minister continues to break so many aspects of Canadian society. While the Liberals come in with a programming motion, using a valuable day of House time debating how bills are going to be debated and how many hours the House will sit, the Conservatives will continue to raise the important issues that Canadians face. The Liberals want to debate and delay, have a day-or-two-long debate arguing about how the process should be handled in the House of Commons.
We are not going to let them off the hook. Let us go through these points one by one.
The government is saying that it has to do this to get its agenda through. We in the official opposition would happily help advance an agenda that would actually accomplish these priority items. If the Liberals were to bring in a bill to cancel the carbon tax or at least cancel the increase that they have scheduled for April 1, we would support that. If they brought in tangible measures that would actually get homes built, we would support that.
We found out just a couple of weeks ago that the current housing minister launched a brutal and devastating personal attack on the previous immigration minister, who, by the way, are the same people. The former immigration minister is now the current housing minister. The current housing minister attacked the former immigration minister, blaming himself for mismanaging the immigration system in our country, which has caused terrible consequences on the housing side of things. After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canada builds fewer homes than the number of new Canadians added every year.
The minister admitted at committee that all of the Liberals' billions of dollars, their fancy photo-ops and their repackaged announcements did not build specific homes. The vaunted and much-celebrated, in Liberal circles, housing accelerator fund sounds active. It is one of those buzzwords. I wonder how many consultants they had to hire to come up with a name like the housing accelerator fund. That sounds exciting. It sounds like it will really pick up the pace of home building. We asked him a simple question. How many homes had this housing accelerator actually built? He said that it did not actually build any homes. Pardon the official opposition members if we come to this place to defend taxpayer dollars and if we oppose billions of dollars of spending that does not build new homes.
One of my Conservative colleagues, and I believe it was my colleague, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, asked a very simple question of the government when it came to the carbon tax. He asked whether the government could tell Canadians how many greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by the carbon tax. We would think that if the signature economic policy of the government is the carbon tax that it might measure that, that it might actually count how many greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by its signature policy. However, the answer that came back was that it did not keep track of it. It does not know; it does not measure that.
The Liberals have imposed this carbon tax on Canadians and have hiked it year after year, after promising not to, by the way. Remember that promise going into the 2019 election when former Liberal environment minister, Catherine McKenna, promised that they were never going to raise the carbon tax? The Liberals attacked me for telling Canadians not to believe the Liberals, that once the election was over, when the Prime Minister did not need the votes of Canadians but still needed their money, he would absolutely raise the carbon tax.
Catherine McKenna's other famous comment was that if we repeated a lie louder and over and over again, eventually people would believe us. That certainly bears out how Liberals have communicated about the carbon tax. They promised not to raise it and now they are forcing a hike on everyone year after year.
In the fiscal update in the fall of 2022, the Liberals promised that they would stop pouring inflationary fuel on the fire. The current Liberal finance minister said that in order to fight inflation, they had to get a grip on government spending, and there was that glimmer of hope. After telling Canadians that the Prime Minister did not think about monetary policy, in the few days after the fall economic update in 2022, there was that brief moment of hope when Conservatives thought that maybe he finally got it, that maybe someone finally read that part of macroeconomics textbooks to the Prime Minister and explained to him how, when governments go deep into deficits and force central banks to create brand new money out of thin air to bankroll government spending, that caused inflation. We thought maybe he finally got that and that the Liberals would work toward getting back to balanced budgets.
Of course, that hope was very short-lived. Just a few weeks after that, they went right back to their Liberal ways, borrowing and spending, plunging the country deeper into deficit. Immediately afterward, inflation started going up again. That is why so many Canadians cringe every time interest rates go up, because the Bank of Canada has to raise interest rates to fight the inflation that it caused in the first place by bankrolling the government deficit spending.
The Conservatives want to stop the crime. After eight years of the Prime Minister, Canadians are less safe. In fact, many areas in Canada are experiencing a dramatic spike in violent crime, which we have not seen in decades, hitting all-time highs in many areas and for many different types of crime.
Crime, like inflation, does not just happen. It is not like the weather. It is not like we can read the Farmers' Almanac one year and say that we will probably have an early frost or that inflation might hit 3.5%. Inflation and crime are directly linked to the government's policy decisions.
The previous Conservative government brought in tougher penalties for dangerous and repeat offenders. We are not talking about young people making a mistake for the first time in their lives. We are talking about hardened criminals, people who use dangerous weapons to commit their crimes, people who commit the same crime over and over again or people who cause grave bodily harm or even death in the commission of their crimes. We toughened those penalties. What did the Liberal Prime Minister do early on in his mandate? He started repealing those common-sense Conservative tough-on-crime bills and made bail much easier to get.
