- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Regina—Lewvan
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05
- Government Page
- May/9/24 7:54:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this fiscal economic statement has led to a budget where the debt servicing costs $54.1 billion, which is more than the federal government transfers to provinces for health care. We all know health care is very important.
How did the member find his way to supporting a fiscal economic statement that led to a budget that spends more on debt each and every year than this whole country spends on health care transfers to provinces?
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- Apr/10/24 5:46:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, all I would ask the member is this: Is it true that in the budget, there will be $2.7 billion less spending on defence over the next three years, yes or no?
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- Feb/27/24 12:12:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we do keep records of who voted for what during budget deliberations, so I would ask this member how he can go back to his riding, when he voted eight times to ensure that GC Strategies got tens of millions of dollars. He talks about the corporate parties. He literally is propping up the Liberal government to ensure the ad scam continues. GC Strategies is still getting money because of his vote. It is actually quite embarrassing.
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- Apr/27/23 6:49:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is with great enthusiasm that I join the debate this evening to talk about the budget implementation act and go over some of the comments I have heard today about the budget. I know the member for Edmonton Griesbach talked about Mouseland and Tommy Douglas, and I am going to get to some of those points later on.
First off, on the budget, one of the main reasons I will not be able to support this budget because the extra spending is going to cost the average family an extra $4,300 a year, all on more spending. Conservatives, as an opposition party, laid out some of the things that we would like to see in this budget, so that we could go forward and work together.
One was no new spending. I think that the inflationary fire has burned out of control for long enough, so we had asked, before the budget came forward, for no new spending. Another thing we had asked for as Conservatives in opposition was no new taxes.
Although members may have heard this before, I ask the members opposite on the Liberal side to please not increase the carbon tax on April 1. On this side of the House, we have heard from all of our constituents that the carbon tax is adding to the price of groceries, home heating, driving one's vehicle to and from work, and driving one's kids to hockey.
We have three kids. I know our van is costing more to fill up when we are going to hockey for our three kids. It is just adding to the pressures of a family trying to make their budget last to the end of the month. That was not listened to either.
Another thing we had asked for, and our leader put this out in his policy declaration when he was going out for leader, was a two-for-one. If we are going to bring in new spending, perhaps we can find savings elsewhere so that we do not have to increase the deficit.
I remember this, and I have said it in a few of my speeches. I remember during COVID the Prime Minister went on national TV and said that the government was going to go into debt so Canadians did not have to.
I do not know if he knows how economics work, but there is no other way for the government to then get out of debt than by taking more money from the Canadians who earn it by going to work. There is no government in the history of the world that has ever earned a dollar. It only gets a dollar by taking it from someone else who has earned that dollar. My friends across the way and our friends in the NDP do not seem to understand that this is how governments get money.
My friend from Lakeland said it very well. This government does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. We have seen it for years and years. I can remember back to the 2015 campaign, and my friend from Winnipeg probably can as well, when they said, “We will balance that budget in 2019.” I remember that. That was a campaign promise in 2015 by the Liberals.
I also remember another promise by the Liberals in the 2019 campaign. They, hand over heart, said that they would never increase the carbon tax over $50 a tonne. I remember that. We talked to people in Saskatchewan. We have not wanted a carbon tax ever, but some people who were going to support the Liberals said that, no, they are not going to increase it past $50 a tonne. I remember having these conversations and thinking we will see.
The 2021 campaign rolls around and, lo and behold, they believed it, but now we see that it is at $70 a tonne. It is affecting people's everyday lives now. In 2030, if the Liberals are still in government, that is going to be 41¢ a litre on gas, when the carbon tax gets to $170 a tonne.
I do not know about many people, and I do not know if the members opposite have talked to their constituents, but I think that the price of gas has increased substantially over the last few years. I do not know anyone who can afford an extra 41¢ a litre when they fill their vehicle, whether they are going to work or taking their kids to sports or driving to school. I know that where I went to school at the University of Regina, kids drove back and forth from out of town, from Moose Jaw, from Indian Head. They drove in. That is going to be a thing of the past because I do not know a lot of students who can afford an extra 41¢ a litre on their gas.
