- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Abbotsford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,571.88
- Government Page
- Mar/19/24 8:54:28 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I too want to join with my colleagues in recounting my fond memories of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
I am going to focus my speech on his colossal trade achievements on behalf of Canadians. One has to understand that, as is true for so many other Canadians, my life has been profoundly impacted by the life of Brian Mulroney.
I grew up in Vancouver and, as a young child, at nine years of age, I already knew that perhaps, one day, I would make a life in politics. Little did I know that I would end up in this place.
However, my member of Parliament, back in those years, in south Vancouver, was a fellow by the name of John Fraser. He was elected in 1972, became fisheries minister under Brian Mulroney and then, yes, became the Speaker of the House of Commons. He basically sat in the chair the current Speaker is sitting in today.
I used to admire John Fraser from a distance. He was now a cabinet minister in the Mulroney government, and I often thought that it would be wonderful to represent the constituents of my community in Ottawa someday and help shape the future of my dear country.
I went through university. I graduated with a law degree, and my wife and I moved out to the beautiful city of Abbotsford, which is still my home today.
Very quickly, these aspirations of being a member of Parliament disappeared, because my wife and I had four daughters. A member of Parliament is away from his or her family for long periods of time, 40%, 50%, 60% of the year. That is not good for raising a family, so I put those ambitions on the back burner. I got involved in local politics.
In 1983, in Abbotsford, our MP at the time was Alex Patterson. He announced that he was retiring. There was a lot of excitement in Abbotsford, because Canada needed change. Brian Mulroney represented that change.
We had a nomination contest, a very big one, with 12 different candidates vying to be the Conservative candidate in the upcoming federal election. My candidate, a man by the name of Ross Belsher, won that nomination; he went on to win the election and serve in the Mulroney government for two majority terms. He later became a good friend.
Four years later, I had the chance to manage the campaign of the other MP representing the western part of Abbotsford, a man by the name of Bob Wenman. I was able to manage his campaign successfully. He also served two terms in that Mulroney majority government.
I now had experience and was following the various issues that were playing out here in our capital city. I took note of the fact that Mr. Mulroney had a resolute character, where he identified the most important issues that needed to be addressed in Canada. One was Canada's competitiveness within the world economy. Mr. Mulroney proceeded to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States.
One has to understand that, back then, this was not necessarily universally popular. In fact, the naysayers came out. They said we were going to hollow out our economy, that Canada was going to lose its universal health care system and the Canada pension plan. Canada as we knew it would be gone; however, as we know, Brian Mulroney prevailed.
He understood what was at stake. He spent the political capital that he had, and he prevailed. Canadians today are thankful that he did. By the way, all the fears of the naysayers were put to rest, because none of those fears ever materialized.
Today we still rely on the successor to NAFTA as the most important economic agreement Canada has in the world. The reason I recount this is that when I was supporting the different candidates to be part of the Mulroney government as Brian Mulroney implemented his grand vision, a more robust and outward-looking vision for our country, little did I know back then that someday his work would intersect with mine in the House. Years later I was in fact elected to the House, and in 2011, I had the privilege and honour of serving as Canada's trade minister as the Harper government rolled out the most ambitious trade agenda our country had ever seen.
We negotiated a trade agreement with the 27 countries of the European Union, the largest consumer market in the world. We negotiated trade agreements with some of our most trusted Asia-Pacific partners in the TPP. We negotiated trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Peru, and numerous investment agreements. The bottom line is this: The tone that had been set by Brian Mulroney and the work he had done in achieving the momentous and historic free trade agreement with the United States, and then later bringing Mexico into our North American partnership, would pay huge dividends as Canada continued to look outward at all those opportunities Canadians could have as we engaged in the global marketplace.
He was a visionary, and I am so grateful I had the opportunity to benefit from his work. Today we benefit from the elimination of trade barriers, tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers, as we look outward. Canada today benefits from a comparative advantage as we do business around the world. Today Canadian companies have opportunities they would have never had if were not for Brian Mulroney.
