- 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
- Feb/26/24 1:09:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague reminded me of something that her House leader said during his speech when he talked about the toxicity in this place. This is from the Liberal Party whose leader violently elbowed a female MP in the chest because he did not get his own way. He threw a temper tantrum. This is the same leader who used the pandemic. Canadians were going through incredible hardship. Loved ones were dying alone because they were not allowed to receive visitors. Businesses were forced to close. People were going bankrupt. While that was going on, what did the Liberal Prime Minister do? He took the time to reward his friends. Let us remember the WE scandal. He chose to use the pandemic as an excuse to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to his friends at an organization that had paid his personal family members massive speaking fees.
How about the former Liberal member of Parliament who got a contract? He had never ran a business in the medical field at all, but when the pandemic rolled around, he got a sole-source contract from the current Liberal government. We are in the middle of the arrive scam hearings where we are hearing about more sordid affairs about how a company got paid $20 million for doing IT even though it did not do any IT work. There are too many examples, in the short amount of time I have in this debate, to go over all the list of the ways the current Liberal government has wasted taxpayer money and has tried to cover up its corruption.
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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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- Feb/1/24 2:33:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this from a government that literally wrote a cheque on taxpayer dollars to give Loblaws millions of dollars for new fridges.
I would like to correct the record. It is not families that are raising grocery prices in stores; it is the government with its carbon tax.
The principle of the carbon tax is to make everyday things in life more expensive and more punishing. The Prime Minister does not care because he never has to deal with those costs. He does not have to pay the carbon tax on his flights or put packages of beef back on the shelf.
Will he finally have some mercy on Canadian families and axe the tax?
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- Nov/23/23 2:26:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if the government truly wanted to help Ukraine, it would support the Conservative motion to export our energy and military equipment, instead of the failed carbon tax. If the government wanted to be honest with Canadians, it would unveil the details of the $15-billion subsidy to a single battery plant that will allow up to 1,600 workers coming from Korea to replace qualified Canadians.
Will the Liberals do the right thing and at least publish the agreement so that Canadian workers can find out how many jobs are being filled by taxpayer-funded foreign replacement workers?
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- Jun/15/23 3:06:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, nobody likes an “I told you so”, except for everyone who told them so.
It was not only Conservatives, but also our major security partners, such as Japan and the United States, and foreign affairs experts, who said the same thing, that the Communist regime would use the bank to bully developing countries and expand its power and influence.
This bank built railways and ports with taxpayer dollars while Canadians here at home are struggling just to pay the bills. Now that the con has been exposed, will the government do the right thing and get Canadians their tax dollars back?
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- Apr/18/23 2:34:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all we are saying is that he should pay for his own vacations and not stick taxpayers with the bill.
While Canadians were experiencing the chaos that his mismanagement of the airport system caused, the Prime Minister got to skip the queues and jet down on yet another Caribbean vacation. The Prime Minister never has to pay for the terrible policies that his decisions make. Other Canadians have to pay for the higher cost of the fuel they put in their cars; he does not. He also does not have to pay for his own home heating fuel, and now we are finding out that he does not even pay for his own vacation.
Treasury Board guidelines say that he should reimburse at least the commercial cost. Did he?
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- Mar/22/23 10:30:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member just lamenting the fact that he did not have the opportunity to ask me a question, so I am happy to stand here now and give him the opportunity to at least answer a question, which is something that his leader never does, so maybe he will break that mould. It is a bit ironic after the many, many weeks at committee when Liberal MPs embarrassed themselves and demeaned themselves in their theatrical filibuster to try to prevent senior officials in the Liberal Party from testifying.
However, we are talking about an escalator tax, an automatic tax increase, on beer, wine and spirits. I did hear the hon. member say it is a few pennies, but we can add it all up and add up the increase on the carbon tax and add up the increased mortgage payments that people have to make as interest rates go up. If the Liberals say that it is not a big deal and it is just a few cents a bottle, the obvious question is, well, then why raise it?
When the Liberals talk about the cost of living and when they talk about all the costs that are falling onto Canadians, why do they believe that Canadians should pay even more, when they come home from work, to enjoy a cold beer after an honest day's work or to bring friends over to celebrate a birthday? Why do they believe that Canadians should pay more for that while the Prime Minister jets around on vacation, billing taxpayers for flights all over the country, sometimes thousands of dollars to avoid driving just an hour? Why do the Liberals believe that Canadians should pay more while they bill taxpayers so much?
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- Feb/16/23 2:24:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals gave wage subsidies to profitable businesses which turned around and gave their CEOs bonuses. They let fraudsters and scam artists keep the CERB money that they stole. Now the Liberals have been found guilty of breaking ethics laws six times.
The Prime Minister's own law-breaking is so bad that the Ethics Commission has had to call him out, saying he did not think anybody would have imagined a situation where the Prime Minister himself would be found breaking the law, “It’s a funny situation to be in.” I do not think he meant “ha ha” funny. It is not funny to make Canadians struggle while Liberal friends and insiders get rich.
Why is treating taxpayer money with respect never the lesson those Liberals learn?
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- Feb/14/23 2:21:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always smart to vote against inflationary deficits that drive up the cost of living.
The Liberals have learned the wrong lesson from this hotel bill scandal. One would think that, after billing taxpayers $6,000 a night for a single room, the lesson learned would be to book a cheaper room next time. Instead, the lesson the Liberals have learned is to cover it up better.
Emails between the PM's staff reveal government officials scheming to cover up the scandal. One even suggested burying these costs in next year's public accounts. The word finally came down from the minister herself to simply stop answering questions altogether, all this at a time when Canadians are paying more just to stay in their own homes.
Why is treating taxpayers' money with respect never the lesson the Liberals learn?
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- Feb/14/23 2:19:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this scandal stings taxpayers so much because it comes at a time when housing costs are taking more and more out of Canadian paycheques.
After eight years of Liberal deficits, interest rates have risen, meaning homeowners have to pay more to the banks in interest payments just to stay in their own homes. In fact, after eight years of the Liberal government, the average monthly mortgage cost has more than doubled and the average $600,000 mortgage sees interest costs go from $12,000 a year to over $30,000 a year.
Again, does the minister think it was a good idea for the Prime Minister to bill taxpayers for one night's hotel stay what homeowners pay in two full months on their mortgages?
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to do that. There is a big difference between lowering the tax burden on Canadians and new spending. It is as simple as that.
I just want to take issue with one of the major principles with the far left these days and this idea that the government has a big pile of cash and all we are really doing is fighting over how to spend it.
The government does not have a dollar that it does not first take out of the economy, that it does not first take out of someone's pocket.
Is the hon. member comfortable saddling Canadians with more financial burdens and higher costs of government? That cost, the cost for this program, has to be paid for by taxpayers. It adds to the inflation crisis, because the government has to first borrow to pay for it.
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