There is something else that I wanted to touch on. I listened to the member for Edmonton Griesbach. He talked about the late, great Tommy Douglas, and there are some great things there. I see the member is coming into the chamber, and I know that he talked about—
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- Apr/27/23 6:32:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to join in this debate and to ask a question of my very learned colleague from Lakeland. She is brilliant when it comes to the oil and gas sector.
It is unlikely, but is there anything in this budget that will actually help the oil and gas sector? If there is nothing, what could we do as Conservatives to make sure that we get the oil and gas sector up and running when we have the ability to govern?
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- Feb/14/23 1:45:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a very fair question. What we are talking about cutting is the $119 million to McKinsey & Company. What we are talking about cutting is the $15 billion in programs that went to prisoners, dead people and companies that did not need the COVID spending. What we are talking about is the $400 billion that the government said it was going to use for COVID programming but never used it. That is the Parliamentary Budget Officers' numbers. That is over $500 billion in spending that we are talking about already.
There is a lot of largesse that the Liberal government has spent over the years. There are a lot of places where we can cut and deliver better services.
I would ask my Bloc colleague this. There has been an increase in the public service, there has been an increase in contracting out and there has been an increase in spending, higher than any other government in the history of our country, but have we seen better services for our citizens?
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Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to join the discussion today on the fall economic statement.
What we wanted to see is a plan for the future of all Canadians, but what we received from the Liberals in this fall economic statement is more reckless spending. We laid out two requests before the statement was delivered. One was no new taxes. The second was that if the government brought in more spending, it should find savings in the budget. That was not possible for the reckless Liberal-NDP coalition.
What we see right now is more spending and less money in the pockets of Canadians. We even heard the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, say that there is a made-in-Canada inflation problem. That is as a result of the reckless spending by the costly NDP-Liberal coalition.
I will go through a few of the spending items that we see as possibly unnecessary.
For one of them, the finance minister could not even answer a question. When asked about the $14.2-billion spend in the economic statement that is unaccounted for, she could not answer what it was earmarked for. As the finance minister of a G7 country, she should really have a better handle on where the money is going.
To add to the idea that the government right now is not in control of its spending, the Auditor General released a report today, and there are some very concerning things in it. A few of the numbers we saw today gave us a second to pause and wonder where the government is taking Canadians. One has to do with “overpayments to ineligible recipients” regarding COVID–19 spending. There was $4.6 billion in overpayments to ineligible recipients that the taxpayers of this country will never get back.
Let us not stop there. There is another one about “payments that should be investigated further” by the Auditor General. This was just released today, and there is $27.4 billion for further programs that we need to look into. One of my questions here, and I hope one of my Liberal counterparts will ask me about it, is whether the Liberals believe this needs to be investigated as well. Are they curious about where that $24.7 billion is that they said was necessary for COVID spending? I ask because we all remember the solemn hand-on-heart moment when Canadians were told by the Prime Minister that he has their backs.
Do members remember one of the last fall economic statements delivered by the current minister and the government? There was a famous line that will go down as one of my favourite quotes from the Prime Minister. He said the Liberals were going to take on debt so Canadians did not have to. How is that working for the government now?
I think Canadians across the country are wondering when exactly that is going to happen, because they have seen the government take on massive debt, more debt than all other governments combined. What I am seeing and hearing from Canadians across the country is they feel that this debt is now being passed on to them. That is how they feel. Where is this solemn pledge by the Prime Minister that the government is going to take on debt so Canadians do not have to? That is not a thing and Canadians are falling further and further behind.
I have a few examples of some of the discussions I have had.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak with the Association of Canadian Custom Harvesters in Saskatoon. People from all over the country do custom harvesting. By the way, in question period, the associate minister of finance, who is from Alberta, keeps saying that there have been massive crop failures across the country, yet I did not hear that from the people who actually harvest crops. That is another one of the fabricated stories the Liberals continue to tell to make sure they have a compelling narrative to keep shovelling out dollars.
