- 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
- Mar/20/24 7:27:20 p.m.
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Madam Chair, we are here this evening to take part in a debate on the Canada-Ukraine relationship and the new strategic partnership between Canada and Ukraine.
I want to say clearly, at the beginning of this take-note debate, that Conservatives support the newly agreed to Canada-Ukraine strategic security partnership.
We have long supported Ukraine. We did this well before the war in Ukraine began, started by President Putin's illegal invasion in 2014. On December 2, 1991, Canada became the first western country to recognize Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, under then Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney. The late Brian Mulroney was recognized this week in the House for his great foreign policy accomplishments with then external affairs minister Joe Clark.
It was under Prime Minister Harper's leadership that Conservatives first negotiated the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement, the first free trade agreement between Canada and Ukraine. This deepened trade and investment relations between the two countries. The trade agreement removed tariffs from 86% of Canada's exports, with the remaining tariffs being phased out over the following seven years. This allowed for stronger exports of agricultural goods to and from Ukraine.
It was under Prime Minister Harper that Operation Unifier was started. That was a significant operation that was done jointly with the United Kingdom, and it was critical in preparing the Armed Forces of Ukraine for Russia's illegal invasion. In fact, my hon. colleague who just spoke in the House referenced that many were surprised about how Ukraine stood up to Russia's second illegal invasion in February 2022; many expected Ukraine's armed forces to collapse in the face of the Russian invasion. In fact, they did not collapse, in large part because of Operation Unifier, which began in 2015.
It was also Prime Minister Harper who led the charge at the G8, which no longer exists, to expel Russia as a member. This turned it into the G7. We all remember that famous video of Prime Minister Harper confronting President Putin on camera when they met in Australia, telling him he needed to “get out of Ukraine”.
These are some things that Conservatives have done in the past to support Ukraine. In opposition, as we have been since 2015, we have continued that support. We have continually called on the government to support Ukraine and to provide more support, particularly military support. We have largely supported the government's initiatives with respect to Ukraine over the last two years.
Long before Russia's war on Ukraine began in February 2022, we had called on the government to provide more lethal military equipment to Ukraine. It was not until February 14, 2022, a mere 10 days before the invasion began, that the government heeded our call. It then reversed its decision not to provide lethal military equipment and started to provide that equipment.
Since February 2022, we have called on the government to provide surplus light armoured vehicles from the Canadian Armed Forces and role 3 mobile hospitals. Recently, we have also called on the government to provide the NASAMS air defence system, as well as the CRV7 rockets, of which there are 83,000 in surplus in the Canadian Armed Forces. Ukraine has indicated that it wants and could use them.
The government could provide these four things immediately to support Ukraine: the surplus light armoured vehicles, the role 3 mobile hospitals, the 83,000 rockets and the NASAMS air defence system.
We have been calling on the government to do these things because we believe Ukraine needs additional military support. We have also been calling on the government to increase arms production in Canada, and in particular, the production of munitions. The NATO alliance and Ukraine, beyond that, are in desperate need of 155-millimetre shells. It has been assessed that Russia has produced millions of similar types of shells and that the alliance is desperately underproducing these shells. The government recently announced that it has looked at increasing shell production in Canada. Conservatives believe the government needs to do that expeditiously to meet not only Ukraine's defence needs but also our own here in Canada.
I will go back to the strategic security partnership that was just agreed to by the Government of Canada and the Government of Ukraine, formally titled “Agreement on security cooperation between Canada and Ukraine”. There are two clauses in that agreement, in particular, that Conservatives support. Section I is titled “Resilience of Energy and other Critical Infrastructure”. That part of the agreement reads:
Acknowledging that energy supply security remains crucial for Ukraine’s resilience, and building upon existing support for Ukraine’s energy infrastructure from the G7 and others, Canada will continue to seek to support Ukraine’s overall energy sector with a special focus on nuclear safety and security and clean energy transition.
We support that; one thing we think Canada should be doing to support Ukraine and counter Russia is exporting clean liquefied natural gas, not only to displace Russian liquefied natural gas in western Europe and in Ukraine, as well as liquefied natural gas among other democratic allies, but also to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A kilowatt hour of electricity produced by coal-fired plants produces double the greenhouse gas emissions that a plant fired by natural gas does. We can meet our security and defence goals in co-operation with Ukraine and, at the same time, help reduce global emissions. About a fifth of all global emissions are produced from coal-fired electricity plants. If we could eliminate those in the next 10 years, we could cut global emissions, just on that alone, by 10%.
The technology to replace coal-fired electricity plants with LNG or with natural gas plants is decades old. It is easy to do. Ontario did it when it closed down the Nanticoke coal plant some years ago and replaced it with natural gas-fired plants throughout the province of Ontario.
The other section we like in this agreement is section N, titled “Compensation for Losses, Injuries and Damages Caused by Russian Aggression”. We like it because we have long called for Canada to lead an effort, which we have suggested should be at the G7, to repurpose some 300 billion U.S. dollars in Russian assets that have been seized by western democracies. When the war broke out two years ago, scores of Russian assets were seized by western governments in order to punish Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Those assets remain seized, but we need to take the next step and repurpose them for the reconstruction of the infrastructure in Ukraine, which has been much damaged by Russian aggression. About $200 billion of those assets rest in Europe.
