- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
- Oct/6/22 1:01:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, often I have to educate the member for Winnipeg North about how the aggressive policies that the Liberal government has brought forward are hurting Canadian farmers. The carbon tax, in itself, is escalating the price of food, increasing the price of production of that food and creating food insecurity. What the Liberals are doing on reducing the use of fertilizer in this country by 30% is actually going to reduce production by more than 30%.
Why do the Liberals hate the Canadian farmer? Why are they creating food insecurity? Why are they going to force Canadian farmers out of business and move that production elsewhere in the world, where they actually encourage their agricultural producers to grow more food?
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- Sep/27/22 1:09:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time today with the amazing member for South Shore—St. Margarets.
I have been looking forward to participating in today's debate to prove once again that the Liberal government is so misguided it actually thinks taxation would cause us to fix climate change. However, its own record shows that it continues to drive up emissions while costing Canadians more by raising carbon taxes on everything we do, not just a certain part of our economy but everything we do, whether it is heating our homes, feeding our families or driving our kids to sports.
We need to address how this is hurting us, especially in my province of Manitoba. I can tell the members across the way in the Liberal Party that the net cost to Manitobans, the fiscal and economic impact is $1,145 per household. If we look at the average cost per household in what we define as the middle class, it actually goes up to $1,600 per family. That is atrocious. The Liberal government is pickpocketing the middle class to the tune of $1,600 and making life more unaffordable.
We are talking about a carbon tax that is going to triple from where it is today, more than triple. It is going up to $170 a tonne. Right now it is at $50. That would keep driving up the costs of everything we do: the cost of living, our affordability, whether or not we could afford to go out and buy a new car or a new home. Everything would be impacted. I really feel for the people in my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman. We are a rural riding. People have to drive great distances. It is not like the people who live in a city who can just drive across town to take their kids to a hockey game. We often have to drive hours to get to the next-door community arena so the kids can play sports or to go to the school to watch a basketball game that the kids are participating in. Everything continues to add up.
Canadians who are living on fixed incomes, like our seniors, are the most impacted by the Liberal government's failed policies. We know that often in rural areas we have to drive for doctor's appointments, and specialists are always in the big cities like Winnipeg. That means getting in the car, driving down the highway and paying more and more just to go see the doctor, never mind if they have to go to Winnipeg or an urban centre for shopping or to visit family.
This is impacting our seniors. The Canada pension plan index continues to lag way behind what is happening with the cost of living. It has been exacerbated because of the carbon tax. It is falling farther behind.
I do not think the Liberals understand this, but the lifeblood of Canada is diesel. Everything we do is based on diesel, including the food we grow, the crops we transport and the products we ship around the world. The food is farmed with a tractor, and later it goes onto a truck, a train and a ship. We need to make sure that we are protecting the competitive advantage we used to have as Canada. We need to be protecting our food growers in this country. However, the Liberals are trying to put them out of business.
The Canada trucking industry said that, last year, the carbon tax cost the trucking industry $528 million. They are expecting that next year it would cost the trucking industry $1.2 billion in extra carbon taxes, and in 2030 it would go up to over $3 billion. Those costs are going to be built into the costs of everything we buy. Whether it is shipping clothing across the country, shipping produce in from offshore or shipping our own farm-raised products to markets across this country, it is going to mean higher costs for food for every single Canadian.
I do not know how the Liberals figure they are going to get out of that. Maybe they are going to take more of Canadians' tax dollars to try to buy their votes back, which is a Liberal thing to do, but we are undermining affordability for Canadians. We are undermining the productivity of our industries right across the board with this carbon tax, and we are diminishing our competitive advantage in the world market.
We are an exporting nation. We have to export to create jobs. We have to export to get rid of the surplus goods we produce here, including our agriculture products.
When the carbon tax first came in, it cost an average farmer $14,000 a year. It has gone up since then, and now the Liberals want to triple the cost of how much people pay in carbon tax to put fuel in their tractors and trucks, and to use natural gas to dry their grain and heat their livestock barns. Whether they have poultry or hogs, they have to be able to heat those facilities, and every time they do that, the government is saying, “Gimme, gimme, gimme. I want my carbon tax.” It is not going to change the farmers' habits. It is a necessity of how we raise our food.
This is having a huge impact, and to add insult to injury, the Liberals are charging GST on top of the carbon tax. It is a tax on a tax, and it is something the Liberals love to do. It is not about adding value; it is about adding tax. It is about putting more in government coffers and doing nothing with it to fight climate change.
