- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
- Conservative
- St. Albert—Edmonton
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $119,185.60
- Government Page
- Nov/6/23 3:01:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, Alberta got shafted yet again. With Liberal support collapsing in Atlantic Canada, the desperate Prime Minister gave Atlantic Canadians a pause on his punitive carbon tax on home heating while Albertans got nothing.
Today, the Liberal minister from Edmonton Centre has a choice. Will he support our common-sense Conservative motion to axe the tax on home heating or will he once again sell out his constituents to his boss, the Prime Minister?
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-34, an act to amend the Investment Canada Act, at report stage. I will get into the particulars of the bill shortly, but before I do, let me say that in a little more than an hour and a half, Liberal members across the way will have a choice. They can vote for our common-sense Conservative motion to axe the tax on all home heating, or they can do the bidding of their boss, the Prime Minister, and sell out their constituents.
These are Liberal MPs from Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. We will see whose side they are on, because their colleagues from Atlantic Canada, including the member for Avalon, received an exemption for Atlantic Canadians on home heating oil. However, it seems that all other Liberal MPs are so useless that their constituents, including my constituents, Albertans, have received nothing. We will see whose side Liberal MPs, including the member for Edmonton Centre and the member for Calgary Skyview, are on very shortly.
With respect to this legislation, when it was presented in the House at second reading stage, it was a modest bill. It was, frankly, inadequate in terms of strengthening the foreign investment review process, which takes into account the net benefit for Canada, as well as national security considerations. However, the good news is that the bill has been significantly improved thanks to four Conservative amendments that were adopted at the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, although opposed by the Liberals.
I would submit that the most important of those amendments is to require a mandatory security review for investments by foreign state-owned enterprises in which Canada does not have a trading agreement with the countries.
This legislation marks the first major revamp of the Investment Canada Act since 2009. It goes without saying the foreign investment environment has changed considerably in that time, with foreign bad actors, including Beijing, posing an increased threat to our security and sovereignty.
PRC firms work closely with Beijing's military and intelligence apparatuses to gain information about foreign companies, as well as to acquire their technology. Professor Balding, who testified at the industry committee in 2020, indicated that PRC firms are actually given a list each year of foreign assets to acquire, underscoring the threat posed by Beijing.
The fact that we have this increasing threat demonstrates that the Investment Canada Act is long overdue for an update. However, for the past eight years, the Prime Minister has been asleep at the switch, while Beijing has attacked our sovereignty, security and democracy on his watch.
Beijing has used its embassy and consulates to interfere in our elections and to target sitting members of Parliament for daring to speak up and call out Beijing's egregious human rights violations, including the genocide being perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims as we speak. This regime has set up illegal police stations to harass, intimidate and repatriate Chinese Canadians, and it is spreading disinformation on a mass scale to divide Canadians.
In the face of that, the response of the Prime Minister has been to do nothing, to turn a blind eye. Indeed, the only concrete measure that the Prime Minister took was to expel one Beijing diplomat, but only after he got caught for keeping the member for Wellington—Halton Hills in the dark about how he and his family were targeted by a diplomat at Beijing's Toronto consulate.
For the past eight years, Beijing has effectively been given the green light to acquire vast amounts of farmland. It has gained a foothold with respect to critical infrastructure and strategic resources, including minerals. Even worse than that, we have a government, under the Prime Minister's watch, that has refused to undertake national security reviews and has given the green light to Beijing-controlled enterprises to invest in Canada and acquire Canadian companies, to the detriment of Canada's national security. In so doing, it has also caused irreparable damage to Canada's reputation among our Five Eyes allies.
One egregious example of that, and I stress that there are many examples I could cite, was when the Beijing-controlled Hytera sought to acquire the B.C. communications technology company Norsat, which worked with National Defence Canada, Public Safety Canada and the Pentagon. Our U.S. ally said to put a pause on this takeover by Hytera, but the Liberal minister of the day, in his infinite wisdom, ignored the U.S. and gave the green light without any security review.
Last year, Hytera was charged with 21 counts of espionage by the U.S. This underscores the degree of recklessness on the part of the government to give the green light, not to mention the damage it has done to our reputation with our most important ally, the United States.
