- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
- Apr/19/23 5:03:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member talked about Ukraine, but this budget has absolutely nothing in it for Ukraine. It has nothing in it for the Canadian Armed Forces, and it has nothing to ensure that Ukraine would be victorious over its Russian aggressors. I do not know how she could stand in this place to talk about all that the Liberals are doing for Ukraine. As someone of Ukrainian heritage, I found it was incredibly disappointing and insulting that there was not anything there, other than loans, at a time when the country is getting invaded.
I want to talk about the Washington Post article that just came out this afternoon. It came from documents through the Discord messaging app, which said that the Prime Minister had absolutely no intent of ever meeting our NATO targets. According to the article, the report that was released, and it comes from the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “'Widespread defense shortfalls hinder Canadian capabilities,' the document says, 'while straining partner relationships and alliance contributions.'”
Why is the member supporting a government that continues to undermine our bilateral relationship with the United States and our collective security?
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- Apr/17/23 6:18:08 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to remind the member for Winnipeg North that to imply that members in this place, or Canadians for that matter, are idiots for believing there are not investments happening in mental health or seniors' health is disrespectful. He should withdraw that comment.
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- Apr/17/23 1:24:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to draw to the hon. member's attention that there is again no commitment to increasing funding for the Canadian Armed Forces in this budget.
We saw in the last report from NATO that Canadian investment in our armed forces and our collective defence with our allies has fallen to 1.29% of the GDP rather than 2%, where it is supposed to be. That is down from 1.34%, where it was just a couple of years ago.
Under the Liberals, the government continues to allow spending to erode. From his recent trip to Taiwan, the member knows how important collective defence is and how, in these times of great power rivalries, we are dealing with the Communist regime in Beijing, the corrupt kleptocrats in the Kremlin and the war in Ukraine. Therefore, we need to be standing on guard.
Will the member ensure that his government makes the proper investments in the Canadian Armed Forces so that we have enough staff, which is currently down 10,000 members, and the equipment to do the tasks that our military is so often called upon to do?
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- Apr/27/22 4:52:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, again, it is a perfect illustration of how the Liberals will say one thing but do something completely different, and it continues to undermine the economic prosperity of individual Canadians across this country. Instead of offering things as simple as tax relief, all we get is more ridiculous spending that is unnecessary, and it is ultimately undermining the government's ability to support Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
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- Apr/27/22 4:50:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from the Bloc for his intervention, because he is dead right. The one thing the provinces asked the NDP-Liberal coalition government to do was increase health care transfers. About $28 billion was asked for and they got nothing. Instead, they got $5.3 billion for an imaginary dental plan, and that is nothing the provinces have asked for. Again, the federal government, now with the support of the NDP, continues to ignore the interests of our provinces in delivering health care to all Canadians from coast to coast to coast, and continues to venture into that type of jurisdiction.
The housing program is another example of this. The federal government is stepping into provincial jurisdiction to create housing stock. We all know the money it is offering is not going to create half the housing stock that is required. It also penalizes people who are trying to increase housing stock through property developments, condo developments and flipping houses, which are all now being taxed even more by the Liberal-NDP coalition. That is disgusting.
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- Apr/27/22 4:48:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the member for Winnipeg North that under Stephen Harper, when we were at war in Afghanistan, there was defence spending. This is before the Liberals cooked the books on how we calculate the amount of money that is allocated to national defence by adding things like the Coast Guard, veterans' pensions and other things that are spent under foreign affairs, not under defence. If we had added those numbers in, we would have been well over 1.5% when we were at war in Afghanistan.
When we pulled out of Afghanistan, defence spending went down because we balanced the books. The government here continues to spend recklessly. This means that the debts and deficits of today are going to be the taxes of tomorrow on our kids and grandkids, and we know the Liberals still have not made the investments, because the money they promise does not get spent.
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- Apr/27/22 4:37:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to be able to rise today and address the budget, which I will call “the good, the bad and the ugly”. I am expecting Clint Eastwood to walk through the doors and the music to play.
I will say this, just to address the speech. There is a section of this budget that I agree with. The good part is that the government is promising to give Ukraine $500 million and to provide weapons that are so desperately needed right now in the war against Russia. We need to make sure we send whatever lethal weapons Ukraine has been asking for. I am glad to see the government has made this announcement and will be out there on the market buying up as many weapons as possible.
I know, for example, that there are lethal weapons being built in Winnipeg by PGW Defence Technologies, which builds sniper rifles. It has already done business on its own directly with the Ukrainian government in the past, and has also sent sniper rifles over very recently. I believe those high-quality sniper rifles being made in Winnipeg would be very valuable to the Ukrainian armed forces, and buying more of those weapons with this $500 million would be welcome news.
I have been advocating this for quite some time, going back to early March, right after the invasion started. There is an inventory of Canadian military equipment that is sitting around and that is about to be retired and turned into museum monuments at war memorials and legion halls across this country, but we do have light armoured vehicles, such as the Coyotes and the Bisons. There are 32 armoured ambulances in the Bison configuration that can easily be used and shipped over to Ukraine.