Let me close by saying that Brian Mulroney intuitively understood that he would be setting the stage for our country. He set the stage for subsequent governments to expand on the golden opportunities that he so deftly and courageously negotiated. Today our prosperity depends on freer and fairer trade with the world.
We who followed Prime Minister Mulroney rode on the shoulders of a giant, a political giant and an economic giant. More than that, it can truly be said of him that Canada has lost one of its great Canadians. We all owe him and his family a debt of gratitude. To Mila, Caroline, Ben, Mark, Nicolas, their spouses and children I say thank you for sharing their husband, father and grandfather with us.
Rest in peace, Prime Minister Mulroney.
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Madam Speaker, at least this question relates, although obliquely, to the Investment Canada Act.
With respect to the Nexen transaction, prior to that point in time, Canada had absolutely no rules about how state-owned enterprises could invest in Canada or if they even should be investing in Canada. When that transaction came forward and cabinet had to review it, we said to hold it because with this transaction, there were no rules for us to be guided by. Therefore, Stephen Harper at that time articulated a clear set of rules for when countries like China or state-owned enterprises from countries like China, Russia and Iran, which are hostile actors, want to invest in Canada. We established the first set of rules for that, and of course, that—
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Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to speak to this implementation bill for the modernization of the Ukraine free trade agreement.
I always welcome opportunities to talk about trade. It is one of my passions, which is why I was somewhat disappointed by the disparaging remarks made by my colleague from Winnipeg North regarding the previous Conservative government's record on trade, especially Stephen Harper's focus on trade as the linchpin of Canada's economic strategy.
During the Harper years, the government set an unprecedented pace for negotiating trade agreements. When the Conservative government was first elected back in 2006, Canada had trade agreements with five countries: the United States, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica and Israel. By the time we were finished some nine years later, we had free trade agreements with 47 additional countries, an astounding number. That included the Canada-Europe free trade agreement. It included the TPP, which morphed, of course, into the CPTPP. It also included South Korea, which was a very difficult negotiation but was successfully concluded.
One of the agreements that former prime minister Stephen Harper really wanted to get done was between Canada and Ukraine. Even back in 2010, Ukraine was facing difficult challenges. It had a very weak economy and was struggling in trying to deal with Russia. The Prime Minister at the time, Stephen Harper, said the government was going to negotiate a trade agreement with Ukraine that would be unique in that the outcome would be asymmetrical. What that meant is that the benefits flowing each way were not necessarily going to be equal or balanced, at least at the beginning. The phasing in of market access and the elimination of tariff barriers would be done on a differentiated basis so that the outcome was not a quid pro quo in the perfect sense of the term. The Conservatives did that because we wanted to give Ukraine a leg up and help Ukraine re-establish itself as economically viable and strong.
I should indicate that I will be splitting my time with the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.
When the former Conservative government negotiated the trade agreement, the negotiations started in 2010 and were concluded in 2015. We left office in 2015. These agreements sometimes take a number of years to come into force, so the agreement came into force in 2017 and has served Ukraine well. Our trade with that country has increased. It was not completely unexpected that when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, trade flows declined. In fact, the current government and Ukraine stopped negotiating for a while because of the invasion by Russia into Ukraine.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and made sense out of the fact that Ukraine still needed to move forward economically and put in place the economic structures that would allow it to be successful. Negotiations were then recommenced in 2022, and here we are, a year later, in a position to pass the implementing legislation.
The purpose of modernizing this free trade agreement is that the free trade environment around the world, the playing field, is evolving rapidly. Some things are happening that are not necessarily good. For example, the world is becoming more protectionist. We are putting up more and more tariff and non-tariff barriers.
The United States, under Donald Trump, turned inward. In fact, members may recall that it was former president Donald Trump who pulled the U.S. out of the TPP negotiations. Why? I do not know. He was running for office. I suppose he saw it as politically beneficial.
The whole premise for the TPP was to take advantage of what is called comparative advantage. Every country has its own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to manufacturing goods and delivering services. If we can take the strengths of each country and cobble them together into a coherent trade strategy, we can ensure that the outcome for partner countries is optimal.