As bad as that is, one would think that after a company such as Hytera was facing 21 espionage charges in the U.S., it would be enough for the government to decide not to do business with Hytera. However, one would be wrong; it was not enough for the current Liberals. Eight months later, the Liberals gave the green light for a contract with the RCMP to sell technology to protect sensitive RCMP communications equipment for espionage from a subsidiary of none other than Hytera, a company charged with 21 counts of espionage. One cannot make this stuff up. It is scandalous incompetence with real national security implications.
In 2020, to make it appear that he was actually taking Beijing's interference seriously, the minister of industry announced a policy of enhanced scrutiny for investments from foreign state-owned enterprises. No sooner had he announced the policy than he disregarded it, giving the green light to another Beijing state-owned enterprise to acquire a mining company that operates the largest lithium mine in Canada. Now, all that lithium is controlled by Beijing.
In closing, let me say that when it comes to protecting Canada's national security from authoritarian states such as Beijing, the government cannot be trusted. The good news, however, is that this bill would require the reckless government to undertake the security reviews that it should have taken but did not. On that basis, it is a much stronger bill going forward, thanks to the Conservatives and no thanks to the Liberals.
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- Nov/2/23 4:20:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member said that the current NDP-Liberal government has spared no effort to make life more affordable for Canadians. Guess what: It is not working. Rent and mortgages have doubled, and there is 40-year-high inflation and 20-year-high interest rates. That is the record of the NDP-Liberal government. Meanwhile, the hon. member's constituents are being penalized by the punitive carbon tax on home heating. They will not benefit from the suspension with respect to home heating oil, which was a desperate effort by a desperate government to save Atlantic MPs.
Will the member finally, for once, stand up to his boss, the Prime Minister, and vote in support of our Conservative motion so his constituents can keep the heat on? Will he vote to axe the punitive carbon tax?
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- Nov/2/23 2:49:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last year, the NDP voted against our common-sense Conservative motion to scrap the carbon tax on home heating. The Liberals have admitted that these taxes are not worth the cost after they exempted Atlantic Canada, but, once again, they left Albertans out in the cold.
Is the Liberal minister from Edmonton going to order the NDP MP for Edmonton Strathcona to vote against the wishes and interests of her constituents, or will she be permitted to axe the tax to keep the heat on?
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- Nov/2/23 2:47:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on Monday, the NDP will have the opportunity to show who they work for: the Prime Minister or Canadians who want the tax off and the heat on. It is cold in Edmonton, yet Edmontonians are being penalized as a result of this NDP-Liberal government's punitive carbon tax on home heating.
Is the Liberal minister from Edmonton going to order the NDP MP for Edmonton Griesbach to once again vote against his constituents, or will he be permitted to vote with Conservatives to axe the tax and keep the heat on?
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to the government's fall economic statement, a fiscal and economic blueprint that falls short.
The Conservatives called on the Liberals to do two important things. First was to stop the deficit spending that is fuelling inflation and driving up the cost of living for everyday Canadians. Second was for the government to commit to no new tax hikes. After all, Canadians are facing a cost of living crisis as a result of 40-year-high inflation being driven by the Liberal government's reckless spending. Food inflation has hit double digits. One in two Canadians is $200 away from insolvency, and an astonishing 1.5 million Canadians are going to a food bank every month, which is a 35% increase from last year.
The Liberals often say that they have the backs of Canadians. Well, in the face of a cost of living crisis, the least one would expect from a government that truly had the backs of Canadians is for it to commit to no new tax hikes. However, what we learned is that those are just more empty Liberal words, because they did not do that; they did the opposite, with tax hikes that are going to hit workers, seniors, families and small businesses.
This starts with a payroll tax hike on January 1, not to be outdone by a carbon tax hike on April 1, which will further drive up the cost of essentials, including gas, groceries and home heating. The carbon tax, by the way, has done nothing to reduce GHGs, which have gone up not down under the Liberals' watch. It is a carbon tax that the Governor of the Bank of Canada has determined exacerbates inflation, causing a 0.4% increase in inflation, further worsening the cost of living crisis.
When it comes to spending, the government doubled down on its failed inflationary policies. We saw $20 billion in new inflationary spending, and that is on top of half a trillion dollars in new deficit spending over the past two years.
