- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Conservative
- Wellington—Halton Hills
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $120,269.09
- Government Page
- Nov/17/22 2:09:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this past week, Germany inaugurated its first liquefied natural gas terminal. Germany started construction after the war in Ukraine began on February 24 to get off Russian gas. Before Russia's war on Ukraine, Germany had no LNG terminals. It took Germany 194 days to approve and build this new LNG terminal in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven. It took 194 days, and four more are on the way shortly.
Germany has a stronger set of environmental standards than Canada, and Germany has reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than Canada. Germany is also led by a left of centre Social Democratic chancellor, and its minister of economic affairs and climate action is a Green Party minister. Our government needs to ask itself how Germany can approve and build a new LNG terminal in 194 days, while it takes a decade or more to approve and build a single LNG terminal in this country.
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- Oct/20/22 3:45:46 p.m.
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My apologies, Madam Speaker. I got caught up in the moment and I made a mistake. I withdraw that.
I want to quote from this article, because it is damning.
It reads:
But all of Canada’s peers in the Group of Seven, or G-7, have managed to achieve economic growth while simultaneously cutting emissions, and Canada’s environmental commissioner says the country is struggling to bend the emissions curve. Among the Group of 20 major economies, or G-20, Canada ranks behind only Saudi Arabia when it comes to per capita emissions, and ahead of Australia.
That is a damning indictment of how the government's climate change policies are working, including its carbon tax.
I will finish by saying that this is the only government in the G7 that has raised taxes on fuel during a period of record high global energy prices. Even the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador is pleading for relief.
The government needs to get in touch with Canadians and understand that 10% of this country is in dire straits facing a heating crisis this winter. It needs to do the right thing and cut the taxes on propane and heating oil.
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- Oct/20/22 3:36:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
The government is completely out of touch, and I do not say that lightly. There is a crisis unfolding in rural parts of our country, in Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, a real crisis, a crisis the government is ignoring.
Here is the crisis. Ten per cent of Canadians heat their home with heating oil or with propane. That is 3.8 million Canadians. About a million and a half households in our country heat their homes during the cold Canadian winters with heating oil or with propane. That is a third of Canadians living in Atlantic Canada. That is over a million people living in the province of Ontario. They heat their homes with oil or propane, and the vast majority of them heat with oil.
What many people do not realize, and what the government certainly does not realize, is that these Canadians are in dire straits. They are facing a crisis this winter. The one out of 10 Canadians who relies on heating oil or on propane is going to be bankrupted by the cost of heating his or her home this winter, and here is why.
Traditionally, 90% of Canadians heat with heat other than heating oil or propane. They either use natural gas or some form of alternative. However, here is the reality for those 10% of Canadians who use heating oil or propane.
For a house that is heated with natural gas, for every dollar of heat that house uses in natural gas, for that same house located in an area where there is only heating oil or propane, it costs three dollars, three times the amount, to heat with propane and it costs four dollars to heat with heating oil, or four times the amount.
These figures I give to the House are before the global energy crisis that has hit global economies over the last year or so. This winter the figures now facing the 10% of our fellow citizens who heat with propane or heating oil are truly frightening and that is why this is a crisis. I went on the website yesterday of West Nova Fuels of Nova Scotia, and I will quote from its website:
[O]n average a typical house with four people in it should burn about three to four tanks of oil in a year to heat your home and hot water, about 2800 litres of oil.
That is now much it takes to heat a typical home in rural Ontario and rural Atlantic Canada: 2,800 litres.
I went on the website of a company called Crescent Oil in rural southern Ontario that services much of rural southwestern Ontario with heating oil. Its current price for the cost of a litre of that heating oil is $2. Some areas of rural Ontario and rural Canada have even higher per-litre costs for heating oil. Canadians will understand that if they are told that number two heating oil is diesel. That is what furnace oil heating oil is.
If people have driven around in Ontario in the last week or so, they will see that the price of diesel fuel is at record high levels because of shortages of distillates and other heavy crudes, and it is selling for about $2.35 a litre now in Ontario. Therefore, it is no coincidence that heating oil, which is diesel, is selling for $2 a litre. That is $2 a litre for 2,800 litres over a winter. That is $5,600 to heat a typical home in rural Ontario or rural Atlantic Canada. That is before the carbon tax and the HST.
There is a carbon tax of roughly 13¢ a litre on that heating oil. There is HST not just on the base cost of the heating oil, but also on the carbon tax, so that $5,600 it is going to cost to heat one's home this winter in rural Ontario or rural Atlantic Canada actually is closer to $6,739, of which $375 is the carbon tax.