Canada has strong diplomatic ties to many countries in Europe; it has strong ties with the European Union, NATO member countries and individual member states. We should be using this diplomatic capacity to come to an understanding among the western alliance that we are going to repurpose the $300 billion in assets to create a Marshall-type recovery plan for Ukraine. Thus, when this war ends, the people of Ukraine can rebuild their infrastructure, join the community of democracies and rebuild their lives.
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- Mar/19/24 9:03:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to remark on the life of the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, in the hope of looking at his life as a way for us to look toward the future.
I was a young, grade 11, student at Centre Wellington District High School in Wellington County in 1988 when I joined the Conservative Party. There was an election that would take place later that fall. That spring I joined the party to campaign for my local member of Parliament at the time, who has become a very good friend, the Hon. Perrin Beatty. That was my first step into the life of politics.
I clearly remember why I joined the party. I clearly remember why I helped campaign for Perrin Beatty in 1988 as a young high school student. It was because I believed in the vision that Brian Mulroney outlined for this country. It was the free trade election that many have referenced in the House. It was a big shift in Canadian policy, the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States. In fact it was arguably the biggest shift in foreign policy in Canada in a century, since the reciprocity election of, I believe, 1911, when then prime minister Laurier argued for free trade and the Conservatives of the day argued against it and in favour of what was called the national policy. Canadians at that time decided against free trade and decided to implement a series of tariff barriers to protect domestic industry and shield it from foreign competition.
Brian Mulroney, after listening to experts in 1986 and 1987, decided that it was time to spend some political capital and convince Canadians to do away with the over 100-year-old policy that Sir John A. Macdonald had implemented, the national policy, in order to ensure our future prosperity. That is exactly what he did. The 1988 free trade election was arguably one of our only recent modern elections that has been about foreign policy, because it essentially was about Canada's relationship with the United States. I joined the party at that time as a young teenager, a high school student, because I believed in his vision, in his confidence in what this country was and could be.
When we look at the track record of the Mulroney government, we see a remarkable record. It implemented the last series of big tax reforms that we have seen. We all know about the 1971 tax reforms that were the result of the Carter commission, but many of us have forgotten the reforms of 1987 and 1988 and, subsequently, of the early 1990s. The Mulroney government took 10 federal tax brackets and reduced them to three. It eliminated a punitive 13.5% manufacturers sales tax and replaced it with a value-added goods and services tax that expert economists had been arguing for since the early 1970s, all in an effort to unleash the productive capacity of the Canadian economy. It implemented monetary policy reform at the Bank of Canada under the leadership of then governor John Crow by implementing inflation targeting of 2%, which is with us to this day. It also privatized and deregulated many industries, unleashing productivity, growth and job creation in those industries.
On top of doing all of that, it actually, over its term in government, brought the budget to an operating surplus. The reason that is significant in today's context is that it was the Mulroney government that was the last government in this country to meet our NATO 2% defence spending commitment. It was also the last time we came close to meeting the overseas development assistance goal of spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid to the world's most vulnerable and poorest.
It was also the government that was ambitious in its foreign policy when it came to the environment. It was the government that helped put in place the Montreal Protocol, which banned substances that contained chlorine and bromine, that came into effect in 1989 and that effectively helped close off the ozone hole, which continues to be repaired to this day as a result of that protocol.
It was the government that implemented what we now call the acid rain treaty, which was known as the air quality agreement, that convinced Republican President Ronald Reagan to sign on to such an agreement, as well as his successor George Bush, in order to de-acidify the freshwater lakes in much of Canada, particularly throughout the Canadian Shield, many of which had become dead lakes because they had become so acidic they no longer could support the native flora and fauna as they once did.
It was the government that introduced the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which is something near and dear to my heart as an Ontario MP, that touches on four of the five Great Lakes, Great Lakes that hold one-fifth of all the surface freshwater on the planet.
It was a government that accomplished those foreign policy goals in the environment, in defence and in overseas development assistance, all the while bringing the Government of Canada's operating budget to a surplus during the nine years it was in power.
On top of all that, the late Prime Minister Mulroney led the charge in the Commonwealth to stand up against an apartheid regime in South Africa. He was a leader in joining with allies on so many other initiatives.
Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the late prime minister Brian Mulroney was to instill in this country a confidence about who we are and what we could be. He was the prime minister who said to Canadian businesses that they can compete with the best in the world and that they do not need a tariff wall to protect them from competition, because he knew Canada, Canadians and Canadian businesses, and he knew they were excellent. He knew they could compete with the best in the world.
He instilled in our academic researchers that same kind of confidence with the initiatives he undertook to fund post-secondary education and research. He instilled in all parts of the country this idea that Canada had boundless potential and that it was only limited by our own limited horizons about what we could be.
Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was to instill in a new generation of Canadians, who would later follow him to serve in the House and who hopefully will come to serve in subsequent Parliaments, the idea that we can be the best in the world, that we can compete with the best in the world and that we can strive for and can achieve excellence.
I want to thank Mr. Mulroney for his contributions to this country. I want to particularly thank his family, Mila, Caroline, Ben, Mark and Nicolas, for the sacrifices they made over so many years and for allowing Mr. Mulroney, a father and a husband, to donate and to contribute so much to this country we call home.
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