Unfortunately, the United States has pulled out, and since that time, it has really turned inward. It is not negotiating free trade agreements. When we go to the World Trade Organization, we notice that large countries, such as Brazil, China, South Africa and India, often block consensus on trade liberalization.
This causes us to reconsider how we engage with the world and open up new opportunities for Canadian companies to do business abroad and expand exports. That is why this agreement with Ukraine, which was negotiated under the former Conservative government led by Stephen Harper, is now being modernized. Many of these factors that were not in play back when we first negotiated this agreement now call for us to update the agreement and modernize it.
For example, there are 11 new chapters included in this agreement. There is a chapter on cross-border trade in services. There is a chapter on investment, which is very important. There is a chapter on temporary entry for business purposes, to facilitate the travel of business people back and forth between our countries. Financial services are covered, as is telecommunications. There is a chapter on small and medium-sized enterprises.
There is also a chapter on digital trade, because digital trade has evolved so quickly that it has left a lot of our trade agreements behind. One of the reasons that our free trade agreement with the United States was updated is that we had no chapter on digital services. People are doing business online now. Amazon has become an obscenely profitable company. Why? It is because of online purchasing, which is digital trade. There is a separate chapter on that.
There is a new chapter on how labour and workers will be treated, and the high standards that both countries want to set. There is also a chapter on the environment.
The bottom line is this: We as Canadians need to step up and stand in the gap for Ukraine. Canada has a large Ukrainian diaspora that expects us to partner with Ukraine in its time of need. That is what this agreement does. That is what the original trade agreement did.
In my home city of Abbotsford, many Ukrainians have fled their home country and made their home, or at least their temporary home, in Abbotsford. We now have something called the Ukrainian village, which is reinforcing why it is so important for all of us to work together with our Ukrainian diaspora and with the people of Ukraine to put in place a trade agreement and structure under which the Ukrainian economy can be lifted back up. Both of our countries can benefit from that.
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Madam Speaker, I am very proud of the Harper years. During the Harper years, of course, the globe experienced an economic crisis that Canada also had to address. The member knows that Canada was the last country in the G7 to enter that global recession and the first to emerge from it. This occurred because of the management of Stephen Harper. I am very proud of our accomplishments.
By the way, the member is right that, in 2015, we left the Liberal government a surplus of $2 billion. We had balanced budgets. Since that time, the Liberal government has been unable to achieve balanced budgets. In fact, the deficits this government has incurred are actually atrocious when we look at the generational debt that has been created for my children and my grandchildren and for his.
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Mr. Speaker, I quote:
...let me be very clear. We are absolutely determined that our debt-to-GDP ratio must continue to decline and our deficits must continue to be reduced. The pandemic debt we incurred to keep Canadians safe and solvent must [and will] be paid down.... This is our fiscal anchor. This is a line we will not cross.
Who said that? It was our finance minister. A year ago, she made that bold statement, said those bold words, when she proclaimed to the world that Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio would be Canada's anchor and that she would not cross the line of allowing it to increase.
Here we are a year later. Can we guess what happened? Our finance minister took a big step across the line. The issue for Canadians is this: Whom do they trust to manage this country's finances?
We asked for three things. We asked that the war on work and lower taxes for workers be ended, that the inflationary deficits that are driving the sky-high cost of living be ended and that the gatekeepers be removed from home construction across Canada so Canadians can have their dream of home ownership restored. None of those three requests were followed through on by the Liberal government.
I want to touch on a couple of issues, including affordability and inflation, the problem of uncontrolled spending, the staggering cost of government and, finally, economic performance. I do not know if I will have enough time to cover all those issues, but I will do my best.
First is affordability and inflation. Taxes on everything are going up. There is a reason that Canadians should not trust the current government to manage finances. It is a tax-and-spend government under which the cost of living has skyrocketed, including the cost of groceries, gas at the pumps and home heating.