The government's rebates do not cover these costs. A typical four-person family, mom, dad and two kids, living in these rural areas, heating with heating oil and driving to work in a two-income family and putting 25,000 kilometres a year on each vehicle, because there is no public transit in rural areas, which is the very nature of living in a rural area, will consume about 5,000 litres of gasoline in a year.
As well, in Ontario there is an 11¢ a litre carbon tax on that gasoline. That means someone who is paying about $550 a year in carbon taxes for commuting, and add to that the $375 they have paid on their heating oil to keep their home at a minimal temperature of about 19°C or 20°C, is looking at $925 a year in carbon taxes just on commuting and heating. That is not to mention all the carbon taxes that are embedded on shipping, groceries and other costs. The climate rebate of $204.88 a quarter, for a total of $819.52, does not cover the cost.
Out of the government's own admission, and we heard it from the previous member, two out of 10 households in this country do not get more back from the rebate than they pay in carbon taxes. The government is ignoring those households and ignoring the crisis facing these households. It is ignoring the astronomical skyrocketing costs it will take to keep one's house warm in rural Ontario and rural Atlantic Canada this winter.
The argument that this is somehow working as part of a plan to reduce emissions to combat climate change is bunk. Here is the proof. Liberals have not met a single target. They came to office saying that they were going to meet Copenhagen. We blew through that without meeting that target. They said that they are now on track to meet Paris, which is total baloney.
Emissions have been rising under the Liberal government. In 2016, the first full year the government was in office, emissions were 715 megatonnes. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic for which we have data, emissions rose to 738 megatonnes. Now, they dropped in 2020, but shutting down the economy is no way to combat climate change and reduce emissions.
I will go out on a limb here. I believe that in 2022, Canada's emissions will blow through that 738 megatonne level to a record high for the government. Do not take it from me; take it from Bloomberg. I was reading the news this morning and I came across an article Bloomberg just published today entitled “[The Prime Minister] Defends Canada's Minuscule Climate Progress”, with the subheading, “A bevy of climate policies championed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have not yet translated into steep pollution cuts in the country.”
I want to quote from that article—
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- Feb/16/22 4:15:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I present a petition signed by constituents in my riding of Wellington—Halton Hills. The petitioners call on the parties in Parliament to work together to commit to reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% from 2005 levels by 2030, to establish a concrete plan to end fossil fuel subsidies, to stop all new fossil fuel expansions, to restart the just transition consultations and to pass legislation as soon as possible.
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- Feb/1/22 4:06:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I believe that the best way to achieve climate emission reductions is to ensure that there is a price on carbon that is equitable across all regions of the country, and equitable across all economic sectors of our economy. Reductions should be achieved through that mechanism. I also believe that an essential part of getting the job done is being honest with ourselves about our record on climate change, which is one of the worst in the industrialized world.
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- Feb/1/22 4:04:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that plan was not for all consumers in all 10 provinces. It was restricted to provinces that had refused to allow the federal government to put in place its own plan. Obviously with the Supreme Court's ruling, it is clear that the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, where this was the case, will certainly be putting in their own plans at some future date to comply with the federal government's price on carbon.
In brief, the central point of the matter is this: The government came to office promising to do better on climate change. The fact is that emissions have risen every year that the government has been in office, and despite that the government's lofty promises keep getting more grandiose. The Liberals came to office promising to reduce emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. Just in the last year, they promised to reduce emissions by 45% from 2005 levels by 2030. It is an even more ambitious promise that flies in the face of the facts.
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- Feb/1/22 4:02:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the last election campaign, we presented a climate change plan that was supported by experts. Our plan adopted the government's plan for putting a price on carbon for industry, and we presented a plan for the consumer sector. We truly believe in the challenge of climate change. We understand that it is a global challenge and that Canada has to do its part.
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- Feb/1/22 3:51:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Yellowhead.
The government's foreign policy is not serving the country's interests nor its values, and the Speech from the Throne we are debating today does little to address this shortcoming. It does little to address Canada's decline on the world stage. The Speech from the Throne makes no mention of a foreign policy review.
We have not had a significant foreign policy review in this country for almost 20 years. Countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia have regular foreign policy reviews. These are anchored around white papers that set out the government's foreign policy, its defence policy and its foreign aid policy. They guide the whole of government in implementing the government's policies in those spheres of foreign affairs.
The United States goes through a similar process through the state department in order to anchor American foreign policy to ensure consistency and clarity. It also provides the capacity to respond to changing circumstances, but we have not done this. In fact, the last time I can recall a significant foreign policy review was in 2004, under the previous government of then prime minister Paul Martin, when Jennifer Welsh was tasked with taking a look at the government's foreign policy. Since then we have had no significant policy review, and the results are showing.