We should be investing in best practices to fight climate change, such as carbon sequestration, which we can do on farms. Actually, with the fertilizer mandate that is coming forward from the Liberals, where they want nitrogen fertilizer to be reduced by 30% because they think this will reduce emissions, members can guess what happens.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. James Bezan: Madam Speaker, if the member for Winnipeg North wants to listen, he will actually find out why the Liberals' policies are so misdirected. It is because they are going to force more and more farmers to try to farm more land. However, guess what we cannot produce in this country. We cannot produce more agricultural land. What we are not farming now is not farmable, but what will happen is that crop production is going to push into what is right now marginal land for pastures and grass and supporting our ranching industry, which is very sustainable, from a climate basis. These are carbon sinks, but now we are going to be forced to till them at lower productivity with less fertilizer, which reduces the potential of that land even further.
I know the member for Winnipeg North thinks he can dig in any part of the country out there and is going to grow potatoes, but he cannot. There is only certain land that can produce potatoes or root crops, but especially when it comes down to growing cereals, soybeans, corn, wheat or canola. We have specific land capabilities, and if we are going to farm that marginal land, we are destroying wildlife habitat. If we are going to farm that marginal land, we are removing carbon sinks and being detrimental to the overall climate change policy.
This is very short-sighted on behalf of the Liberals, and it is something that continues to worry me. As the leader of the King's official opposition said this morning, the Liberals brought forward this policy even though they have been promoting, for the seven years they have been in government, to buy local because it would reduce the cost of transportation of the food we eat. Reducing the transportation distances and using less fuel to get it into urban centres will be good for the climate.
What happens with this model of carbon taxing and tripling the carbon tax is that we are putting the local farmer at a huge disadvantage and allowing individuals who are producing in non-regulated countries around the world, such as those in Latin America, those in South America and China, to bring those food products here. That, to me, is unconscionable. It should never be allowed to happen. Our own food security is being undermined by the Liberals and we have to stop it now.
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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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- Mar/28/22 5:06:48 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, I am glad the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is taking an interest in this because these are very troubling times. The last thing we want to see is famine, hunger and starvation across the planet.
Although there is some hoarding by certain countries in their own coarse grain stocks, whether it is rice, wheat or corn, we also know that the coarse grain stocks and carry-overs we have right now are at some of the lowest points that we have seen in the world in history. On any given day, the actual amount of food that is on supply is only about a 30-day window. That really is how tight stocks are. By taking a country like Ukraine out of the equation, it can have a serious impact. Of course, it is going to go to the highest bidder in a lot of cases, but this is why we need organizations to step in to ensure humanitarian relief is there for those who cannot afford it.
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- Mar/28/22 4:51:46 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to get up on Bill C-8 and talk about some of the financial expenditures the government has made and some of the ones it is talking about in this bill.
I want to recognize that this is the first time I have been able to get on my feet since the announcement of the Liberal-NDP coalition. I know those in the sea of orange that I see across the aisle are still adjusting to being new NDP backbenchers. I know that is going to be difficult with the NDP prime minister we have now. I would say that this will be a big impact on the way the government spends going forward, and we are talking about Bill C-8 right now, which is the addition of the economy and fiscal update of 2021.
Let us just say that we, as Conservatives, are opposed to Bill C-8 because it has another $70 billion in inflationary spending. We know that every time the government goes to the money presses and prints a whole bunch of new $20s, $50s, $100s, thousands, millions and billions of dollars, it drives up inflation in this country because we have too much currency in circulation. We also know that, during this pandemic, out of all of the COVID spending we have had, $176 billion was not even related to the pandemic. There is $176 billion that has gone into Liberal pet projects and that has increased our national debt to where it sits today at $1.2 trillion. We are talking about a national debt that is now almost double since the Liberals came to power in 2015. That is beyond belief and something I do not think any of us ever expected.
We know that we are sitting in a world today where we are seeing hyperinflation caused by everything from supply chain disruptions to Russia's war in Ukraine, something that is very near and dear to me with family and friends back in Ukraine dealing with it, knowing that there are going to be extra costs and burdens that we have to carry as a country to help out the people of Ukraine, those fighting the war against Putin and those fleeing the violence, the carnage and the atrocities being committed against the people of Ukraine.
Every dollar that we spend today is precious. We have a fiduciary duty to the taxpayer to ensure that their money is being spent wisely and that we are making the greatest benefit to society here in Canada and around the world. That is why investing in everything from national defence to humanitarian relief efforts, to what we do at home to make life better for Canadians, is important. Unfortunately, that has not happened under the Liberal-NDP government.