It used to be that if people had prior convictions, had proven to society and the courts that they were dangerous offenders and were accused of committing new crimes, it would be harder to get bail. In other words, it would be harder for them to be released before their trials. The Prime Minister's ideological obsession with putting the rights of criminals ahead of the rights of law-abiding Canadians decided to make bail easier to get. He actually mandated judges to err on the side of granting bail, even for dangerous and repeat offenders.
Again, we are not talking about a young offender being picked up for the first time for shoplifting or someone who has lost their temper for the first time and maybe lashed out at someone in a restaurant or a park. We are talking about people who commit the same crime over and over again. The government decided to put them back on the streets as early as possible. It is no surprise that crime started ticking up. Now we are in the midst of a crime wave that we have not seen in over a generation, and it is all directly linked to the government's agenda.
The Conservatives offer practical solutions. We offer many different ways of providing Canadians tax relief when it comes to the carbon tax. Obviously, we would like the government to acknowledge the failure of its signature economic policy. It does nothing to reduce emissions. The government does not even count how many emissions are affected by the carbon tax. It increases the cost of literally everything. Everything that needs to be produced, shipped, refrigerated, heated or sold in a store that has to have lights or any type of refrigerator or freezer has to pay the carbon tax, and that is built into the price that consumers pay.
We are going to hear Liberals saying throughout the day, and we hear it all the time, that Canadians are better off with it, because of the rebate they cooked up. What they do not tell Canadians is that the budget watchdog, the person the government appointed to scour through all the data and to go into a room, read all the reports and measure everything, account for everything and model everything, the non-partisan independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, has concluded that the vast majority of Canadians pay far more in the carbon tax than they hope to get back in any rebate.
The reason for that is that when the Liberals designed it, they deliberately excluded the knock-on effects of the carbon tax. Therefore, the only thing the rebate even contemplates, when it is being calculated, is the actual line item we might see on our bill when we fuel up or when we pay our utility. What we do not see, and what the calculation does not take into account, are all the price increases that go from farm to plate and from forest to Home Depot. All the aspects of the supply chain where costs are added on, the carbon tax applies every single step of the way and increases that price.
We offered a common-sense plan to scrap the tax, and it was rejected. Then we proposed to at the very least stop raising the carbon tax in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. When we are in a hole, we stop digging. Homer Simpson has the idea that when we are in a hole, we can try to dig up, but that does not work, and it certainly does not work to keep digging, to add on those costs.
The government is hiking the carbon tax. It is due to go up again on April 1 by 23%. Media reports say that the rebate is only going to go up 17%. Even with the fact that the rebate does not cover all the costs, as the government hikes the carbon tax, the rebate does not keep up with it. Canadians are falling further and further behind.
We proposed to at the very least stop hiking the tax, and that was rejected. Then we talked about grocery prices going up. There is that heart-breaking scene that so many of us see when we go to the grocery stores in our communities. We see well-dressed men and women, often with children, going through the grocery aisle. They pick up a package of beef and they stare at it for sometimes a full minute or maybe even a minute and a half. Maybe they pick up something else to compare with it. Then they put both of them back because they cannot afford them. Grocery prices have gone up so quickly and so dramatically because of the inflation and the carbon tax.
What is the government's answer? It is to keep hiking it. We proposed to at least take the carbon tax off groceries and farmers, to remove the carbon tax off farm production so that we do not tax the farmer who grows the food and we do not tax the trucker who trucks the food or the retailer who sells the food. That was rejected too. The government does not want the carbon tax to be lifted off our agricultural producers. That is a tangible practical way we could bring costs down. The government rejected that.
We have proposed a common-sense approach to tackle car thefts. Our leader announced a signature policy to deal with this scourge that is now plaguing Canadians from coast to coast. Stolen cars are becoming one of Canada's fastest-growing exports after the Liberal government weakened penalties and made it easier to get bail. It also diverted much-needed resources from frontline border service agents, who have the responsibility to inspect and track things leaving the country, and it spent those resources on the arrive scam.
An app that should have cost $80,000 ballooned to over $60 million because of phony invoices, work that was never done and all kinds of corruption that we are uncovering. The government paid billions to consultants instead of investing in the frontline resources that would actually bring that crime down.