The Liberals will claim that this is as a result of COVID, except the Parliamentary Budget Officer has clarified that it is not and that 40% of the half a trillion dollars in spending pertains to non-COVID-related measures. The evidence of this is that after all the COVID programs and supports expired, government spending increased an astonishing 30% in just two years. The government has a spending problem.
Why all the spending? Simply put, the government measures its success on how much it has spent, as opposed to what it has delivered, and the results are not positive. Let us look at a few Liberal lowlights.
It gave $35 billion to the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which was supposedly going to leverage private sector investment to get infrastructure projects completed. However, after six years, not a single infrastructure project has been completed. After $35 billion and six years, there is not a single infrastructure project. Talk about taxpayers not getting value for their money.
The Liberals brag about spending $40 billion on housing. Has that increased the housing supply? Has that made home ownership more accessible? No. Housing prices have doubled on the Liberals' watch.
Then there is the $54-million app, the ArriveCAN scam, as it has become known, that should have cost $250,000 instead of $54 million to complete. It should have never been built in the first place given that it caused travel chaos and resulted in more than 10,000 healthy Canadians needlessly having to quarantine.
Today, there was a shocking Auditor General report that determined that $32 billion of the Liberals' COVID spending went to recipients who should not have received the money. It was $32 billion out the door and wasted. To put $32 billion in perspective, the government spends $45 billion on the Canada health transfer, so nearly three quarters of what the federal government spends on health care annually was wasted, out the door and gone.
We talk about waste and mismanagement, but the Liberal government is not one to learn lessons, because in the fall economic statement, $14.2 billion was found to be unannounced by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. There were no details about where that $14.2 billion is going. When my colleague, the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, asked the finance minister where the $14.2 billion was going, she could not say or would not say. All we know is that it is a blank cheque to who knows what. Talk about a lack of transparency. Talk about a lack of respect for the sweat-soaked tax dollars of hard-working Canadians.
For all of this spending, what do we have? We have 40-year-high inflation. If we listen to the Liberals across the way, they act as though they are bystanders to the 40-year-high inflation, except they are not. Their policies have driven it. Let us look at the facts.
To pay for half a trillion dollars of deficit spending, the Liberals, through the Bank of Canada, embarked on a policy of quantitative easing, something the Canadian government has never done before. It is essentially money printing. What happened over two years? The money supply increased by half a trillion dollars, on par with the Liberal government's half a trillion dollars in deficit spending. This is not a coincidence. What we have seen is a 27% increase in the supply of money at only a 2% rate of economic growth. We cannot have cash outbid goods and services tenfold and not have inflationary pressures, and that is precisely what has happened as a result of the government's out of control spending.
The finance minister is fond of saying she will not take lessons from the Leader of the Opposition. I would say to the Minister of Finance that she should start listening to the Leader of the Opposition, because it was the Leader of the Opposition who was among the first to sound the alarm that all of this spending was contributing to inflation. Had the finance minister listened to the Leader of the Opposition, we would not be in this inflationary mess that is pummelling everyday Canadians.
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- Nov/16/22 2:19:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the finance minister recently scoffed at Canadians when she told the CBC that the carbon tax does not add to the challenges that they face. Talk about being out of touch.
The minister should get her facts straight. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, once the Liberals triple their carbon tax, the net cost to Alberta families will be more than $2,000. This tone-deaf, downtown-Toronto finance minister should realize that, when $2,000 is added onto the bills of hard-working Albertans, it significantly adds to the challenges they face.
The minister should come down from her ivory tower, give Canadians a break and axe the tax.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary is simply wrong. I have always opposed the carbon tax. The Conservative Party has always opposed a carbon tax, and we will scrap it if elected.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-31, which is legislation styled as an act respecting cost of living relief measures. I emphasize “styled” as an act respecting cost of living relief measures, because the measures put forward in the bill can at best be described as half-measures and band-aid solutions that fail to address the root causes of the cost of living crisis faced by everyday Canadians.
The bill offers measures by throwing some money here and throwing some money there, all in a desperate effort by a desperate government to make it appear that it is doing something, anything, to address the cost of living crisis, a crisis of this Liberal government's own making. I have to say that it is a bit ironic that, even though the bill is styled as legislation to address the cost of living crisis, it would, in fact, exacerbate the cost of living crisis. It would do so because it comes with a price tag of several billion dollars that would be borrowed and would pour fuel on the inflationary fire that is at the heart of Canada's cost of living crisis.
