- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Kelowna—Lake Country
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,412.70
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman.
I am always proud to rise to speak on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country on legislation we have before us. Bill C-11 is before us tonight at this very late hour. It would amend the Broadcasting Act.
Our constituency office has received hundreds and hundreds of emails, letters, phone calls and messages on this bill. Every time I am out in the community, people come up to me, letting me know how they do not want Bill C-11 to pass, as well as the former Bill C-10.
I think it is amazing that along with soaring gas and grocery bills and rising rent and mortgage payments, residents in my riding are letting me know that in addition to these very important topics, they are also concerned about this bill, which would affect their use of the Internet. I think it is because all of these topics affect their lives every day.
That level of attention is warranted because of what the government is proposing for this legislation to pass. It would cause unprecedented changes in how Canadians go about their daily lives online. Local residents in my community, Mitch and Lori, wrote to me to say that Bill C-11 represented the tipping point of government overreach.
Benji wrote to me to say that Bill C-11 would represent a major step back for our country.
Were Bill C-11 to pass, which it looks like it will with the Liberal-NDP coalition, those members in this House would be gifting the Liberals the power to play censor on what Canadians can see, if it does not match what they determine to be classified as Canadian content. The beneficiaries are the oldest legacy companies whose viewership has decreased. This bill would allow the government to have a policy directive implemented through actions like criteria. The government would give authority over online licensing and other matters. The only thing is that we have no idea what these would all be.
Bill C-11's twin bill, Bill C-18, would help failing legacy media companies looking for government cheques. They have found a perfect partner in the Liberals' desire for greater control of everyday Canadians' lives. A free and democratic country like Canada should never seek to empower the government with censorship powers to protect failing companies.
Canadians are rising up against the bill and against the Liberals for not listening. Bill C-11 is the government's proposed updating of the Broadcasting Act to provide the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC, the power and authority to regulate online content platforms.
The stated reasoning behind Bill C-11 is to bring the CRTC into the 21st century, while supporting Canadian artists and promoting the spread of Canadian content over that of international competition. While that may seem like a noble goal, there are reasons Canadian artists, legal experts and digital content providers are speaking out against this bill. In fact, this legislation is going to suck content creator innovation into an antiquated Broadcasting Act black hole.
There are profound questions about using the CRTC bureaucrats as online regulators, as would be granted by Bill C-11. Here I am again in this House standing against bureaucracy and government overreach. This bureaucracy, the CRTC, took over a year to implement a three-digit number for mental health emergencies, despite that action being called for unanimously by all members of this House. This organization has proven to lack accountability. It regulates the telecoms and we know that Canadians pay some of the highest rates on the planet.
The questioning we did at the industry committee last summer of the CRTC, that I was part of at the time, on the Rogers' outage was like we were questioning a telecom executive and not an executive of the regulator.
The CRTC's expertise is primarily regulating radio waves, television feeds and advertising. If this bill passes, it would also be tasked with regulating user-content generating websites, like YouTube, where users upload hundreds of thousands of hours of video content every minute but even assuming they could do it, the federal government should not be policing what will be defined as Canadian content when using social or digital media platforms.
Canadians are right to question an organization having the power to censor or impose what content will be prioritized for Canadians to see online.
Here is the most concerning part: The criteria will come later and we have no idea what the criteria will be. We are just to trust the Liberals.
A free and open Internet is the gold standard of open, democratic nations around the world. The bottom line is that what we will search for and see online will be different after the CRTC puts in place its regulations, which will change online algorithms.
The former vice-chair of the CRTC, Peter Menzies, has come out strong, all along the way of this legislation. Of this legislation from the past Parliament, to which there really are few changes in the new legislation, he said, “Overall, it ensures that going forward all Canadians communicating over the internet will do so under the guise of the state.”
Then, in November 2022, Mr. Menzies stated, “If Bill C-11 passes and Internet regulation falls into political hands, Canadians will regret it for the rest of their lives.”
Many of the very people the Liberals say Bill C-11 would help do not even want it. There was extensive testimony, at both House of Commons and Senate committees, by content creators, digital experts and professors. Without Bill C-11, Canadian artists are succeeding in making their full-time livings producing content on digital platforms with the support of fellow Canadians and viewers from around the world, receiving billions of views.
Canadian social media stars bringing their concerns to the federal government about their content being hidden because of Bill C-11's regulations found themselves ignored. Over 40,000 content creators affiliated with Digital First Canada called for the discoverability rules in Bill C-11 to be removed. The government is not listening to all of these voices.
What is discoverability? It really is about, when one searches online, what comes to the top based on what one is asking about and what one's interests are. This legislation would change discoverability, because the CRTC would come up with criteria that would rise to the top.
The Liberals have refused every offer of good faith regarding Bill C-11, not just from regular Canadians but also from the government's appointed senators. Most of the senators are independent who sent an unusually high number of amendments, after months of study, back to the House of Commons.
The minister responsible made it clear he was rejecting all amendments that attempted to restrict the powers he sought for himself and the CRTC.
Once again, this has never been about good legislation, better regulation or updating our laws. It is about control for the Liberal government.
Some Canadians have already gotten a sneak preview of what life with Bill C-11 might be like. Recently, Google announced that, because of another overreaching online law, Bill C-18, it started a test run to temporarily limit access to news content, including Canadian news content, for some Canadian users of Google.
This was not an outright ban. However, people were searching and not seeing what they did before, and that is my point here. Censorship by big government or big tech has the same results.
