So V ote

Dec/8/22 5:16:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, yes, we have to launch many infrastructure projects. One of the big Liberal failures is that the Infrastructure Bank has hardly done any projects at all. We also have to make our economy more resilient through innovation through the private sector, and we have been doing that. Agriculture is a perfect example. All the innovations done through technology and better seeding practices have all been done through the private sector. Whether it is precision ag, zero tillage, crop rotation or crop cover, it was all done by private entrepreneurial agriculture producers. There was not one government program that said, “Thou shalt do zero tillage.” It was done through private innovation, technology and the sharing of best practices. That is how we get ahead and create a more resilient economy, not by continuous government intervention.

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Dec/8/22 5:14:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if I had had more time for my speech, I would have gone down that path. The carbon tax hits at different points in the supply chain, so taking the carbon tax off food would also help lower the price of transportation and agriculture inputs, thus lowering the price of food across the country. It is not just at the grocery store that the carbon tax gets added onto the price of groceries; it is throughout the supply chain. That is why this motion would almost immediately help lower the price of groceries across the country, in the provinces that have the federal backstop and the ones that have their own.

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Dec/8/22 5:04:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would just like to take a few moments to rebut some of the things my colleague from Kings—Hants said. In terms of my question, which was pretty direct, from 2019 to 2021 Canada had the second-highest increase in its gross debt-to-GDP ratio out of 33 countries covered by the IMF, behind only Japan. Our gross debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 87.2% to 112.1% in 2021, an increase of 24.9 percentage points. Given that the Canadian government has accumulated more debt as a share of our economy than nearly every other country in our peer group, the expectation would be that Canada's economy fared better than others during this period. This is incorrect. Despite leading our peers in debt accumulation, Canada did not outperform our peer group in economic growth during the pandemic. Canada had the 11th-lowest real GDP growth, 5.2%, in 2020 and the 12th-lowest real GDP growth, 4.6%, in 2021. Canada also did not outperform its peer group by achieving lower unemployment during the pandemic. Canada had the third-highest unemployment rate, 9.58%, out of 33 industrialized countries and the eighth-highest unemployment rate, 7.43%, in 2021. I get that these numbers are a lot of numbers that just came out at everyone, but I put these numbers on the record to debunk the myth that the Liberals keep on trying to portray, that they somehow went into the pandemic later than everyone else and came out sooner. That is simply not the fact. They spent more than every other country in the world but Japan, and our citizens are not better off. The proof is in the pudding, as 1.5 million Canadians in one month used a food bank to put food on the table for their families. That is a failure of leadership by the Liberals. Students at universities across our country are staying in hostels or needing to use a food bank to eat or, like in my alma mater, the University of Regina, actually fundraising so students do not go to bed hungry, asking alumni for money to help feed students. Another thing I am looking forward to is splitting my time with the member for Brandon—Souris and hearing what he has to say about a private member's bill he brought forward last Parliament, which still has not been implemented. On the topic of not doing what Canadians need, I would like to talk a bit now about agriculture and the agriculture file. My colleague from Kings—Hants left a bit of wiggle room on Bill C-234. I know he had some positive things to say about it, and I am very interested, because all the Liberal members voted against the bill in committee. As the chair, he did not have to vote, and I am really excited to see how he votes and if he is going to stand with the agriculture producers in Kings—Hants or with his party whip, whether he will be voting along the party line or voting for the people who sent him here. I am very much looking forward to that vote, because I think that over the last couple of weeks a few members on the Liberal backbenches are starting to feel a bit of pressure when it comes to either supporting the carbon tax or supporting the amendments at the report stage of Bill C-21. I am looking forward to seeing if some of the rural members from the Maritimes or Newfoundland or some of the members from Alberta and Manitoba are going to support these gun amendments that criminalize law-abiding firearms owners, or if they are going to support their constituents and make sure their voices are heard in the chamber. There are a few votes on which I am really looking forward to seeing what some of the Liberal members in the back rows are going to do. This motion is about making life easier and more affordable for Canadians. We hear in our offices across the country that one of the biggest strains now on families is going to the grocery store and trying to make sure they have enough food to put on the table. Some of these increases are staggering. I get pictures sent into my office of what $100 buys now at a grocery store. It does not go a long way for a lot of these families. Some of the reasons are that fish is up 10.4% to purchase; butter is 16.9%; eggs, 10.9%; margarine, 37.5%; bread, rolls, buns, 17.6%; dry or fresh pasta, 32.4%; fresh fruit, 13.2%; oranges, 18.5%; and the list goes on: lettuce, 12.4%; potatoes, 10.9%. These are a lot of staple foods for families. Our household is no different from anyone else's. We have three growing children. They are five, seven and nine, and they are starting to eat more and more. Like a lot of other families, we are seeing our grocery bills continue to climb, and these are the things that we need to have solutions for. As members of the House of Commons or as public servants, we have to look for how we can ease this inflationary pain. One of the things we can do is get together and take some taxes off the prices of these fruits and vegetables and everyday essentials. We also had a motion brought forward a couple of weeks ago to take the carbon tax off home heating, which is quite reasonable. Some of the members across the way voted in favour of that motion, and I thank them, including the member for Avalon, for voting in favour. I appreciate that very much, because he was listening to his constituents. It is incumbent on us to remember who brought us here. Former premier Wall always said that these are not our seats, that these are the seats of the constituents and we are just caretakers for a while, because someone else will come and take them. I think a few members are remembering that, and we appreciate that support very much. When it comes down to erasing the carbon tax on the price of groceries, it is pretty much unanimous in the House of Commons that the price of groceries is too high. We are just trying to figure out how to deal with that situation. Also, the price of groceries is high because that carbon tax hits our producers; it hits the farmers and it hits the trucking industry. At each link of a supply chain, the carbon tax continues to increase the price of goods. That is something we are trying to get through to the members across the aisle and get through to our Liberal, NDP and Bloc colleagues. It is not just a one-time hit; it continually makes things more expensive. We saw from a recent report that a 5,000-acre farm, by 2030, will pay $150,000 in carbon taxes per year. I grew up on a small family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. We had dairy and beef, and we made our own hay. We had 2,000 acres that we combined. They are not big farms. I do not know anyone who farms 5,000 acres who can take a $150,000 hit year after year. Unless common sense prevails, the only outcome for these family farms is bankruptcy. The Minister of Agriculture was at the agriculture committee, and I am proud to be a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. The minister was there for ministerial estimates, and I asked her to give me a definition of what a family farm is. She could not. Some Liberal members have not been on a farm and do not know agriculture. They see it as big corporate agriculture and big business, but 95% of the farms in Canada are still family farms. The minister was taking the family out of the family farm and said that families are still okay, but it is the farm that is getting taxed. That is not a thing. The family farm is one unit. It is a package deal. Those two cannot be separated. Some are incorporated and some are not. One thing we learned through CERB was that sometimes a family farm that is not incorporated missed out on some programming. I will leave members with this, when it comes to the rising cost of inflation. Tiff Macklem, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, said himself that the increase in spending by the government has had an effect on inflation. One more thing that is really going to hit us hard, now that the interest rate is 4.25%, is that people are going to start losing their homes. I have friends whose mortgages have gone up $750 to $800 per month. That is over a $10,000 increase in what they will have to pay for their mortgages over a year. Families, farm families and everyone in between are squeezed hard enough. They cannot absorb that $10,000 hit. They cannot absorb that $1,000 hit on their grocery bill. We in the House of Commons are going to have to come to the realization that one cannot get blood from a stone. We have to give tax breaks to Canadians.

