- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- North Okanagan—Shuswap
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 69%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $117,514.07
- Government Page
- Apr/11/24 2:16:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Prime Minister has shamelessly delivered record high deficits, driving up inflation and causing sky-high interest rates. His government has doubled rent, mortgage payments and down payments. Food banks received a record 2 million visits in a single month last year, and a million more are expected to use food banks this year. He has added more to the national debt than all previous prime ministers combined.
While life has gotten worse for Canadians, the PM is spending more than ever. Now, a leading economist says that rate cuts may be delayed because of high government spending. We saw that this week, when the Bank of Canada held its rate in efforts to maintain its policy of quantitative tightening.
Canadians are seeing that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost. Will the Prime Minister cap his spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule and bring down interest rates and inflation, or will he continue to make Canadians pay for his failures?
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Mr. Speaker, we are seeing that, after the inflationary spending of the current government, many businesses are struggling to survive. With the high interest rates that have been created, we are concerned about how many businesses may not be able to do so. However, to quickly sell them off to a foreign entity, which is really just looking to buy up businesses for pennies on the dollar, is not the answer. There should be a way for Canadians to invest in Canadian companies to make sure that those businesses are viable and can continue.
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- Oct/17/23 5:03:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this question would apply to any member of the House.
After eight years, we have seen that the Prime Minister has added more to the national debt than all prime ministers in the past. However, I would like to take us back to just over 40 years ago, when the Prime Minister's father was prime minister and was running out-of-control deficits and inflation was out of control. When he rolled through my town in North Okanagan—Shuswap, he gave the one-finger salute to a few previous Liberal supporters who were standing on the railway platform protesting his car when it stopped.
I would ask the member if she believes there is any difference between that prime minister, who rang up deficits and inflation so incredibly, and the current Prime Minister, or if this one really does not care and is simply not worth the cost.
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- Jun/13/23 2:14:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it has been 40 years since the Trudeau government caused such pain for Canadians with inflationary spending and skyrocketing interest rates. I remember when that Trudeau came through my hometown while on vacation and gave his famous Salmon Arm salute from his private rail car to a group of protesters calling for restraint on government spending. Interest rates would reach record levels and people could not afford to keep up with the soaring cost of living.
Now, 40 years later, it is the same out-of-control spending. Sixty billion dollars' worth of fuel poured on the inflationary fire is causing the interest rates to rise 19-fold higher than they were a year ago, and the Prime Minister wants to go on another vacation. While the PM goes on vacation, Conservative members will work through the summer to make things right so that Canadians can afford groceries, the cost of living and homes. For their home, my home, our home, let us bring it home.
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- Jun/5/23 9:55:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there were promises in the 2015 election campaign from the Liberals of a small deficit for one year and then a return to balanced budgets, but what has been delivered is something totally different. We have seen eight years of inflationary spending, and now the government is signalling that it will never return to a balanced budget and will continue its out-of-control spending as long as it can. Hopefully, we can end that soon.
If that were not bad enough, to go along with these massive deficits, we are seeing increasing interest rates in an attempt to rein in the skyrocketing inflation the deficits have caused. Compile all of this, and it spells bad news for Canadians. Canada's debt is projected to reach $1.22 trillion in fiscal year 2023-24. That is nearly $81,000 of debt per household.
One of the results of this inflationary spending is to cause inflation to go up to the highest rates we have seen in 40 years. The previous high was under a former Liberal government with an out-of-control spending problem. The high inflation rate is resulting in the Bank of Canada raising interest rates to try to rein in inflation, rates that the Liberal government was warned about, but it failed to take the warning. Therefore, now, as a result, we have record high national debt combined with jacked-up interest rates that will see Canada's debt service costs projected to reach $43.9 billion for fiscal year 2023-24.
Can members imagine the good $43.9 billion could do if it were not required to pay just for the debt? That is not to pay off the debt. That is just to pay the annual debt service cost. None of that estimated $43.9 billion would be going to reduce the deficit or the cost in future years. It is only to pay that annual debt service fee. That is $43.9 billion that could have gone to health care, to the nurses, doctors and hospitals where health care workers have been stretched to and beyond their limit. That is $43.9 billion that could have been going to infrastructure projects to improve water and wastewater projects in our communities, indigenous communities and municipalities. That is $43.9 billion that could have gone to transportation projects to help people get to work on time, or $43.9 billion to get homes built. However this $43.9 billion is only going to pay the debt service costs.
I used to ask people at home if they could envision what $20 billion looked like because I myself had trouble envisioning what that looks like. I would get blank stares or heads shaking back, and so I would ask them if they can imagine what five $100 bills would look like in their hand. They would say, “Yes, I can picture five $100 bills.” I said that is what $20 billion is to every living Canadian, every infant, every youth, every adult, every senior and every veteran. It is five $100 bills in debt. That was what the $20-billion deficits were causing. Now we are seeing $40-billion deficits.
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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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- 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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Madam Speaker, it is obvious that this government has become extremely afraid of scrutiny, of accountability, and it is becoming even more evident with this latest backroom partnership with the NDP.
One hour of debate on 440 pages of a bill is hardly what Canadians deserve for scrutiny and accountability of the government. Not even the backbench Liberal MPs have been able to speak on any parts of this budget that may benefit their ridings. I have not had a chance to debate the possible $2 billion in lost sales in the auto, aerospace and marine sectors. The implementation of this budget, which is projecting a $53-billion deficit, needs more than the one hour of debate that this government has allowed.
We have not even talked about inflation. The minister earlier spoke about temporary inflation; it has recently been in the news that this inflation is now entrenched in Canada. This deserves debate, and I am strongly opposed to this time allocation motion.
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- Feb/17/22 2:18:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are debating the Emergencies Act because of a political crisis of the Prime Minister’s own making, a political crisis here in Ottawa because of his failure to act sooner.
There is another crisis building across our country that he and his government have failed to act on. Canadians are seeing the rising cost of living impacting them in their homes and in their backyards, in my riding of North Okanagan—Shuswap and across the country. Groceries will cost families $1,000 more this year. Energy prices have reached record levels, and rent rates are skyrocketing.
Constituents have contacted me about house prices going up by 35% to 45%, concerned that young families cannot afford their own homes. Seniors on fixed incomes cannot keep up with inflation, which is now pegged at 5.1%, the highest rate in 30 years.
The Prime Minister and his government have failed to act on the cost of living crisis and have now created another crisis as a diversion. This is shameful. Canadians deserve better.
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