- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Regina—Lewvan
- Saskatchewan
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05
- Government Page
- May/9/24 10:38:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a two-part question.
The first part is that Ford just announced that, in its first quarter, its EV department lost $1.3 billion. It has delayed a bunch of its EV products.
The second part, and we have not talked about this near enough when we talk about the economy, is that Mexico has surpassed Canada as the largest trading partner to the U.S.A.
Could the member reflect on those two things?
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- Mar/21/24 1:53:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the one question I would ask of my hon. colleague is this: Do Liberals not understand that the rebate that they are bending over backward trying to explain and that they are giving to Canadians, is Canadians' money already?
They would not have to give a rebate to all Canadians if they would not take the money in the first place. I do not understand how the Liberals and their NDP stooges do not understand that. If they would not take the money out of Canadians' pockets, they would not have to bend over backward with this rebate. It is not revenue-neutral, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer has said. They are keeping $2 billion of the carbon taxes they are collecting and are using it on their pet projects.
Why can they not just let Canadians keep the money they earned in the first place?
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to join this debate on this private member's bill, Bill C-293.
There are a lot of conversations going around now about how a different approach to the pandemic would have looked. I want to go back a little and talk about how the pandemic did evolve, what the decisions by government were and how we should have a review of that. However, that review cannot be done by one of the Prime Minister's ski buddies. As my colleague, the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, said, it needs to be a transparent review.
It was not too long ago that Canadians were not able to come together to celebrate Christmas or Easter. I remember Canadians were not able to celebrate birthdays or funerals with one another or with family. That happened so quickly. It drove a wedge between Canadians. That is what the Prime Minister is so very good at, wedging and dividing Canadians. That is what we saw with the government's approach during the pandemic.
We saw the government stigmatize people who made different health choices. We saw people who were literally not able to travel. We saw people who wanted to work but due to a personal health choice were unable to go to work. Therefore, they were fired and were unable to support their families.
I think we learned a lot through the process of the pandemic. Coming out of it on the other end, where we are now, I believe Canadians would never go back and agree to the decisions that were made over that period of time. We did have a review of the approach the government took, and it was found that the use of the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional. The constitutional rights of Canadians were broken by the government.
How can we then have the same government put people in charge of doing yet another review? Trust has been broken. That is something that takes a long time to build back. There are so many things that happened during the months of the pandemic. We are now seeing that money was flying out the door, whether it be through CERB or CEBA, and how that money was allocated inappropriately.
The flagship of inappropriate spending that we see right now is the arrive scam app. Literally, a two-person company was given $20 million of taxpayers' money, and it did not have any IT expertise. It is unbelievable, as we are looking at some of this.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: It was millions from Harper too.
Mr. Warren Steinley: Madam Speaker, my colleague, the current member for Winnipeg North, who is in trouble in his riding, is trying to get in as many words as possible. It is interesting that every time he thinks something is inappropriate, he says “Stephen Harper”. I actually feel quite bad for the member for Winnipeg North, because former prime minister Stephen Harper has been living rent-free in this guy's head for years, and we know how expensive rent is right now. It must be nice for Mr. Harper to have that ability. There is a fair bit of room there, so I think he would be quite comfortable.
It does come down to what the Liberals say time and time again. If something goes wrong, they say, “Stephen Harper did it differently.” I guarantee that Stephen Harper would have done the pandemic differently. There would not have been billions of dollars spent on things that did not need to be done. The allocation of funds to Liberal friends would not have happened—
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- Feb/13/24 3:15:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, given that the Auditor General revealed that GC Strategies—
Some hon. members: No.
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- May/4/23 10:54:57 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to join in the debate to discuss Bill C-293, an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness.
I do not think we would find anyone in the House who would be against being prepared for when the next pandemic comes to our country. However, we would have a different way of going about it.
Looking through the bill brought forward by the member from the government's side, there are a few questions that come to my mind right away.
One of its sections talks about agriculture and industrial agriculture. It states:
(l) after consultation with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Minister of Industry and provincial governments, provide for measures to:
(i) reduce the risks posed by antimicrobial resistance,
(ii) regulate commercial activities that can contribute to pandemic risk, including industrial animal agriculture,
(iii) promote commercial activities that can help reduce pandemic risk, including the production of alternative proteins, and
(iv) phase out commercial activities that disproportionately contribute to pandemic risk, including activities that involve high-risk species;
I do not see a definition of what those high-risk species. We have a question about that.