At this conference in Saskatoon, it was great to hear about some of the innovations and new technologies these custom harvesters are using to lower emissions. There were questions they kept coming back to ask me: How much is enough? For the carbon tax, what level will make the government happy? I was dumbfounded. I did not know how to answer that because I do not think it will ever be enough.
One of the custom harvesters actually does work across the border in Montana and the Midwestern states, and then comes back up. I asked him what the difference in his fuel bill is when he is harvesting down south across the border compared to when he is harvesting in Canada. He said it is between $15,000 and $20,000 a week. Could members imagine doing business in a different jurisdiction where it costs an extra $15,000 to $20,000 a week on something they have no control over? They have to fuel their vehicles. They have to fuel their harvesters and trucks. I asked him how it makes sense to keep going back and forth across the border. He said it does not. Then and there it just hit me that this is why we are becoming so uncompetitive. That is why the jobs are going south. It is because the current government is taxing businesses out of existence.
Then I remembered a quote I heard from one of the Liberal backbenchers, the member for Whitby. It all made sense when he stood in his spot and said to Canadians that they will have to go through pain. Can members imagine a government member standing up and saying that it is going to get worse? Can members imagine him saying he is not sure it is ever going to get better, but that Canadians can be sure that, as long as the Liberals are in government, it is going to continue to get worse for them, with more pain and suffering? I say “kudos” to that member because that is probably one of the first honest statements I have heard from a member of the Liberal Party in being honest with Canadians and saying that under the Liberals it will continue to get worse.
We see that situation across the country. One of the biggest things that hits me when I look at some of the statistics here is that 1.5 million Canadians are using a food bank every month in our country when we are supposed to be the breadbasket of the world. We have the food, fuel and fertilizer the world needs and we cannot feed our own people.
I opened the mail the other day when I was at home and my wife brought a letter to me. We are both U of R alumni. It was from the University of Regina. Usually people get these fundraising letters when it is for a capital project or some kind of infrastructure project. My wife said, “You will never believe this is coming from the University of Regina.” I read the fundraising letter and it was literally to feed students. It was an anonymous letter from one of the students saying that they go to bed hungry almost every night. There are 58.6% of university students at the U of R who are going to bed hungry. This is in our country now and it is shameful. From where we were to where we are now as a country, the food bank usages are up. Students are living in hostels and going to bed hungry, and they were looking for a vision from this economic statement. The government cannot spend itself out of inflation.
We are getting to another point where, if there are two more interest rate rises in this country, we are going to see a rash of bankruptcies. What is the Liberals' plan for that? Times are getting tough. I know people on variable mortgages whose mortgages have gone up $600 or $700 a month. Now it has come out that grocery bills are going to go up $1,000 to $1,500 per month. Eventually, there is nothing left.
In our country, under the current Liberal government, taxes now exceed take-home pay for people who are going to work every day. This is unsustainable in our country. We need a vision and we need a plan. We need to start making paycheques pay again. We need to make it so that people who are going to work have the ability to support their families and do not have to put water in their milk so they can make it go further for the kids. Parents are literally now scared to take their kids to the grocery store. I have constituents who have sent pictures to me of what $100 in groceries is buying for their family now, and it is sad. It is a couple of loaves of bread, maybe a jug of milk, some pasta and some pasta sauce. That is not good enough.
I will leave members with a quote. It is something Premier Wall always said when we were in government. He said that the best thing a government can and should do is leave things better than it found them. The current government has failed on that miserably.
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- Apr/1/22 11:32:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have been through a global pandemic and now we are living through a European conflict that has exacerbated the already irresponsible fiscal record of the government. The effects of the government's incompetence are continuing to bleed into the household budgets of people across the country as we see inflation levels reach new heights and everyday essentials become more and more unaffordable.
My question, and what Canadians want to know, is this: On April 7, will the budget return to the fiscally responsible ways of the classic Liberals like Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, or will this just be a budget of NDP wish lists?
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