Let us not forget the cost of housing. Under the Liberal government, nine out of 10 Canadians now say that dream of home ownership has disappeared. It is a dream I grew up with. I assumed it was attainable for most, if not all, Canadians. Today, nine out of 10 young Canadians say that dream is no longer a reality for them. A down payment on the average Canadian home, the average mortgage payment and, quite frankly, the average rent payment have doubled in Canada over the last seven years under the Liberal government.
Inflation has eroded what a dollar buys. We see stagnating wages across the country. It is at the point now where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing ever greater. Those with assets are growing richer, whereas those who earn paycheques are growing poorer. We now have one in five Canadians skipping meals just to get by and have enough to eat. Let us think about that. There is a perverse situation in which the poor are going to food banks and asking for medical assistance in dying, or in other words, assisted suicide. This is not because they are sick but because they do not want to go hungry. Is that the perverse situation in which we find ourselves in Canada? The government is expanding access to medical assistance in dying, while at the same time, it is not providing the resources Canadians need to at least survive and have some kind of satisfaction in their lives.
I will talk about the problem of uncontrolled spending, which is a critical issue for this country. Today, the government is spending $151 billion more than it did in 2015, when it came to power and took over from the Harper government. That spending has created unprecedented inflationary pressures that are driving the skyrocketing cost of living for Canadians, who just cannot afford life in Canada anymore. Today, we have a deficit of $43 billion. Does everyone remember when the Prime Minister, back in the 2015 election, promised tiny deficits of no more than $10 billion? Every year since then, budget deficits have been much greater than that.
We all acknowledge that, during COVID, there had to be supports and benefits provided to Canadians to allow them to make it through that very troubling period. However, we are out of COVID now, and the deficits continue despite the government's promises to return to balanced budgets. The Minister of Finance promised we would return to a balanced budget. She promised that last year, just one year ago, and today she broke that promise. Promise after promise after promise is broken by Canada's corrupt and failed government.
The result, of course, is that over the last seven years, Canada's national debt has doubled. In fact, the government has racked up more debt than all other Canadian governments combined. That, by definition, is profligacy. That is irresponsible use of taxpayers' money. The government does not understand that we have to live within our means, the way any Canadian family has to.
I will go on and talk about the staggering cost of government. Under the current government, the federal public service has increased by nearly 31%. In seven years, over 80,000 new federal government positions have been added. I can ask an average Canadian citizen out there whether they are getting better service. Those 80,000 professionals who have been hired by the government must be providing an enhanced level of service. How are passports doing? What a failed program that is. How are visas doing? That is a failed program. Immigration is a failed program. It goes on and on and on. Service is going down, and the cost of government is going up. Who pays for it? Canadians do.
Finally, I will talk about economic performance. One thing I had hoped the government was going to include in the budget was something addressing the issue of competitiveness. We compete with other countries around the world for capital, for investment and for human resources, and we have a productivity gap in this country that continues to grow. Canadians are producing less and less product. That is undermining our national competitiveness, and it is driving inflationary pressures. Every economist will tell us that. There was nothing in the budget to address that gaping hole in our productivity.
I have had so little time to flesh out why we, as Conservatives, cannot support the budget. This is a failed budget. Canada has a failed government, and Canadians deserve better.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to talk about foreign investment, because as members may recall, in a past life in the Harper government, when we had a robust trade and investment agenda, I had the opportunity to be the trade minister. I travelled around the world to many different countries promoting Canadian investment. That is a two-way street, of course. We can talk about Canadians investing abroad, which we do, but there are also foreign companies—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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Madam Speaker, I think what my hon. colleague from the finance committee is signalling is a concern over the financialization of housing in Canada, where people see housing as simply being an investment to be profited from rather than a roof over a person's head. I do share his concern that, if we are not sensible about this, it is going to cost Canadians significantly.
However, I do take issue with his assertion that, under the Harper government, somehow housing prices also spiked. No, that is not true. Housing prices were very stable during the Harper years. We a had a slight appreciation in value over time, which is what Canadians expect. They want to see a return to stable house prices in Canada. We, as Conservatives, are capable of delivering that.
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