The section continues:
(m) include the following information, to be provided by the Minister of the Environment:
after consultation with relevant provincial ministers, a summary of changes in land use in Canada, including in relation to disturbed habitats, that could contribute to pandemic risk, such as deforestation, encroachment on wildlife habitats and urbanization and that were made, in the case of the first plan, since the last report on changes in land use published under the Federal Sustainable Development Act or, in the case of the updated plans, during the reporting period for the updated plan,
There are issues that will need discussion.
First, I would ask the member who brought the bill forward if he had discussions with the provincial and territorial health ministers already. When I read the bill, there is a lot of encroachment on provincial jurisdiction. I think some of the Bloc members would have concerns about that as well, moving to take over some of the things that should be in the province's jurisdiction.
I have another issue with respect to the agriculture file. I am on the agriculture standing committee and a few things in the bill could limit the use of agricultural land. That concerns me and the people who I represent across western Canada and in Saskatchewan. Our producers do a fantastic job with managing their land use. Part of this preparedness plan has some land use issues in it.
Talking about deforestation, one of the biggest countries that is in competition for agriculture, one that our producers compete against, is Brazil. Brazil is doing a lot of deforestation right now, putting more and more land into agriculture use. If we could use our land and produce more, we would be helping the environment on a larger scale by ensuring that other countries would not have to use deforestation. They would have to put that use of land into agriculture, which would be great for our environment.
More concerns around the pandemic preparedness act are some of the encroachments on our civil liberties. One thing that is mentioned a few times in the bill is the “one health approach”. Like many people, I did not know what one health meant, but I did get a definition from its website. It states:
One Health' is an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and the environment. It is particularly important to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
The approach mobilizes multiple sectors, disciplines and communities at varying levels of society to work together. This way, new and better ideas are developed that address root causes and create long-term, sustainable solutions.
One Health involves the public health, veterinary, public health and environmental sectors. The One Health approach is particularly relevant for food and water safety, nutrition, the control of zoonoses (diseases that can spread between animals and humans, such as flu, rabies and Rift Valley fever), pollution management, and combatting antimicrobial resistance (the emergence of microbes that are resistant to antibiotic therapy).
On the surface, it sounds like it is a pretty good approach, but one of the concerns I would have is the loss of our own ability to get ready for the next pandemic. The problem is that the one health initiative to integrate work on human, animal and environmental issues limits our ability to look after our own Canadians citizens. This, from the WHO, is more of an overarching approach to health care and that still should be central to governments in their own countries not to have that loss of control. We need to dive into this and look a lot closer at the one-health approach.
I hear my colleague from Winnipeg North speaking. I hope he gets up on his feet today.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives are concerned with most bills the Liberals bring forward. They take a decent idea in theory, but then they over-complicate it. That is what this legislation would do and that is one of the reasons we will be unable to support it.
Also, when it comes to the Liberals' approach to the pandemic, all we have seen throughout the pandemic is a lot of money being thrown at some of the issues when it comes to programming. We have found out now from PBO that 40% of that money was not even used for pandemic services. That is a big concern for us and we believe it is one of the major factors that has been hitting inflation so hard for Canadians across the country.
The approach the Conservatives are taking is that we would like to see a little more control and a lot more consultation. I asked about the dental program that my friends across the way hail so largely. I asked the Minister of Health if he consulted with the health ministers of the provinces and territories before the Liberals brought forward the dental program. To this date, he has never answered me. I would really like to see some follow up on the consultations the member did on his private member's bill with the other jurisdictions, the municipal and provincial leaders. I would also like to know if they had any input into bill before it was tabled.
I would like to see some follow up on the consultations that were had with the appropriate health ministers and also with the agriculture ministers. The Liberals talk about agriculture, land use within agriculture and animal health, so I also wonder if the member, before putting his private member's bill forward, had discussions with all the agriculture ministers across the country as well since they are talking about changes to land use in agriculture land.
I have not heard whether the member spoke to the Saskatchewan agriculture minister. I wonder if there were any conversations with those ministers. When we talk about consultation, we talk about working together in other governmental jurisdictions, with provincial, territorial and municipal leaders. I believe the government has failed on those consultations many times. I wonder if this is another stack of failed consultations that should have been done before the bill was brought forward.
I look forward to hearing other speeches and whether other members will or will not support the bill. I am happy to stand and lay out some of the reasons why I feel the government does not have the capacity to be prepared for the next pandemic. I hope that we can work together with our provincial and municipal leaders to ensure we have things in place. The Conservatives believe that we have to be ready for the next pandemic, but we do not think this bill would get the job done.
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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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