When I debated the government's original version of this bill in the previous Parliament, I said that Canadians did not want this deeply flawed legislation that would limit speech and online viewing.
The number has changed from Bill C-10 to Bill C-11. Sadly, everything else has stayed the same, with some minor amendments from the Senate. The most important Senate amendments have been rejected by the government.
Canadians still do not want it, but the Liberals and their coalition partners insist on passing it. It is time for a government that protects consumer choice and encourages Canadian creators instead of getting in their way.
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- Feb/7/23 12:07:58 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier.
I am very pleased to speak today to our Conservative motion to cancel the carbon tax. People will often say that our role as the official opposition is to question the government and hold it to account, but they also ask what we would do differently if we were in government. Today, our motion to immediately cancel the carbon tax would give Canadians an actionable item to help address the 40-year-high inflation that is hurting households, farmers, not-for-profits and small businesses right now. I hope that all members in the House will support this motion.
I look for every opportunity to bring the voices from my riding of Kelowna—Lake Country to Ottawa. With the debate today on the Liberals' failed carbon tax, I would like to quote Bob, who wrote to me recently. He wanted to inform me that his household had “just received our house gas bill, and we have a carbon tax of $32.24” even though his family had “installed a high-efficiency furnace”. Therefore, even when Bob takes action to reduce his carbon footprint, he still gets hit with a tax bill. There is a reason for that: The carbon tax is a tax plan, not an environmental plan. It is a classic high-tax Liberal move for the high-spend Liberal agenda.
The results of this policy are now on full display. For Canada's climate change goals, the Liberals have missed every target they set and left Canada 58th out of 64 countries on climate performance. This is according to the new Climate Change Performance Index presented at COP27 last year. However, it does not have to be this way. The U.S. does not have a carbon tax; therefore, Canadian people and businesses are at a disadvantage because they have to pay more taxes than Canada's closest trading partner does.
This Liberal carbon reduction plan is here to tax Canadians. I was speaking with a young woman recently who is a university student living in her parents' house. In addition to being stressed out for herself, she was also very concerned about her parents, which really touched my heart. She said her parents are middle class and she sees how hard they work. She said their household expenses are not keeping up, and she is worried about her parents' stress level and future retirement. After eight years, the Liberals' economic plan is to keep increasing the carbon tax, even though Canadian families, farmers, not-for-profits and small businesses are being squeezed by 40-year-high inflation and the largest jump in interest rates we have seen in a generation.
The Bank of Canada's governor, Tiff Macklem, addressed finance committee members in a letter. He said that the Bank of Canada's experts have calculated that the carbon tax is contributing to the inflation crisis. According to Mr. Macklem, removing the carbon tax on gasoline, natural gas and fuel oil would have reduced the level of inflation that Canadians are facing. However, instead of giving Canadians relief, recognizing the generational inflation crisis in our country and eliminating or even just pausing the carbon tax increases, the Liberals are once again planning to increase the tax on April 1.
This cruel April Fool’s Day increase is not a joke to the single parent who has to fill up their car to take their kids from school to appointments and extracurricular activities. It is not a joke to the small business owner who still holds over $100,000 in new debt because of government pandemic policies and who finds it harder to make payments and cover their bills every month because of inflationary cost increases. It is not a joke to the senior who sees their CPP and OAS pensions shrink compared with rising inflation, making them question whether they can afford their heating bill next month.
Richard from my riding wrote to me recently, saying, “We got our first OAS cheque of 2023. It went up $2 per month. That means we can buy half a grapefruit once a month. How do the Liberals and NDP figure that helps seniors? When you figure inflation in, we have lost money, so there goes our half grapefruit.”
Conservatives have brought the heartbreaking stories of many Canadians to Parliament. However, Liberal ministers shamefully brush them aside and continue to double down on the harmful policies that are squeezing our middle class.
This Conservative motion today is calling on the government to give people a break and immediately cancel the carbon tax.
The Liberals shrug off worry about the carbon tax hike and say that it is not a big deal because Canadians will be getting money back in rebates. In reality, despite what the Liberals claim, most Canadians will pay more in carbon tax than what they will receive back.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, a non-partisan office, has calculated that in provinces where the Liberal government has forced the carbon tax directly onto residents, most households will see a net loss in their income as a result of this tax. In provinces like B.C., which collects the carbon tax and leaves it up to the provincial government to determine if it gives any back to its people, the federal government still imposes the amount that has to be charged.
By 2030, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, some households will be paying thousands more into the carbon tax than what they will receive in rebates.
From the Parliamentary Budget Officer to the Bank of Canada and regular Canadians, it is very clear: This carbon tax is hurting Canadians, who are already struggling with a generational cost-of-living crisis. We have a housing crisis, an economic slowdown, and now, further tax increases.
For residents in my community, an increase in the carbon tax means paying more for essentials from farm to table. I want to talk about how the carbon tax affects farmers. About 45% of the land in Kelowna—Lake Country is agricultural land. Farmers across B.C. and Canada are being hit by the carbon tax, and this is affecting our food security.
Farmers know what the carbon tax does to their products. It raises the cost of growing, packaging and shipping them. This is multiplied if an agricultural product is turned into a value-added product, where the costs are added at each stage because of the carbon tax for production and distribution.
Ultimately, these businesses make less, while some costs are passed on to consumers. This continues the cycle of ongoing inflationary increases the Liberals are creating with the carbon tax.
