- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- North Okanagan—Shuswap
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 69%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $117,514.07
- Government Page
- Nov/23/23 9:29:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for St. Catharines seems to have forgotten to fit into his speech, which is supposed to be about the affordable housing and groceries act, that his Prime Minister had this big meeting with officers from all of the major grocery chains, and he promised to bring down the price of groceries by Thanksgiving. How much did that meeting bring down the cost of groceries by Thanksgiving?
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- Jun/8/23 8:15:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the way to be able to afford that and to pay those day care and child care workers to be in the homes is to have young families being able to take home stronger paycheques and more of their paycheques than the current government is allowing them to take home. The government is taxing them more and more, making it less affordable. We have seen the inflation, the high cost of groceries and the high cost of home heating, so they cannot afford to pay the bills and they cannot afford to pay—
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- Mar/8/23 7:14:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this House as the representative of North Okanagan—Shuswap. It is such an honour to have this opportunity to circle back to a question that I did not consider got an adequate answer when asked the first time and seek a response that would give hope to seniors, those struggling under the inflationary policies of the government.
On February 16 of this year, I put the following question through the Speaker:
...after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister's inflationary policies, seniors cannot afford food. Barry told me that 40 out of 120 attendees at the mission he works at were seniors. People who used to donate to food banks are having to go to one because they cannot afford groceries.
Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for seniors going without food, or will the Liberals get out of the way so the Conservatives can fix what they have broken and restore seniors' dignity?
The response to the question was shameful, claiming that the government has been there for seniors. The way the government has been there for seniors has been to allow its out-of-control spending to contribute to inflation rates that we have not seen in 40 years. Food prices are climbing so fast that so many seniors are going to food banks because they cannot afford groceries.
Another example of how the government has not been there for seniors came to light last week for me while talking to a restaurateur at home in the Shuswap. While talking to this restaurateur, I asked if she had been affected by rising food prices. The owner took a step back and gave me a look. She did not have to say anything. I knew what the answer was. She went on to tell me how she had built a lunchtime clientele from scratch by building the business for seniors. She built that business around seniors who often preferred a meal out at lunchtime so they did not have to drive at night or it was better for their digestive system than eating at night. She told me that lunchtime seniors clientele was drying up because of increasing food costs and because of the costs that she had to pass on to customers, prices like a case of cauliflower that used to cost her business $35 to $40 per case now costing $130 to $140, prices like green beans being $8 per pound, and these are wholesale prices. We are seeing even higher prices on grocery store shelves.
For the government to say it has been there for seniors is truly shameful. What we have seen in the past eight years from the Prime Minister is that the price of a home has doubled and average rent prices soared above $2,000 in our 10 biggest cities. Nearly half of all Canadians with variable mortgages will no longer be able to afford those mortgages in nine months. Canadians are grappling with 40-year-high inflation. A quarter of Canadians cannot cover an unexpected cost of $500.
Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for seniors going without food, or will the Liberals get out of the way so the Conservatives can fix what they have broken and restore seniors' dignity?
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- Feb/16/23 3:04:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister's inflationary policies, seniors cannot afford food. Barry told me that 40 out of 120 attendees at the mission he works at were seniors. People who used to donate to food banks are having to go to one because they cannot afford groceries.
Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for seniors going without food, or will the Liberals get out of the way so the Conservatives can fix what they have broken and restore seniors' dignity?
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- Oct/26/22 7:06:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I originally posed the question of whether any of the spend-DP-Liberals thought about monetary policy a few weeks ago because the Prime Minister had already admitted he does not spend much time thinking about it. He also thought that budgets balance themselves, inflation was transitory and it was okay to borrow $400 billion because interest rates were low.
A few things have changed in those few weeks since I first posed the question. The Liberal-NDP coalition government has been driving up the cost of living. The more the Prime Minister spends, the more things are costing, and it is not just inflation that we are dealing with now, it is people's lives because they are having to consider monetary policy and make a choice between buying groceries or heating their homes. They are having to make the choice between putting fuel in their vehicles to go to work, or not.
Interest rates are rising faster than they have in decades. People and families are at risk of losing their homes because they cannot make increasing mortgage payments. It is to the point that over one-half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries to cope with rising prices because of the thing elite Liberals think is just inflation. This means there are situations like the one I heard about just this morning. It came from Lyle, who said that he was shopping yesterday and the elderly person in front of him had to put four apples back as she could not afford them. He said that the increase in carbon taxes are driving up the costs of everything from home heating to food, and that the current government is completely out of touch with Canadians. That is what Lyle said.
All this need not be. If the government had been prudent and responsible and considered monetary policy, it would have done things like not wasted $54 million on a punitive ArriveCAN scam and scrapped the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank. Let us not forget the WE scandal, the millions to Loblaws for refrigerators and so much more wasteful spending.
On top of that, had Liberals not squandered an extra $200 billion in spending not related to COVID, Canadians would not be feeling the pain they are now, but the government chooses not to pay attention to monetary policy, so now Canadians are receiving the bill for that massive $500-billion deficit. They are seeing typical mortgages go up by $7,000 a year and having to pay so much more attention to their household monetary policy just to put food on the table and keep the heat on. On top of all this, the Liberal-NDP coalition is planning to triple the carbon tax, further increasing and inflating the cost of gas, groceries and home heating, just as we approach winter in Canada, when heating is not a luxury but a necessity.
I am sure I am probably going to hear an excuse from the other side about where I am going on this, and we are going to hear back from the government saying that inflation is a global phenomenon. The governor of the Bank of Canada now says that inflation is homegrown. It was grown by the Prime Minister and his cabinet's lack of consideration of economic policy.
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- Jun/10/22 11:33:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, sky-high inflation, now at a 31-year high, is having a disproportionate impact on Canadians. The Prime Minister does not have to buy groceries or fill his own tank. However, Canadians on lower incomes are spending a disproportionately higher percentage of their incomes on necessities like bread, milk and sundries. Gas prices in North Okanagan—Shuswap are at $2.13 a litre. Some cannot afford to drive to work.
We know the Prime Minister does not think about monetary policy for Canadians, but do any of the other speNDP-Liberals think about it?
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