Mr. Mark Gerretsen: You've got it right, the Liberal-NDP.
Mr. James Bezan: Madam Speaker, I'll say the NDP government, just for the benefit of the member for Kingston and the Islands. I will talk about how his NDP government has been irresponsible in how it spent the money and how there has been so much money thrown into circulation it has created hyperinflation.
The biggest impact is, of course, on housing. We have seen housing prices increase by 85% in Canada in the past six years. A house that was worth $435,000 six years ago is now worth $810,000. That is the average price in Canada. For those of us who own homes and are going to sell down the road, that is great, but for my kids, for the generation of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings who hope to have the ability to buy a house, just as we did when we were in our twenties, they cannot afford it now.
There is the extra stress test that has been put in place by the government, which banks now use on new lenders, and they cannot even get a mortgage. We continue to see inflation eat away at their take-home pay. That goes to everything from housing to what we are seeing in food and what we are seeing with gas prices now. A lot of that, of course, is related to sanctions against Russia's oil sector. Oil and gas in Russia have to be sanctioned and sanctioned hard.
We also know that gas prices here are laden with taxes, especially the carbon tax, which is going up on April 1. The Parliamentary Budget Officer's report just documented that Canadians, especially rural Canadians and western Canadians, lose big time with the carbon tax. In Manitoba, the Parliamentary Budget Officer is saying that the carbon tax costs an average family an extra $1,100 a year out of pocket, and they are not getting money back. It is $1,100 out of pocket, and that is on top of the food inflation that we are seeing right now that is already up, this year alone, $1,000 per family. We are talking $2,100 because of excess inflation, especially on food, and $1,100 on the carbon tax. Rural Canadians are hurt even worse, because we have to drive to get anywhere.
I have an agriculture background. My brothers, my son-in-law, my daughter, they are all farmers. They do not get any tax breaks with the carbon tax. To dry grain, they have to pay the carbon tax, and it runs into tens of thousands of dollars a year. That takes money out of their profit margin, but it also drives up the cost of food. It exacerbates food inflation.
We just heard from a couple of members who spoke before me, talking about the concern about food shortages. In Ukraine, we are talking about the bread basket of Europe. Here we have a real food crisis on the horizon. If Ukraine does not get its crops in the field, and it is very doubtful with the war going on that it will, there is going to be such a shortage of corn, wheat, sunflower, canola and soybeans. It is going to short the entire world market. We need to step up and do even more, just as we did in World War II when Canada produced even more wheat and fed the world. We are going to have do this again.
The carbon tax, on everything from propane, natural gas and diesel fuel, along with the impacts of higher fertilizer prices will impact input costs. I do not know if members on the NDP-Liberal government side realize that the number one ingredient in making nitrogen fertilizer is natural gas. Those companies that produce nitrogen fertilizer have to pay the entire carbon tax, and they are getting nothing back. That is all passed on down to the farmer. Now we have Ukraine and the sanctions against Russian fertilizer, which produces nitrogen and phosphorous and potassium, which is going to be in even more short supply.
Even though farmers are going to see higher commodity prices, we know that the higher input costs, largely created by excessive government taxation through the carbon tax and other means, will drive down the profit margins. Instead of enjoying higher commodity prices, they will still be struggling to get by day to day.
In Bill C-8, there is some money in here that is doing things we have to call into question. There is $300 million out of the consolidated revenue fund to support more COVID-19 proof of vaccine initiatives. There is no plan or description on how that $300 million is going to be spent. There is another $1.72 billion for more COVID testing. Again, there is no description. Is this another Frank Baylis situation, where we have Liberal insiders and Liberal friends getting sole-source government contracts and making millions and millions of dollars? We are spending $300 million on proof of vaccination programs. Why? Mandates are coming off. The restrictions in all the provinces are ending, and here we are going to invest more money into more federal proof of vaccinations.
The government should really start listening to Canadians and listening to the provinces. It is time to actually start taking off these mandates and allow people to travel again. It is time to remove the trucker mandate, because that is something that was never required to happen in the first place. It does not protect public health in any way, shape or form. All it did was create the protest and ultimately hurt supply chains again.
I am glad to be able to stand here and say I am opposed to Bill C-8. I am glad to join with my colleagues in pointing out all the difficulties that it presents and how this undermines our economy here in Canada.
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