One of Canada's top agriculture experts, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from Dalhousie University, told the agriculture committee that the cost chain will not just worsen if we continue with the carbon tax. Rather, it will collapse. Too many farmers across Canada are at risk of their farms falling apart altogether.
I should not have to explain the domino effect that this will cause on our grocery bills. We have already seen a surge of food bank usage. The Central Okanagan Food Bank reported a yearly increase of 30%, which is similar to numbers that have been reported across the country.
A family knows what the carbon tax means: a freezer less full, a fridge less stocked and a cupboard emptier. A restauranteur knows what the carbon tax means: higher costs for all their ingredients.
In my opinion, the Liberals have a clear choice to make today, as do all members in this House. They can continue with their activist, inflationary agenda of increasing carbon taxes, which has been proven not to work since the Liberals have not met any of the greenhouse gas emission goals.
Alternatively, they can acknowledge that after eight years of Liberal policies, they are causing inflation to be as high as it is and that they need to reverse course on their inflationary policies, which are crushing Canadians' pocketbooks and spirits.
There is hope. A Conservative government will put people first.
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Madam Speaker, first, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to split my time with the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise on behalf of the residents of Kelowna—Lake Country.
Just as a reminder, I am splitting my time with the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.
I will lay out some of the issues with the Liberal child care bill, Bill C-35, that will need to be addressed.
I thank those who work in the child care system and who look after our children.
To be clear, this is not a child care strategy. In my province of British Columbia, a 2019 survey found that the greater Vancouver area, represented by several cabinet ministers in the Liberal government, had only enough child care spaces for 18.6% of children in the metro region. That is bad enough in urban areas of our country, but in many rural regions of Canada large child care centres do not exist at all. This bill offers rural parents or those who need flexibility nothing. Again, it chooses to ignore the simple fact that low-cost child care is not possible if child care resources are not accessible to begin with.
However, the rural-urban divide is not the only issue with this legislation. There is a serious concern about the complete lack of focus on ensuring that child care spaces go to those most in need instead of creating advantages for the already well off. After all, affordable child care should be prioritized for those who otherwise cannot afford it.
There is no means test. Under the current Liberal proposal, someone who works on Bay Street with children already in day care will get access to $10-a-day child care the same as a lower-income family. People who do not need to work have the same access as a family who needs to work.
There is no flexibility for families who are not working the weekday office job hours and who currently have different types of child care options that work for their shift work or their schedules. That is because this legislation dogmatically preferences not-for-profit and government child care over operators working and running child care centres in the private sector. These are people, most often women, who work in their homes, who have small businesses and who often have young children.
When my son was a baby I found someone to come into my home part time. That was back when maternity leave was only six months, and it was hard to work with such a young baby. Having someone come in was expensive, and I was not making a lot at the time. However, it was the only option I had at the time as few child care centres took infants that young or would allow me flexibility with part-time needs and hours. Christina became like family.
Anyone who has this type of scenario would not be applicable in this legislation. When my son was a toddler he was in the home of a wonderful woman, Pauline, who had a group of kids. Because I needed flexibility in child care due to the type of contract work I was doing at the time, the larger, structured child care centres did not work for what I needed.
The scenario of in-home small business child care does not meet the priorities of the government's legislation. Instead of giving parents freedom to determine what child care works best for their children and their lives, the government has opened the door for a two-tiered framework of child care. Under the government's plan, only not-for-profit and government child care spaces have open access for parents to utilize the Liberals' program as the legislation states is the priority. That is not universal access and the legislation does not include strategies to address spaces or labour.
We know there are labour shortages. About a year ago, in Kelowna, it was announced by one centre that they had to say goodbye to about 24 children, because they could not find the staff to meet the government licensing requirements. That left families scrambling with little ability to find a new location with waiting lists being long.
A Vancouver operator of 300 spaces said, “In the past two years, we've had to close programs temporarily, whether it's for a day or two, or shorten hours for a week”. A report on child care recruitment published in January 2023 found that in British Columbia, 45% of child care centres are losing more staff than they can hire, and 27% of child care employers turned away children because of a lack of qualified staff.
To adequately staff the Liberals' proposed plan in British Columbia, they found that 12,000 new child care employees were required. Still, current recruitment and retention programs are failing with several thousand employees behind target.
When the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development put this bill forward, she said its purpose was to enshrine the Liberals' record on children and family into law. However, their record on this file is something that they are not strong champions of. Canada was once ranked 10th among the OECD for the well-being of children, but under the present government, Canada has fallen sharply to 30th place.
We will work on this side of the House to try to make this legislation better and more accessible to parents who want and deserve the freedom to decide what kind of child care works for their family. Looking beyond this, a future Conservative government will work hard on ways to increase child care workers and spaces and to ensure there are stable, good-paying jobs for families to keep more of the money they earn in their pockets.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.
I want to start today by thanking child care workers for the important work they do.
In reading the government's new legislation, Bill C-35, I have to say that I am disappointed. Once again, we are seeing the Liberal government choosing to put forward buzzwords and campaign slogans rather than crafting the substantive solutions parents in my community of Kelowna—Lake Country are asking for when it comes to serving their child care needs.
To be clear, this is not a national child care strategy and not a national child care program. It is strictly to subsidize, through the provinces, some families already in the child care system using certain types of child care deemed a priority by the Liberals. It is not universal. This bill in its current form is another missed opportunity for Parliament to work toward creating and staffing actual child care spaces where families could place their children. This bill does not seek to shorten long waiting lists.