The cost of living crisis cannot be understated. It is happening. It is real, and Canadians are hurting like never before. Inflation is at a 40-year high. It hit 8.1% in June. Inflation for essentials such as food is even higher. Grocery prices are increasing at a faster rate than we have seen in 40 years, with food inflation hitting 10.8%. When one looks at some dietary essentials, prices have gone up even more. Fresh fruit is up 13.2%. Eggs are up 10.9%. Bread is up 17.6%. Pasta is up 32.4%. I could go on. The average family of four is now spending $1,200 more this year over last for groceries. That is $1,200 more this year over last year just to put food on the table.
While members opposite and their coalition partners in the NDP will undoubtedly pat themselves on the back for handing out $500 rent cheques, which, by the way, most renters would not even qualify for, that is a mere fraction of the increased cost that Canadians are paying just to put food on the table. It underscores the severity of the cost of living crisis and the empty response on the part of this government in tackling it.
How did we get into this mess in the first place? Undoubtedly there are a number of factors, but perhaps the biggest factor is the government's reckless fiscal policies and the government's out-of-control spending. Never in Canadian history have we had a government that has spent more, borrowed more and added more debt. To put it in some context, in the past seven years, the Prime Minister has accumulated more debt than all the debt accumulated in the 148 years of Canada's history leading up to the election of this government.
The Prime Minister has added more debt than all previous prime ministers combined. That is staggering. It demonstrates a total lack of prudence and a complete recklessness on the part of the government, which has now resulted in this cost of living crisis with 40-year-high inflation. The government told us not to worry and that it can spend and spend some more because interest rates are low, until they are not.
We saw the highest increase in interest rates in a quarter of a century last summer and interest rates are undoubtedly going to go up even further. The Liberals say they had no choice because of COVID, except when one looks at the facts, the government cannot hide behind COVID as an excuse for its out-of-control spending.
Let us look at some of those facts. To begin with, the government added $100 billion in debt in its first five years in office, before COVID hit. In other words, the government added more debt during the good times, indeed, more debt than any government had accumulated during that period of time, leaving the cupboard bare.
Of the half a trillion dollars in new spending that we have seen over the past two years, this fire hose of spending, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has determined that more than 40% of that is unrelated to COVID. The Liberals say it is because of COVID, yet hundreds of billions of dollars of the half a trillion dollars of new spending, according to the PBO, is unrelated to COVID.
Then, in January, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that the stimulus spending was not serving its intended purpose anymore. The PBO effectively called on the government to stop the new spending. What was the government's response to the Parliamentary Budget Officer? It was to do exactly the opposite. The government did the only thing the government knows how to do and that is to spend other people's money, with $71 billion of new spending with Bill C-8, $60 billion in new spending with budget 2022 and now billions more dollars with this inflationary spending bill.
To pay for it all, the government, through the Bank of Canada, did something that no other government has done before, and that is quantitative easing or, in other words, the printing of money. After all of the spending, all of the debt and all of the money printing, there has been a cost. That is the cost of 40-year-high inflation. The more the government spends, the more the cost of living goes up. The more the government spends, the costlier it is for Canadians to purchase goods. Canadians are making less in their paycheques and their purchasing power is being diminished, all because of the government's reckless fiscal policies.
Although we find ourselves in this position of 40-year-high inflation, fuelled by the government's reckless spending, one must say that it ought not have been a surprise to the government that it would find itself in this place. After all, it was quite foreseeable. When we have more money chasing fewer goods, we are going to get inflation. That is called economics 101.
The leader of the official opposition, when he was the shadow minister of finance, called on the government to monitor inflation. He predicted that, if the government did not get spending under control, we would see inflation. What was the response from the finance minister and the Prime Minister? It was to completely ignore the Leader of the Opposition. They said to not worry about inflation and that, if anything, we must be concerned about deflation. How wrong they were.
