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Warren Steinley

Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
Conservative

Regina—Lewvan
Saskatchewan
Voting Attendance: 67%
Expenses Last Quarter: $123,656.05

Government Page

Mr. Warren Steinley (Regina—Lewvan, CPC)

Apr/9/24 4:57:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very much looking forward to hearing the speech by my colleague, the member for Yellowhead, and I will be splitting my time with him. It is my pleasure to join the debate on our official opposition motion to have the Prime Minister take the time to meet with the 14 premiers of the country. I do not think it is too much to ask, and I find it interesting that all the government members are very opposed to having the Prime Minister do his job. He has not met with the 14 first ministers since 2016. I remember that because, during that time, I was an MLA in Saskatchewan with former premier Brad Wall. I remember Premier Wall came back and said that the Prime Minister committed to not announcing any forced carbon tax until there were discussions and the premiers had had the chance to come back and bring forward options. That is what the Prime Minister said to the 14 premiers at that meeting. I also remember that the environment ministers were called to have a meeting with then-environment minister Catherine McKenna to talk about the backstop of the carbon tax on provinces that had not yet gotten their plans in place. There was good faith. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley asked about good faith. In that meeting of environment ministers, they announced the backstop of the carbon tax. That is when our environment minister walked out of that meeting. When we talk about good faith, a lot of that good faith has to come from the federal government as well. When we talk about good faith, it is very important. A lot of the Liberal and NDP members of Parliament have talked about misinformation. I will stick strictly to the facts for the member for Winnipeg North, so he cannot talk about misinformation. It is a fact that in our country, over the last year, two million people have accessed a food bank. The expectation is that a million more people will access a food bank in 2024 because of high food prices. That is a fact and is not to be disputed in the House. I do not think any of us think that is the type of country that we should be living in, where that many Canadians, and especially those in our armed forces, have to access a food bank just to get by. That is something we should all take to heart and try to do better. This has been caused by the continuous rise in inflation. The fact is that the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer and the Governor of the Bank of Canada have said that the carbon tax adds to inflation. These are undeniable facts. I would also say that, throughout the years, we have done some studies in Saskatchewan, and the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan has said that the carbon tax will add $1.93 per acre in 2019, increasing to $7.42 in 2024. This is something that is amazing. The carbon tax will cost $17.31 per acre by 2030, once it gets to $170 a tonne. There is no way a rational person could look at those numbers and think that the carbon tax is not increasing the price of our food. If we tax the farmer who produces the food and we tax the trucker who trucks the food, we tax every single Canadian who goes to the grocery store to buy the food. Talking about continued increases, we can see that across this country rents have doubled and mortgages have doubled. When I was younger and we bought our first home, it took 25 years to pay that home off. Now it takes 25 years to save for a down payment on a home. Eight to nine out of 10 young Canadians do not think they will ever own a home in our country. That is not the country our children should grow up in. There should be hope. There should be optimism in this country. We should take some of the members of the Liberal caucus at their word. A couple of years ago, the member for Whitby stood in his spot in this chamber and said that Canadians would feel pain. There is a success. Canadians are feeling pain, and it is because of their out-of-touch policies. Let us look at the Prime Minister. He just did an interview in Alberta saying that life was going to get more expensive. He made an out-of-touch comment that, for people who own a pool or drive three vehicles, life would get more expensive. That is not the fact. The fact is that, in this country, life is more expensive for each and every Canadian. There is always more month left than paycheque now for Canadians. That is because of the out-of-touch policies brought forward by the government. I find it very interesting that Liberal members are still talking about the rebate. They think they are heroes. I congratulate them for giving rebates to Canadians. It is their money in the first place. If they did not take the money from them, they would not have to bend over backward to give it back to them. Government never earns a dollar ever. It only gets money by taking it from Canadians and businesses who have earned that money first. I would like to end by saying that it is not unreasonable for us to ask the Prime Minister to sit down, defend his flagship carbon tax policy and explain why the government should take more money from Canadians than it is going to give back in front of our premiers. If he is so proud of his carbon tax and it is doing such a wonderful job, when we are ranked 62 out of 67 in the world on the environmental index because he is doing nothing to meet that target, he should have no problem defending his policies to our premiers.

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Governor

Context: House Hansard - 291 - Mar/19/24

Mr. Warren Steinley

Mar/19/24 6:40:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is true that things would have been done very differently if there had been a Conservative government that had the opportunity to govern during the pandemic. Perhaps people would have been able to go to funerals. I know other countries did take a different approach. We can see that people had the ability to do some of those things in different countries, like Sweden, while we did not have the opportunity to be with our loved ones— Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Those were provincial. Mr. Warren Steinley: Madam Speaker, the member said that was provincial and I hear that, but I remember we lost my uncle. At my uncle's funeral, when we listened to the eulogies, I listened to them in the truck, because there were only a few people allowed in the church. I believe Canadians never want to get back to a point like that. We do agree that there have to be more reviews done. They have to be done fairly, and we have to know who is going to be doing them. Like I said earlier, we did talk about how the constitutionality of the Emergencies Act was challenged. It was done by an independent body, and that review came back and said the Emergencies Act was invoked and it broke the constitutional rights of Canadians. Those are the things we need to really come together on and say they should never happen again. People's bank accounts were frozen in this country because they donated $25 or bought a T-shirt to support a movement. That is not the Canada I want my three kids to grow up in. I think we are better than that, and we should always be vigilant and stand on guard to make sure things like that never happen again. We talked about what happened with the spending, and my Liberal colleague from Winnipeg North was talking about spending the millions and billions of dollars. How many people made a lot of money during the pandemic who did not have the ability to follow through on contracts? I can think of several. They talk about being there for Canadians and having Canadians' backs. A big chunk of the spending, billions of dollars of COVID spending, was never spent on COVID programs. It was not spent at all on COVID programs, so there should be an audit of finance during COVID as well, because I think we have only hit the tip of the iceberg when it comes to programs like the arrive scam app. We should not forget that it is not just about the money when it comes to the arrive scam app. Tens of thousands of people were forced by the government to quarantine who never should have had to. The failure of that app was not just the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money that was wasted. It was that it actually took away some more rights and freedoms of Canadians. They had to quarantine, miss work and not be with their kids for no reason at all. There are a lot more of these funds and this spending that happened during COVID-19 that we really should take a look at, and I cannot wait to see what happens when we are—

551 words

Context: House Hansard - 186 - Apr/27/23

Mr. Warren Steinley (Regina—Lewvan, CPC)

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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Member of Parliament

Warren Steinley