What is particularly disappointing is that it is hand-picking the types of child care that are acceptable to the government. While I am disappointed, unfortunately I cannot say that I am surprised. The promise of universal child care has long been an over-promised and never-delivered commitment of the Liberal Party. How do we know? It is because it has promised it since most members of this House were children themselves.
In 1984, the former Liberal prime minister John Turner ordered a national task force to study and implement a federal child care program. It was never created. In 1993, the then future Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien promised in the Liberal red book a national child care program, and no program was ever delivered.
In 2004, after 10 years of doing nothing on child care, the then new Liberal prime minister Paul Martin promised to spend $5 billion on a national child care program in a last-ditch effort to save his government. Despite winning the 2004 election, no program was ever created.
Canadians are not fooled by the Liberals' over-promised yet under-delivered way they manage. We will continue to hear from the government that it has lowered the cost of child care in Canada, and it has for some, but there needs to be a number of updates made to this legislation to make child care accessible and inclusive, allow parents the freedom to do what works for their family, and to actually make a difference for many. The Conservatives will be working on these.
Just as the Liberals have allowed Canada's once ample supply of children's cold and cough medicine to dwindle to levels so low that parents must now make supply runs to American pharmacies, so too have they allowed a chronic shortage of child care spaces across Canada over the past eight years of their time in government.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees studied the shortage and found that, “in many communities there is only one child care space available for every three children who need it, and waitlists are long.”
The Quebec child care system, the model from their provincial cousins that the federal Liberals have long said they wish to copy, at last count had a wait-list of 51,000 spaces. We know, listening to those operating private child care centres, that many have the resources and space to take more children, but they are continually hampered by the same labour shortage issues repeatedly ignored by the current government in many sectors of our economy and social support networks. Looking again at British Columbia, we see stories of day cares of all structures reducing their hours and turning away new children because of staff shortages.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to request unanimous consent to split my time with the member for Saskatoon West.
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- Sep/29/22 4:16:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lethbridge.
I am happy to be here today supporting our opposition motion, which states:
That, given that the cost of government is driving up inflation, making the price of goods Canadians buy and the interest they pay unaffordable, this House call on the government to commit to no new taxes on gas, groceries, home heating and pay cheques.
I want to bring the voices of my constituents from Kelowna—Lake Country to Ottawa, not the other way around. Over many months this year, I have sent out several surveys to hear how people are struggling with the government's 40-year-high inflation. I had thousands of responses. Robyn in Lake Country said, “People can't afford to eat, to get to work, to take care of the basics for their families in this economy.” Rollie in Kelowna wrote that the government must “slow down on their spending. They're putting people in the poor house. It's a real shame.”
Tax relief is what my constituents are asking for, and the vast majority agree. With the record gas prices we are seeing today in British Columbia, that relief is more desperately needed than ever.
Recently, as a member of the industry committee, I questioned Aaron Wudrick, director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. In response to my questioning about Canada's regulatory burden, high taxes and expensive housing affecting young adults, Mr. Wudrick said, “In short, they're discouraging.”
I agree with his assessment, especially after speaking with many young people in Kelowna—Lake Country and across B.C. over the summer. They feel hopeless. They feel hopeless when seeing the value of their paycheques decline, hopeless in finding the money they need to start a business and hopeless in finding an affordable apartment, let alone ever dreaming of owning a home of their own.
International students often pursue education in high-demand fields. They have lost hope in being able to afford to live in Canada. We have a labour crisis in everything from health care to farming to tourism. The government's high-spend, high-cost agenda will see us lose their ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
A recent Leger poll showed that 46% of young immigrants say they are now less likely to stay in Canada. When asked why they would not recommend Canada to future immigrants, the top two reasons given were the cost of living and the current government.
Higher taxes are not the solution either. How do we know? It is because under the last Conservative government, we oversaw the lowest federal tax burden in over half a century, nobody needed to wait month after month for passport renewals past deadlines and homes were half the price. Furthermore, it should come as no surprise that new taxes, as well as presently automatic tax increases, would have a significant impact on small business owners.
As the shadow minister for small business recovery and growth, I have had the opportunity to speak with numerous workers and owners of small businesses in Kelowna—Lake Country and across the country to hear their perspectives, the challenges facing them and what needs to be done, or not done, by the federal government to allow them not just to survive but to succeed. We have a 40-year-high inflation rate, labour shortages, supply chain issues, increasing business debt and federal tax increases on businesses, and they are already increasing costs at an unmanageable level for small businesses.
Small businesses have been hit particularly hard as a result of the volatile open-and-shut cycle over the last two and a half years, with 54% of businesses still reporting below-normal revenues. About 62% of small businesses are still carrying debt from the pandemic, according to the CFIB. It also notes that small business insolvencies are on the rise, with a reported one in six businesses considering closing their doors. Downtowns and business districts have been hollowed out, with small businesses in those areas struggling to even keep their doors open given limited customers.
I spoke to a BIA organization this week, a business improvement area organization, that often represents main streets. It is saying that now the heart of some of its issues deal with mental health and addiction crises. It also said its members are burdened with debt. They are having a very challenging time.
Many are barely hanging on. It is nothing short of cold-hearted to increase multiple taxes that would further hit their bottom lines. I know what a small business owner is going through, as I have been one myself. Small business owners have not forgotten the 2017 Liberal-proposed tax changes that party attempted to ram through on small businesses, which would have been devastating to entrepreneurship in our country. These tax changes would have had “significant, unintended effects on all SMEs, particularly middle-class, family businesses.” Those are the words that came from the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade back in 2018.