I guess it is a consequence of having a prime minister who has admitted that he does not think much about monetary policy. Perhaps if he thought a little about monetary policy, we would not find ourselves and the country in this fiscal mess and the consequent cost of living crisis that everyday Canadians are enduring. If the government was serious about addressing the cost of living crisis, it would not be doing what it is doing, but it is doubling down on the same failed approach that got us into this mess in the first place, with even more spending.
What the government should be doing is heeding the advice of the Leader of the Opposition by reining in spending, by restoring a fiscally responsible policy and a sound monetary policy, by finding savings and by rooting out waste in government. There is no shortage of waste to root out.
If the Prime Minister was serious about tackling the cost of living crisis, which begins with tackling the out-of-control spending of the government, the Prime Minister would be doing what the Leader of the Opposition has called on the government to do, which is to introduce legislation such as “pay as you go”, whereby the government must find a dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending.
Some Liberals might scoff at the notion of “pay as you go” legislation, but it has worked. It has worked in the largest democracy and the largest economy in the world, that of the United States. More than 20 years ago, a Republican Congress passed and a Democrat president, Bill Clinton, signed into law “pay as you go” legislation. What was the result? It was a balanced budget for the first time in decades, and the United States paid down more than $400 billion of debt.
Do not expect the current government to implement measures such as this. Do not expect it to rein in spending. Do not expect it to reflect on its failed policies and reverse course, because, on issue after issue, the government's measure of success, as it measures success, is based upon how much it has spent.
We see this with respect to housing. The government has spent billions of dollars, more than $40 billion, on housing. Billions more were announced in budget 2022. What have been the results?
To begin with, the average Canadian is now paying roughly half of their monthly paycheque to cover their monthly housing costs. When the government came to office, the average Canadian was paying roughly 32% of their paycheque. They are now paying 50% of their paycheque. As well, housing prices have doubled. They have gone up 52% in just the past two years.
We have the most land in the G7, and yet we have the fewest houses in the G7 on a per capita basis. The Liberals can pat themselves on the back for spending all this money in housing, but when we look at the results, we have the fewest houses in the G7, among the highest prices, which have doubled under the government's watch, and now Canadians are paying half their paycheques just to put a roof over their heads. I would call that a policy of failure. Canadians certainly have not received good value for all that money that went out the door.
If the government were serious about tackling housing affordability, it, again, would be turning to the Leader of the Opposition, who has put forward a comprehensive plan to make housing more affordable so Canadians can purchase a home or rent a unit, by, among other things, tackling supply, increasing supply, by selling off a portion of the federal government's real estate portfolio to build more housing units and by incentivizing municipalities to allow more houses to be built, including tying federal infrastructure dollars to municipalities based upon new units built. These are reasonable solutions to try to address a very real problem that is impacting so many Canadians.
What is the government's solution? To hand out a $500-rent cheque. Its solution is a $500-rent cheque that does not even cover one week's rent in most Canadian cities. Not only that, more than six out of 10 renters will not even qualify for the cheque, and those who do will see whatever short-term benefit of that $500 eviscerated with the Liberals' inflation, rising interest rates and, most significant, planned Liberal tax hikes in the new year.
At a time when Canadians are paying more in taxes than in housing, transportation, food and clothing combined, at a time when Canadians are faced with 40-year-high inflation, the Liberal government has suddenly decided it is a good time to increase payroll taxes and triple the mother of all taxes, the tax on everything, the hated carbon tax, which, by the way, is contributing to inflation.
It demonstrates that the government is not serious about addressing affordability. If it were, as a starting point, it would heed the advice of the Leader of the Opposition and cancel the planned tax hikes. It will not, so we have a government that is with one hand handing out some cheques to some Canadians only to take whatever benefit away with the other hand in the way of planned Liberal tax hikes.
This legislation may be styled as an act respecting cost of living relief measures, but this is not a serious plan to address the cost of living; it is more Liberal smoke and mirrors. It is an empty PR exercise in the absence of a real plan. It is why I will be opposing the bill.
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- Mar/30/22 2:37:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the PBO has put to rest the NDP-Liberal government's bogus claim that the carbon tax is revenue-neutral. The St. Albert Legion wrote to me and said that the carbon tax will cost it $6,000 this year. That is $6,000 that could have been spent to support veterans in my community.
When will the NDP-Liberal government just admit that the carbon tax is not revenue-neutral and axe the tax?
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