We offered to fast-track that bill too. We could have easily had those types of things passed. Instead, the government is doubling down on its failed agenda and using the coalition it has with the NDP to ram through more of the same agenda, the very same policies, the very same ideology that caused the cost of living crisis, the inflation, the massive interest rate hikes, the crime wave plaguing our cities and the housing shortage that has driven the dream of home ownership out of the reach of so many Canadians. The government wants to double, triple and quadruple down on that and ram its agenda through. While Canadians are going through this cost of living crisis, as they have to pay more because of the Liberal Prime Minister, he has decided to put everything on pause and to use this valuable House time to effectively try to make changes to the Standing Orders.
If one went door knocking in their constituency and hit 100 doors this evening, how many Canadians does one think would say they are really concerned about how the House of Commons manages its time and to please go back to Ottawa to sort that out? The government is wasting the valuable time of the House and of members of Parliament because the government cannot admit its failures. The Liberals cannot put their egos aside. The Liberal Prime Minister cannot put his ego aside and admit he is the reason so many Canadians are suffering right now.
The Liberals also have a coalition partner in the NDP. It used to be that the NDP and the Conservatives could agree on a few things. We disagreed on many policies. I live in Saskatchewan, and we know what NDP economic policies can do to a province over time. NDP members promised in the last election that they would not enter into a coalition with the government. They broke that promise. Canadians believed them when they said they would not enter into a coalition. As soon as the election was over, they started hatching their scheme.
One thing Liberals and Conservatives used to agree on is transparency and accountability. The NDP members have decided to protect the Prime Minister personally against political embarrassment and to help him cover up his corruption. Time and time again at committee, we see the NDP vote against Conservative motions to investigate corruption and scandals, vote against our attempts to summon witnesses and vote, in essence, to protect the Prime Minister from his corruption being exposed. Their policy agenda is not working. That is why Conservatives are holding them to account.
I will make one final point about how Liberals are handling the proposed changes to the way the House operates. These are substantive changes that would fundamentally alter the timeline for bills to be debated and moved through the House. It would give the government incredible new powers that are not in the Standing Orders and that have not been contemplated by any of our procedural books. Normally, those types of major changes require all-party support and go through the proper process of procedure and House affairs examining the proposal, studying it and allowing all recognized parties to have some kind of say in it.
The government is establishing a precedent today by using this type of motion. I want to point out to the government that it is now doing, through government motions, what used to be done through consensus and through all-party support. If its members want to talk about protecting democracy, one of the most fundamental ways to protect a democracy is to ensure that even when there is a working majority, because of the NDP support, they still hold that tradition of not making major changes without all-party support. That would mean any party could work with the government, in a minority parliament, and could ram through massive changes to the Standing Orders over the objections of other recognized parties. That has consequences.
However, they are choosing to do it this way, and they are establishing a precedent for future governments. They cannot come to this place and start talking about the rights of members of Parliament and the ability of opposition parties to hold the government to account if they are going outside the normal process to make major changes in the House.
That being said, we are going to continue to oppose their agenda because it has failed. Their economic agenda continues to drive up inflation and interest rates. Their housing agenda continues to drive up home prices by rewarding local gatekeepers and by preventing new homes from entering the market. Their crime and justice agenda continues to let dangerous and repeat offenders back out into the streets where they terrorize law-abiding Canadians. For those reasons, we are going to oppose this motion, and we are going to oppose the rest of the government's agenda.
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- Apr/17/23 2:17:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, here are some simple facts that should not be controversial: water is wet; Saskatchewan is cold in the winter; and the CBC is funded by the government. None of that should freak anybody out, but in Liberal Ottawa, pearls are being clutched and outrage is being manufactured, all because, for greater transparency, Twitter applied the “Government-funded Media” tag to the CBC's account.
Liberal MPs are calling it nonsense, an unwarranted attack, even a threat to democracy. What do they not understand? The CBC was created by government. It gets over a billion dollars a year from government, and the government appoints the board that controls it.
It is no wonder the Liberals are reacting this way. They love the CBC because they get so much benefit from it. The CBC sued the Conservative Party in the middle of an election. Its CEO openly attacked the Conservative leader, and it eagerly carries Liberal messages all of the time, but I have good news for all of those who are upset and having fits about Twitter's decision. That government-funded label will not be around for long. After the next election, the Conservative leader will make sure it does not get any tax dollars at all.
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- Oct/28/22 11:22:56 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what we are against is the inflationary deficits that the government is causing. The reason prices are going up today is that the government flooded the banking system with $400 billion of brand new cash, and now Canadians have to pay for it.
Again, and these are based on modest estimates from the Canadian Real Estate Association, a typical family in Ottawa will have to come up with an extra $1,000 a month when they go to renew their mortgage. Once again, has the government been briefed on how many Canadian families are going to lose their homes because of the Liberal-caused inflation?
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