Thanks to the advocacy of small businesses, chambers of commerce, BIAs, boards of trades and Conservatives pressing the issue day in and day out, the government finally backed down. This just shows the government's mindset.
What are the main taxes that are going up soon? We have the payroll tax, the excise tax and the carbon tax, which affects the cost of everything. Dan Kelly at the CFIB put it well recently in explaining why a payroll tax is, in fact, a tax. As he put it, “1. They are mandatory, with penalties for not paying. 2. While there are benefits that come back to some of those paying premiums, they are not proportionate to the amount paid. 3. For the business that pays 60% of EI & 50% of CPP costs, they are unquestionably payroll taxes as the benefits are for workers, not employers.”
Regardless of what the government says and tries to obfuscate, even the Prime Minister has called these payroll taxes, and many other Liberals have as well. These taxes are going up every year, hitting the paycheques of workers and the bottom lines of small businesses, and should not be increasing during a time of 40-year-high inflation.
The excise tax is an escalator tax, which is a fancy bureaucratic word for “automatic”. It is a tax that does not have to come to Parliament to increase. It automatically goes up. The excise tax is on beer, wine, ciders and spirits. These industries raise concerns about this every year while the government ignores them, and 95% are small businesses.
Every year these taxes go up automatically, hitting our local producers with more taxes, as well as the retailers and restauranteurs who buy these products and who then have to pass on the price to people who buy them. This ultimately adds further to inflation. As Restaurants Canada said, the government introducing the automatic escalator in 2017 “made an already bad situation worse” for restaurants.
Recently at the industry committee, we heard from Beer Canada, which called excise tax increases “counterproductive and harmful” to their sector, and “simply not sustainable over the long term.” Let us not forget this escalator is tied to the CPI and, therefore, inflation, meaning it will go even higher next year, adding more to inflation. It is set to increase again on April 1.
On the carbon tax, after the government said it would cap it at $50 a tonne, it is now planning to bring it up to $150 a tonne, more than three times what was initially promised and at a rate that small businesses are still disproportionately paying into without the appropriate rebates to offset it. Carbon tax increases make the cost of fuel, food and goods shipped anywhere more expensive.
It is time for the government to recognize that adding taxes only increases costs and inflation. The government has provided no solutions to address inflation itself, and now, on top of 40-year-high inflation and interest rate hikes, small businesses' bottom lines are being further squeezed with higher costs for imported goods due to the Canadian dollar falling to the lowest point in almost two years.
Stop the pain. Stop the tax increases.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Red Deer—Lacombe.
This summer, I spoke with thousands of constituents from Kelowna—Lake Country in person, over the phone, on their doorsteps and at community events. I met with small businesses, farmers and not-for-profits. The struggles I heard from people and small businesses are real and extensive.
I heard about the unmanageable cost of living, which includes costs on housing, fuel and food, overall inflation, labour shortages, travel restrictions such as the ArriveCAN app, ongoing federal mandates, crushing debt for small business, supply chain issues, and delays in every federal government department, whether it be immigration and citizenship, CRA, benefits or passports.
It is evident that the legislation before us, Bill C-31, does nothing to address any of those issues and nothing to address the cost of 40-year-high inflation. For the Liberals to introduce this thrown-together legislation that will only boost inflation, and which will see its benefits evaporate with the ever-rising cost of food and gas, demonstrates the government's detachment from working families, small businesses and seniors.
I remember as a kid those tough times 40 years ago at the end of the last Trudeau government. History is repeating itself. I remember eating lots of wieners, white bread and Spam. What got us through were two sets of grandparents who had big gardens. Families are suffering today.
I mailed out a survey to residents of Kelowna—Lake Country to get their feedback about the cost of groceries and gas prices. I received thousands of responses. Food costs can vary regionally, and most people said their food bills had actually gone up more than 20%. To fill their vehicles was over $50 more per fill than last year.
Many people gave specific examples of their personal situations. I will give just a small sampling. John, who needs his pickup truck for work and who says he has good mileage on his truck, will be paying $513 a month more for gas than last year. Jeff in Lake Country wrote to me that he is getting close to having to choose between gas or food, saying that is “not a good spot to be in.”
Lea in Kelowna says she is forced to go to food banks for the first time in her life. Ken wrote that his family is presently helping a person who is living in his car because he cannot afford rent. This person works as a delivery driver, but gas prices may now prevent him from working entirely.
Paulette wrote to me and said, “I am a recently retired as a nurse. I am pretty tight with my budget. I have been able to keep my bank account at the same float number. Since March of this year, I have noticed incremental decline in my bank balance to the tune of $400 a month. It doesn't take long on a fixed income to be alarmed in seeing consistent decline.”
How is a retiree like Paulette supposed to deal with a $400 loss each month? How is a new family or a young worker supposed to deal with it? They will not if we maintain the government's high-spend, high-cost NDP-Liberal approach. We need to stop the money printing, stop the spending and stop increasing taxes, all of which are creating inflation.
Legislation like Bill C-31 will not reverse the ever-increasing costs of our basic necessities. While the government says this legislation will tackle the real issues of Canadians in need of relief, the value of these supports on people's budgets will rapidly proceed to nothing. They will evaporate quickly if the government does nothing to rein in its own costs.
Conservatives have been talking about precisely where the government could reduce costs, which would directly help to reduce the inflation that is shredding the value of people's paycheques and household budgets. It could cancel its $35-billion Canada Infrastructure Bank, which has yet to build a single road, bridge or rail line. It could drop the ArriveCAN app entirely today. It could save $25 million right now and scrap what I call the “ArriveCAN'T” app.