The reason we can use these vehicles to provide armoured personnel carrier protection to Ukraine is that the replacement LAVs, the new super Bisons that are being built in London at GDLS, are almost complete. The parking lot is full of new LAVs. They just need to be accredited by the Canadian Armed Forces. Taking those Bisons, Coyotes and our M113 tracked LAVs and sending them to Ukraine would provide much-needed protection, especially for the civilian domestic defence force that has been stood up with recruits from across Ukraine as they battle against the Russian aggressors.
I have also been working with people here in Canada who want to buy Role II mobile field hospitals, which Ukraine has requested. Unfortunately, the government here has yet to provide those hospitals. We have extra Role II hospitals that are sitting in containers. They were purchased for the pandemic and were never used, so we could be moving them over. There are some mobile field hospitals that are available for sale in the Netherlands. Again, they are ready to go. The Government of Canada could buy those off the shelf and move them over there in under a week. I hope it will consider that and get it done, because Ukraine desperately needs them and has asked for them as part of the shopping list it has given to NATO countries around the world.
Finally, there is the issue of the Harpoon missiles. We had defence and industry experts in Canada who came forward and said that we have over 200 unused Harpoon missiles sitting in inventory. There are launchers sitting on one of the ships that are under refurbishment right now. We could send over a whole cache of truck radar systems, all built here in Canada, with our excess Harpoon missiles that are sitting in inventory, to help protect Odessa from the onslaught that is taking place from the Black Sea. The more we can eliminate the Russian navy's ability to bring its forces to the coastline, the better off Ukraine will be, and the more protected.
I welcome the $500 million. I encourage the government to do more and make sure we are repurposing some of our existing assets. We do not have to actually go there and put cash on the table, just send those and donate them to Ukraine, as well as the $500 million that is approved in this budget.
Unfortunately, that is the only good thing in this budget, and I am not going to be able to support this budget, because of the bad and the ugly that are still in there.
The bad is that the current government continues to print money like it is going out of style. The Liberals have increased the deficit again this year by another $52.4 billion, which has taken our national debt to $1.2 trillion, and all of that has not been entirely tied to, as they would like to say, pandemic spending to support the economy. We know there have been many situations where this budget is about unnecessary spending. It has put increased money into circulation, devalued the Canadian dollar and driven up interest rates and inflationary pressures on our economy.
Canadians are now worse off because of the reckless spending by the Liberal-NDP coalition. They know that they have to deal with higher food prices and higher fuel prices, and that continues to increase the cost of living. In Manitoba alone, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's own numbers, Manitobans are now $2,000 poorer just because of inflation created by the government.
I know they will try to argue that there are supply chain issues. They will try to argue that this is an international phenomenon, but, at the same time, we are talking about 6.7% inflation rate. That is higher than in so many other countries in the G7 and the G20, and it is because of excess government spending and putting too much cheap Canadian money into circulation, which has taken inflation out of control.
The other bad part of this budget is that there is no help there for farmers. We are seeing higher input costs because of inflationary pressures. We are seeing higher input costs on farmers because of the carbon tax, which affects everything from diesel fuel to fertilizer prices. We are seeing that the Liberals continue to push farmers farther and farther down into the deep red hole on their balance sheet because they do not care about protecting our farm families.
They may, as a government, expect that they will be able to import cheap food from elsewhere, but why do we want to make our farmers less competitive on the international market? Why would we not let our beef, pork, grain and oilseed producers flourish and be competitive on the world market? Instead, we are increasing their input costs to such a level that they will never be able to compete on that global scale.
We expect government to actually care about our farmers, our farm families and our rural communities and give them relief from things like the carbon tax, give them relief from rising excise taxes on fuel, give them relief from the increasing costs of fertilizer. We need to know if the government will ever commit to helping out our farmers.
In my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, our farmers last year dealt with a very devastating drought, the fourth year of dry conditions, and again, the help from the federal government was next to nil. We know that there is no help in the budget for farmers who dealt with that drought, whether it was trying to buy feed for their livestock or having major shortfalls in crop production.
The ugly part of this budget is the way the government continues to treat our Canadian Armed Forces. Our members in uniform deserve to be given the best equipment and the best support, and have a warrior culture that is out there actively recruiting and rebuilding our Canadian Armed Forces. We are 10,000 members short as it stands today, and the government seems not to care about making sure that we have a critical mass of soldiers, sailors and aircrew across the country to serve here at home and to be able to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves around the world, including what we are seeing happening in Europe. Although the Liberals talk about increasing spending and getting it up to about 1.5% of GDP, it is still far short of what NATO members expect of us. Our NATO partners are asking us to spend 2% of GDP, and it is not happening in this budget.
On top of that, the government continues to fall short in spending and buying new equipment. Procurement has been well short of satisfactory. We know that in this budget there is a $15-billion gap between what the government is promising to do and what is actually in the Department of National Defence departmental plans for the next year. We know they already have $12 billion lapsed over time that should have been used to buy new ships, new planes and other equipment for our Canadian Armed Forces members.
It just comes back to the fact that the Liberal-NDP coalition has not made the proper investments in national defence, at a time when the world is getting more and more scary. We are witnessing what is happening in Europe with the Russian aggression in Ukraine, and we are always concerned with other nefarious actors on the world stage who are watching and seeing what Canada does, as well as our allies. We need to do more, not less.
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