We have had five foreign ministers in less than six years in the position of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. We have had ministers propose a foreign policy based on responsible conviction, a policy that lasted for a mere year or so before it was replaced with the policy of Canada as an essential country, outlined in a speech given to this House, which was supposedly the government's anchor for its foreign policy, its white paper, which guided the whole government's foreign policy. As a result, Canada's position on the world stage has diminished. That is an incontrovertible fact.
In 2015, the Prime Minister came to office, telling the world that Canada is back. After the government made an attempt to secure a UN Security Council seat, the results came in, in June of 2020. Canada lost that bid for the UN Security Council seat, as it had done a decade earlier, and it lost with six fewer votes than it had won a decade earlier. That is six fewer countries that see Canada as a world leader on the international stage.
In foreign aid, the government came to office promising to do better to help the world's poorest, but in the first five years of being in office, foreign aid was cut by 10% based on the internationally accepted measure of overseas development assistance as a percentage of gross national income, the target number being 0.7% of GNI. Under the government, foreign aid was cut from 0.3% of GNI during the 10 years of the previous government, to 0.27% of GNI in the first five years that this government was in office.
On climate change, the government has failed to meet its climate change commitments. In fact, we have some of the highest per capita emissions in the world. Even south of the border emissions have declined over the last number of years, but in Canada, for each and every year the government has been in office, emissions have risen. In fact, in 2016, the first full year that the government was in office, emissions in Canada stood at 708 megatonnes. They have risen each and every year from that point.
In 2019, the last year for which Environment Canada has data, emissions rose to 730 megatonnes, an increase of 22 megatonnes. No doubt this year we will once again go to record high emission levels because the data that is coming in on oil and gas, and other fossil fuel consumption in this country is indicating that Canada is trending to record high levels of fossil fuel consumption. Again, on climate change, the government has failed to deliver.
The Liberal government came to office somewhat naively, promising to reopen Canada's embassy and re-establish diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, but it quickly realized once in office that it was not going to be able to do so.
On the major issue facing the world today, of the rise of authoritarian governments in places such as Russia and the People's Republic of China, the Liberal government has been either incoherent or naive. On China, the government's policies have been utterly and completely incomprehensible. Here are a couple of examples of what I am talking about. David Vigneault, the head of CSIS has been saying since December, 2018, that China presents a threat to Canada in national security and in intellectual property in five sensitive areas, such as 5G telecommunications, quantum computing and biotechnology.
It has identified Huawei as a threat to our national security and intellectual property, but the government has yet to act. It has yet to take action to restrict or ban Huawei from our telecommunications networks. In fact, it is unilaterally alone and isolated on the world stage in this regard. Four of our closest intelligence and security partners, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, have already taken measures to restrict or ban Huawei from their telecommunications networks.
The Huawei issue highlights the incoherence of the government. In May, 2019, then public safety minister Ralph Goodale indicated that the government would make a decision on Huawei before the 2019 election. Several months later, in the summer of 2019, he reversed course and said that the government would not be making a decision before October 2019, and then that the decision would be after 2019.
Over two years have passed since that time, and still there is no decision on Huawei. In fact, last fall the Prime Minister was asked by Global News if a decision on Huawei was coming. The Prime Minister indicated at that time, in late September or early October, that a decision would be forthcoming in “several weeks.” It is now several months since the Prime Minister indicated that, yet we have no decision on Huawei.
On a new framework on China, the government promised to come forward with something during the year 2020. Apparently that was kiboshed before it got to the federal cabinet for approval. Under the direction of the minister, two foreign ministers ago, we got the three Cs on China: to challenge, co-operate and compete. That then morphed into the four Cs, with the fourth C being co-exist.
That was replaced in the Speech from the Throne with an allusion to a new policy coming forward on the Indo-Pacific Region that would include China. This is apparently forthcoming. I am skeptical about the government delivering on a new policy and a new framework on China.
On Ukraine, the Liberal government has been naive. Ukraine has asked for lethal defensive weapons. The government has failed to deliver. Diplomacy not backed up by the threat of force, and in very limited and in very controlled circumstances, is simply empty talk and rhetoric that weakens our ability to stand up for our interests and values.
Russia has two tools of hard power: its military force, and its ability to cut off natural gas to western Europe. Russia supplies 40% of the gas to the European Union, and is using this as a weapon in order to get its way in Eastern Europe and to threaten Ukraine. This government is part of the discussions about how to ensure that global natural gas supplies are there for Europeans if the Russians decide to cut off natural gas.
For all of these reasons, the Liberal government's Speech from the Throne does nothing to address Canada's decline on the world stage and the need to come forward with a coherent foreign policy.
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