The government could use a one-for-one rule: For every dollar spent, find a dollar in savings. It could cancel all planned tax increases, including payroll tax hikes scheduled for January 1 and tax hikes on groceries, gas and home heating scheduled for April 1. It could cancel the escalator excise tax, which is also scheduled for April 1.
Leaving those scheduled increases on the books will be catastrophic to Canadian and small business bank accounts. Let us change course today. The NDP-Liberal bill would only raise Canadian costs, and this is obvious.
Economists are in agreement on this as well. Robert Kavcic, senior economist at the Bank of Montreal, was quoted recently on the government's proposal as saying, “We all know that sending out money as an inflation-support measure is inherently…inflationary.”
Andrey Pavlov at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business said, “If we have high inflation and that inflation continues, that assistance isn’t going to do very much to help anyone, including the recipients of that assistance. It’s just not going to be enough.”
Derek Holt, vice president and head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank, could not have been clearer: “Any belief that the government's proposals will ease inflationary pressures must have studied different economics textbooks.”
Let us not forget that this legislation is before us only because of the summer rush that the members of the costly NDP-Liberal coalition put on themselves, once again trying to make a parliamentary body of law-making into a short-order kitchen of quick fixes.
The legislation bears all the hallmarks of a bill not thoroughly thought through. If the government members even took the time to glance at most rental listings in British Columbia, they would know that a $500 cheque would represent not much more than a single week's worth of rent.
According to rentals.ca, British Columbia had the highest average rental rate, at $2,578 per month in August 2022. Even if the bill passes, six out of every 10 renters will not qualify for it. In Kelowna—Lake Country, the government's record on rent is clear. According to the CMHC, the average one-bedroom apartment was roughly $900 a month in 2015, when this government was elected. Fast-forward to 2022 and the rental prices have increased 61%, to $1,475.
Instead of a bill that would expand the rental market or offer my constituents an affordable path to home ownership, the government chooses to raise costs even further.
For the government to call the other half of this legislation a dental program is not quite accurate. A program would typically feature an application process. It might coordinate with many provincial, low-income dental care programs. It would actually be a program. Instead, what the government offers is an attestation.
We have seen this attestation process with no verification or cross-referencing before. We have not been told how the CRA will administer this program or what extra staff they will need to administer it. All the government has said is to remember to keep one's dental receipts.
Will people be subject to having the value of this benefit clawed back if the government or the CRA deems them not applicable? My constituency office was inundated with people being told they had to pay back CERB. The government just has not learned.
Once again, the Liberal-NDP coalition is clear on how it wants the government to run: Allow inflation to rise unchecked, take more from Canadians' pockets, circulate it through the government's bureaucracy, and then write cheques that will give only a fraction of it back. It is like a family's financial situation is a sinking boat, and the Liberals throw them a teacup to bail out the boat instead of patching the holes.
We need to put people first.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the member for Peace River—Westlock.
I am rising today to speak on behalf of my constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country to this motion to close debate on Bill C-11. It is a bill that the government continues to insist should not be of concern to Canadians, yet barely allows it to be debated. The previous iteration, Bill C-10, had massive backlash last year, and damning testimony and expert analysis of the Liberal bill, so we can see why the Liberals want to shut down scrutiny as quickly as possible this time around.
Bill C-11 is a piece of legislation that the government continues to insist is entirely different from last year's Bill C-10. After reviewing the legislation, I can confirm there is definitely an 11 and not a 10 in the title of the legislation. Unfortunately, the rest of the deeply flawed Bill C-10, which would limit what Canadians could see, share and view online, has been sadly left in place.
The government can say that it listened and that regulating user-generated content is off the table; however, legal experts and digital content producers can read, and what they are reading in this legislation is still deeply concerning.
The government is moving to shut down debate, shut down committee study and prevent dozens of witnesses from sharing their thoughts and concerns on this bill. Probably the most recent conflict comes between the heritage minister and comments from the current CRTC chair, Ian Scott. Mr. Scott confirmed that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, CRTC, would be able to regulate user-generated content under the current iteration of Bill C-11.
The government has stated that this legislation intends to support Canadian artists, promote the spread of Canadian content over that of international competition and update the Broadcasting Act to cover the rise of digital streaming content. None of these goals is wrong. Our Canadian arts and culture sector is flourishing and deserves our support. More Canadians than ever are making films about Canada. More Canadians are making music than ever in Canada. More video games are being made here in Canada, not to mention e-books, podcasts and YouTube content.
Canadians are producing and watching great Canadian content. Sometimes they will see it through Disney+, and occasionally getting that content made will involve international investment. Under the current rules, this may make it un-Canadian. It is not what the government would prefer for Canadians to watch.
A constituent of mine recently wrote to me with his concerns on Bill C-11 and the threat of censorship that is always present when a government looks to prefer one source of information over another. He told me the story of tenants of his who had grown up in the Soviet Union. He wrote:
Some time ago, a couple from Russia rented our basement suite. We got to know them well and had many discussions over how Russia-controlled media impacted them.... We asked, in your opinion, what was the biggest lie ever told to the Russian citizens. Slava didn’t hesitate: “That Russia won the 72 Canada Russia hockey series!” We were astounded… how could they not know that Canada won? We had the videos. They said the government simply eliminated the last four minutes of the winning game and controlled the narrative.