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Dec/8/22 4:58:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments. I want to talk a bit about how we rank among our peers around the world in how our economy has performed. In 2019 to 2021, Canada had the second-highest increase in gross debt-to-GDP ratio out of 33 countries, only behind Japan. One would have thought our economy would have improved, but despite leading our peers in debt accumulation, Canada did not outperform our peer group in economic growth during the pandemic. Canada had the 11th lowest real GDP growth. The fact is we spent almost more money than any other country, but our GDP growth did not keep pace. Would my hon. colleague say that is a record the Liberals should be proud of?

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Dec/8/22 4:43:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the article states, “She dismissed claims by the [Leader of the Official Opposition] that the government would stretch its promised $50 per tonne price cap by 2022, if re-elected this fall. I would like this member to tell his constituents why the Liberals broke their promise on raising the carbon tax past their committed $50 a tonne.

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Dec/8/22 4:43:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do appreciate the member's ability to stand for 10 minutes and talk about nothing but Conservatives. I think it is a testament to himself and how little he really thinks about what Canadians are going through during this difficult time. I do have a question for him. It is interesting, when we are talking about campaign platforms. A CTV News article from August 2019 states, “Environment Minister Catherine McKenna says her government's climate strategy, including the federal carbon tax provisions, will stay the course. She dismissed claims by”—and I am quoting here, so I can use the name—“Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre that the government would stretch its promised $50 per tonne”—

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Dec/8/22 4:36:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in response to the point of order, we just do not believe that the NDP evolved—

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Context: House Hansard - 117 - Oct/25/22

Dec/8/22 1:53:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Davenport, because she just admitted at the end of her speech that the more the government spends, the higher inflation goes. She just said it. She said that we cannot spend as much as at the height of the pandemic because it makes inflation go up. I will get to my question for her, now that she was honest about that. In listening to her speech, Canadians would think they have never had it so good, yet 1.5 million Canadians use the food bank every month. Does the member think this is a statistic that shows her government is doing well, yes or no?

