- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Kelowna—Lake Country
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $131,412.70
- Government Page
- Feb/29/24 12:01:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on this important topic of child care, it is really important to mention that the government actually signed agreements with provinces previous to bringing forth the legislation. The agreements are already in place.
We are seeing the effects of those agreements. One has only to look at the headlines across the country to see the crisis in the child care system across the country and all the closures and issues that are happening. The Liberals are talking about the economic empowerment of women, when in fact many child care locations are run by women entrepreneurs who are licensed through provinces and yet are not a priority of the government. It is right in the legislation. We are seeing headlines across the country of how this is playing out, with the government not including them and not making them a priority.
Could the minister speak to this, about how the government can talk about economic empowerment for women and yet not actually have them as a priority in this legislation?
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- May/18/23 1:31:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as I mentioned at the very outset of my speech, people are in a really desperate space. It is leading to this addiction and mental health crisis.
People cannot afford to live. They cannot afford to feed themselves. They cannot afford medicines. The price of everything is going up. Inflation is affecting people's everyday lives. I hear about this in my riding. People cannot even afford their rent or mortgage. Everything has doubled. Rents and mortgages have doubled. People are getting into a very desperate space.
This is fuelling the addiction and mental health crisis. We need to deal with the economic side, while we also deal with this very serious addiction issue.
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- Apr/29/22 10:33:31 a.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise and represent the constituents from Kelowna—Lake Country. The government often likes to speak of the economic strength of immigrants who choose to make new lives here in Canada. On this, it is not wrong. Generations of new Canadians have made this country prosper.
The government also likes to make the point, again not wrongly, that immigrants will be strong contributors to ensuring that our nation, as it exits out of this pandemic, rebuilds itself economically. However, immigrants will not be able to do that if they do not choose to stay in Canada. Increasingly, we are seeing troubling signs that both Canadians and newcomers to Canada are looking to take their ingenuity, entrepreneurship and experience elsewhere, thanks to the government's high-cost, high-priced fiscal strategy.
A recent Leger poll showed that 46% of young immigrants say they are less likely to stay in Canada. The top two reasons they look to leave when asked why they would not recommend Canada to future immigrants were the cost of living and the current leadership in government. Some have come from the world's poorest, often corrupt, regions. They come to Canada to escape hostile governments and the dire economic approaches they practice.
Inflation is not a new concept to newcomers. Some have seen bad regimes dilute the value of their earned dollars, and they are seeing the early warning signs of those similarly inflating approaches here in Canada. It does not take training in microeconomics or macroeconomics to get this: $100 buys only two bags of groceries when it used to buy three.
The government continues to say that it is transitory, yet the transition has been from bad to worse. Numerous small businesses and entrepreneurs are telling me they have looked to move south of the border to find better opportunities for their own success. Those comments are not flippant. They are serious, and if we take a step back, we get an idea of how serious they are.
We are now exiting from a once-in-a-century global pandemic and an economic crisis, yet even after weathering two years of economic disruption beyond what anyone can remember, people are still potentially looking to move.
I talked to a business owner from Kelowna—Lake Country recently on the phone while I was at the Toronto airport waiting for a flight, and they were commenting to me on this. Red tape, regulatory burdens and tax increases do not give hope for prosperity. They were looking to move their lives and businesses because of the uncertainty about what the Liberal-NDP plans have done and will do to our economy going forward. A Liberal-NDP government's overinflating fiscal policy, through legislation like Bill C-8, will ruin small businesses' ability to succeed. It will leave families at the mercy of higher prices for gas, groceries and homes. It will leave workers with less purchasing power in their paycheques. The government's insistence on passing yet another overpriced package of spending commitments will only make this worse.
Members of Parliament on that side of the House do not need to take my word for it either. They can take it from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Earlier this year, the Parliamentary Budget Officer expressed his confusion about the government's proposal for $100 billion over the next three years, a number already exponentially increased by NDP agreements. After all, in December 2020, the Prime Minister and his finance minister committed to having guardrails on our economic recovery spending. They said that if Canadians were able to return to their jobs faster, it would decrease the stimulus needing to be spent.
Even though the government claims to have recovered 100% of jobs lost, it has not just ignored those guardrails; it has joined with the New Democrats to build a steep ramp. The Liberal-New Democrat deal outlines new spending sprees even higher than before, deriving even less value for money for Canadian taxpayers while ensuring they will receive an even higher bill by the end of this Parliament.
An area where less value for dollar is of particular concern in my riding of Kelowna—Lake Country is on the issue of housing. A recent community survey I sent out had hundreds and hundreds of people respond about how the rise in house prices is affecting them. They gave their suggestions. The government has now sat on that side of the House for seven years. In that time, they have watched the prices of homes in my riding rise year after year, to the point that they have now doubled.
The benchmark selling price of a single-family home in Kelowna has now risen to $1 million. Housing prices in Lake Country rose similarly, with new figures from BC Assessment showing a one-year increase of 32%. These increases jeopardize the ability of retirees on fixed incomes to stay in their homes. They prevent first-time homebuyers from ever being able to buy a home. They force families to live in homes that no longer suit their family's size. They force people to spend far more than 30% of their pre-tax income on rent. The Liberal government and its housing minister insist on saying they support affordable housing, yet they are not insistent on seeing any of it built.
We have a national housing strategy that now effectively applies only to millionaires and a housing accelerator that accelerates prices, but not construction. What is the new Liberal-NDP government's solution to these broken programs via Bill C-8 and other policies? It is to pour more tax dollars into it. Pouring water into a broken dishwasher does not fix it. Spending sprees are not just unfair to those looking for homes today as prices rise, but to those who will be paying for it tomorrow.
The legislation before us alone would cost taxpayers over $70 billion, while our national debt has already risen to $1.2 trillion. The national debt is not talked about by the government. In checking records, unless it was very recently, no member of the government has said the words “national debt” since the last election. Perhaps the government does not believe Canadians care about what the debt load is that they are carrying, but I can report that I have now had the opportunity to see them proved wrong on this twice already within the last month.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation organized a truck to carry a national debt clock around the country. It gives Canadians a second-by-second look at how fast our debt rises. They made a new debt clock, as the government broke the previous one because the total was too high. When they announced they would be in Kelowna—Lake Country, I attended, and I saw them again here in Ottawa. Everyday people I speak with understand that $1 borrowed by the government today is $1 owed by their children and grandchildren of tomorrow. Legislation like what we see here today is only an extension of the ever-increasing receipt, one the government looks insistent on ensuring is passed down the checkout line to those behind them.
Speaking of checkout lines, this month I am surveying my riding of Kelowna—Lake Country with a mail-out to households, to get feedback on how much families are paying at the grocery store. I am looking forward to going through all of those responses as they come in. No one comes up to me to say their dollars are going farther at the grocery store. They tell me that they are thinking of eating less so their kids can have a full meal, or that someone they know personally is starting to skip meals. The CEO of my local food bank recently stated they had seen a 20% increase in clients.
I think of an email I received from a constituent in Kelowna—Lake Country some months ago that stated, “We are taxed to poverty. With EI and CPP premiums all increasing, carbon tax increases along with inflation running rampant, our paycheques keep getting smaller. Canadians are all going to be in the poorhouse.”
I have received hundreds of emails like this. It is my duty to bring these voices from Kelowna—Lake Country into this House, and it is the duty of the government to listen. Sadly, the government is failing to listen, as legislation like this will only leave life more expensive. There is nothing in this $70-billion piece of legislation for fighting inflation or for economic recovery and growth.
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