They only saw what the government wanted them to see. Bill C-11 gives the Canadian government the powers to do this: it has broad powers that could be used to censor what Canadians can see and say online according to the government’s preferences.
If the government is genuinely interested in updating the Broadcasting Act, let us work together to do that. If the government wants to ensure that Netflix, Spotify and YouTube are not playing by different rules than Canadian producers are, Conservatives are happy to help them in that. Canadians want to see digital platforms pay their fair share, but do not trust Bill C-11 to do it with all the extra censorship power.
To quote very specifically from the bill itself, Bill C-11 seeks to bring platforms like YouTube under the following content regulations. It says the CRTC:
May, in furtherance of its objects, make regulations
(a) respecting the proportion of time that shall be devoted to the broadcasting of Canadian programs;
(b) prescribing what constitutes a Canadian program for the purposes of this Act...
The government says it is looking to bring the Broadcasting Act into the 21st century, but applying those regulations to user-driven content platforms is trying to bring digital content into the 20th century. As my colleague for Calgary Nose Hill put it, “It is like playing an MP4 on a VHS machine: It is just not going to work.”
Regulating digital platforms and social media is beyond the scope of the CRTC's mandate and abilities. Right now, Canadians are succeeding on digital platforms with the support of fellow Canadians. People of every background in this country are making their full-time living creating digital content while receiving billions of views. We know Canadians are succeeding in these spaces.
Social media platforms already have reach within Canada. Why would the Liberals fork over $600,000 in taxpayer dollars in 2021 to pay for social media Internet influencers to sing the Liberals' messages if online platforms were so ineffective? This does not include the money the Liberals spent on the various digital platforms themselves, only to pay influencers. This was only discovered through investigations by Conservatives.
Governments should not look to discourage Canadians from watching Canadian YouTubers just because they make content abroad. We should not look to saddle the success of homegrown content makers with checklists to prove the Canadianness of their videos. Over-regulation is the swiftest eliminator of innovation. It benefits the previously established who may be too out of touch to keep up with the pace of change. Canadian digital content creators are on the cutting edge of new media. They do not need Bill C-11 to succeed, and they have proven that. Canadians are already watching what they are making. They do not need the federal government to tell them to, or to have the CRTC analyzing every online post to see if it is something that meets whatever rules it comes up with and is worthy of its view.
This is truly unbelievable. The Liberals are also refusing to release the policy directive they are giving the CRTC. The only ones who are seeking the government's assistance really are the legacy media companies that once enjoyed monopolies on television and radio. They did not innovate to the new media landscape, and are now looking for backdoor bailouts in partnership with a government seeking greater control of the lives of everyday people.
Any government looking to impose new regulations on a service so vital to everyday life as our digital devices would need to first demonstrate that its actions are not self-interested and that it would not choose to discriminate based on the viewpoints of those it is seeking to regulate.
The current government has proven that it cannot be trusted to be fair and equitable. In the past two years, we have seen two public protest movements that blocked public infrastructure get two entirely different responses from the same Liberal government. Of course, I am talking about the 2020 rail-line blockades, which brought pretty much all passenger and commercial rail, including from ports, to a dead stop for almost three weeks across the entire country and laid off 1,000 people. That is compared to the 2022 trucker convoy border closures at a handful of border crossings for a few days of that critical infrastructure.
Even though there was damage to infrastructure during the rail blockades, the Liberals worked with law enforcement and met with protesters. When the Liberals disagreed with trucker protests over mandates, they turned to the Emergencies Act to give themselves new powers, which were proven not to be necessary as our border crossings had already been reopened under our existing laws. The Liberals froze Canadian bank accounts without verification, which is something just admitted by the Department of Finance. The Liberals were called out by the Privacy Commissioner for failing to notify or ensure the privacy of Canadians whose cell phones were tracked by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Nothing can make the government's track record of secrecy, control and division clearer today than to repeat the same tactic of cutting short debate it used in the prior piece of legislation, Bill C-10, in the previous Parliament.
This motion to impose an arbitrary deadline to send the bill back to the House does not help the Liberals' case. The House is not a short-order kitchen. There is no need to push on law-making, especially on a piece of legislation such as Bill C-11, which has so many holes of uncertainty that its symbol should be a piece of Swiss cheese. However, as the Prime Minister has constantly proven, the work of Parliament is secondary if he can move up his vacation plans in Tofino. As currently written, and with the government having no interest in hearing from witnesses or entertaining amendments, I cannot support stopping debate on this poorly thought-out, full of holes, overreaching piece of legislation.
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- Nov/29/21 11:31:26 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-2
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka.
I rise today to speak to Bill C-2. Specifically, I want to address the government's position when it comes to the growth and recovery of our small businesses. It is disappointing that this is my first opportunity to rise in five months to debate any legislation on economic recovery because of the shutdown of Parliament.
Despite the Prime Minister stating that the election he called this summer was the most important in decades, he took an extended vacation. It is shameful that the Liberals took two months to recall Parliament. Of course, this should not actually surprise Canadians. We cannot forget that it was the same Liberal government that prorogued Parliament just last year to escape scrutiny for its ethical scandals.
When Parliament is shut down, committees cease to exist and all ongoing work in Parliament stops. When would this legislation even be going to a committee to be studied? We have no information from the government as to when committees will be reconstituted.
Prior to the election, I was sitting on the international trade committee, which was undertaking critical studies on clean-technology exports and getting COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries. Unfortunately, reports and recommendations that were going to be made to the government simply will not happen because the election was called. That is what happens when we have a Prime Minister who puts politics before country.