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Context: House Hansard - 103 - Sep/27/22

Oct/25/22 2:12:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians have had enough of this government's reckless, punitive tax scheme. Farmers across Saskatchewan and the country feel ignored and mistreated by this government, and it just keeps getting worse. As we learned recently, the government will be tripling its carbon tax. The “Ottawa knows best” approach from Liberals keeps hamstringing our farmers as they try to dry their grain, heat their barns and export their first-class agriculture products around the world to help feed it. A government led by our leader will respect farmers, listen to their concerns and work together to remove the gatekeepers in our country. Most importantly, we will scrap the carbon tax and finally give the respect to Canadian farmers that they have been missing for the past seven years. Canadians and our farmers cannot afford the costly coalition between the NDP and the Liberals. A Canadian government should value and promote our agriculture sector, not try to tax it out of existence.

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Context: House Hansard - 103 - Sep/27/22

Sep/27/22 6:45:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate my friend's comments from across the aisle. One thing that I will not disagree with him on at all is that I firmly believe that Liberals know how to spend taxpayers' dollars. I believe that he could read a huge list of spending that this government has done, whether it is effective and efficient is a totally different debate. However, one thing the member did bring up was fertilizer targets, and the fact that last year farmers lost about 35.8% of some of the crops that they planted. However, this government wants to bring in a fertilizer reduction target where it is going to put 30% less fertilizer in the fields for farmers. We talked to farmers in Saskatchewan and across the country, and they said that they would not be able to grow the same number of crops with that amount of fertilizer. I am not sure if the member went out to Ag in Motion in Saskatchewan, but I would love him to come out for that tour. I think he might have actually, but it is doing amazing things in agriculture with technology. I went to the YARA incubator, where they actually can scan leaves in a field—

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Context: House Hansard - 80 - Jun/2/22

Sep/27/22 6:39:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to take to my feet tonight to try to get some answers regarding the carbon tax that the NDP-Liberal government is going to force upon the people of Canada. Not only was a commitment made in the 2019 campaign that the Liberals would never increase the carbon tax by more than $30 per tonne, but now we are going to see it go to $150 per tonne. The question that I asked the Minister of Agriculture a couple of months ago was this: What are people supposed to do on the farms? I have a friend now who is paying $90,000 a week in fuel, and a big chunk of that is from the carbon tax. I have another friend who runs a restaurant in Regina. His name is Raul. He said that if he did not have to pay a carbon tax on the heating and utilities to operate his restaurants, he could hire one new employee in each restaurant. He could give someone else a living wage so they could support their family, go to work, earn a paycheque and do better. It would make sure they do well in society. These are a couple of things that I would like to have answered. Another burning question I have right now is this: When is the carbon tax going to kick in enough that it actually lowers emissions? I also hope my friend from Glengarry—Prescott—Russell can answer this question: How much has the carbon tax lowered emissions across the country? I believe that in their seven years of being in government, the Liberals have never actually hit an environmental target. They have not planted their billion trees. They have not lowered CO2 emissions. Really, they have just been punishing everyday families, punishing ordinary Canadians and making it harder for them to get by. We see the rising cost of inflation, and no one believes that the carbon tax has not had a negative effect on it. We have to pay more to truck fruits and vegetables and other groceries into different areas, especially rural and remote Canada. The carbon tax affects the price at the grocery store. I would like to know from my friend as well whether he believes that the carbon tax has not negatively affected the price of groceries. Does he think the carbon tax might actually make the price of groceries go down once it hits $150 a tonne? These are a few things that I hope he can answer in his response. Finally, the government has had some trials and tribulations, obviously of its own making, and I would ask him about the commitment the Liberals made to Canadians that they would not increase the carbon tax past $30 a tonne. I think that is very important, and people across Saskatchewan and Canada want to hear the answer to this: Why did they break that promise? Why did they feel it was okay for the Liberal government to make a promise in that campaign and then not follow through? It is not doing anything for the environment. If they are not lowering emissions and this carbon tax is still making everything less affordable for Canadians, what is the point? I know he is going to answer with this: “Oh, we are just going to give it back in a rebate.” No one in Saskatchewan believes that, because the Liberals are making life less affordable and the rebate does not cover the price at the pumps or the price we are paying at the grocery stores.

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