When the Prime Minister called an unnecessary $600-million power-grab snap election, the Okanagan, where I live, had enhanced health measures and was at the height of its wildfire season, with ash falling from the sky in Kelowna—Lake Country. Simply put, in their typical fashion, the Liberals love to be in government but they loathe governing. It is because of this series of political choices that we are continually asked to rush legislation through to make up for the failures of ministers to manage their portfolios and the House's legislative agenda. We saw this with CUSMA and the Canada-UK Trade Continuity Agreement, and earlier pandemic-relief legislation. Like a bad dream, here we are again.
Deadlines have been missed and we can bet that the Liberals will try their hardest to somehow blame a slowdown of legislation on the Conservatives. However, Canadians are smarter than that. The Liberals can only try to play the same old tricks for so long before everyone gets wise to their tactics. Canadians know that right now it is the job of the Conservatives to hold the Liberals to account.
My Conservative colleagues and I want to ensure that government legislation does not have unintended consequences. We want to ask the tough questions at committees and make solid recommendations to ensure that legislation such as this is right for our constituents and for our country.
We should have been back in the House a month ago. The Conservatives were calling for this back in early October. We wanted to get back to work here. The Liberals wanted to avoid scrutiny. I had thought that this may be because they were taking the time to develop a real plan for Canadian small businesses to recover and grow, a real plan addressing real issues for my constituents, businesses and not for profits in Kelowna—Lake Country. The Conservatives have been writing to ministers and speaking publicly about real measures that will address the challenges facing small businesses across the country.
When budget 2021 was debated, I highlighted how the recovery support programs were not working for many businesses, and this legislation really is much of the same and does not address some of the most important issues facing small businesses, such as labour shortages, inflation, supply chain issues, hindering sales, tax increases and paying off or accessing debt. That is what happens when we have a government that does not listen to people and a government that puts headlines before policy.
Small businesses, especially micro-businesses, in the most devastated sectors are the ones with the least capacity to absorb pandemic-related disruptions and have been the most impacted and need us to focus on these important issues. To make a bad situation worse, businesses that have now started to slowly recover are facing labour shortages, as I mentioned, that could bring their recovery to a screeching halt.
The labour crisis is crippling industries in every sector in every region. According to RBC Economics, one-third of Canadian businesses are grappling with labour shortages and they expect labour shortages to get worse. Small businesses cannot continue to weather the COVID-19 pandemic without the federal government focusing on the real challenges they are facing, such as a slow economic recovery, labour shortages, rising costs and debt.
In the September 2021 report from the Business Development Bank of Canada, it states that out of a survey it conducted, 55% of entrepreneurs are struggling to hire workers they need, causing them to delay or refuse new orders; 64% say the ongoing labour shortages limit their growth; and 44% have delayed or are unable to deliver orders to clients. The government's programs simply are not working.
During the course of the pandemic, it has been reported that small businesses have also taken on nearly 170,000 dollars' worth of new debt on average. I have talked to many small business owners who have personally lent their businesses money in order for their business to survive, and this legislation would do nothing to address this potentially devastating economic issue. If the government's support programs were so successful, why are small businesses forced into higher levels of unmanageable debt?
What has become clear is that the government is failing to focus on warning signs. Its members are forgetting that it is the job of government to ensure that it creates an environment where businesses can thrive, not just survive. Reducing regulatory burdens, tackling the supply chain crisis that started before the pandemic, addressing the labour-shortage crisis through various worker visa extensions, getting people who can work back to work and halting all tax increases for businesses are just a handful of ways to focus on economic recovery. Measures like these need to be taken up urgently.
Just this past Friday, a report in The Globe and Mail said job vacancies have soared beyond one million. Statistics Canada says that nearly a fifth of all vacancies are in the hospitality sector. The government, in this debate, is choosing to boast about its recovery numbers, but members should try asking the average restaurant owner, hotel manager, farmer or construction company in my riding how they are seeing our job market. They cannot remember a time when they have needed to recruit so many workers just to keep the lights on.
The government will no doubt want to lay all these shortages at the feet of the global pandemic. However, the chief economist at the Business Development Bank of Canada recently pointed out that, “Even before the pandemic, employers had difficulties in recruiting.”
Without urgent attention to address this crisis, new and existing businesses will not have the ability to grow their reach, meet their orders or even keep existing employees on their payroll. Shortages mean fewer employees or owners trapped working longer hours, which only adds to our ongoing mental health crisis. According to Statistics Canada's most recent survey of business conditions, more than one in four businesses expects their profitability to decline before year's end. If the government does not take action to get people back into the workforce, there will not be the good-paying jobs out there in the private sector for them to go back to.
After almost two years of pandemic-related disruptions, rapidly rising inflation, serious supply chain issues, skyrocketing and automatically increasing taxes, costs and debt, international trade disputes where Canada continually ends up on the losing end and a labour shortage preventing our economic recovery, not to mention trying to maintain mental health, small businesses, the backbone of our local communities, are on the brink of collapse. For these entrepreneurs and organizations, “help wanted” has never rang more true. It is a cry to keep their entrepreneurial spirit alive. Unfortunately, the government has decided to pursue a course that would do nothing to address these underlying issues.
The Conservatives will continue to stand up for small businesses across this country. We will continue to advocate for real action that delivers concrete results. We are putting policies before headlines. I am fighting for small businesses because I have been a small business owner and know what it is like to have everything on the line.
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