- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
- May/27/24 7:13:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that everything the Liberals have done on housing has been a joke. They have not built any new homes. We have seen that housing starts across this country have failed. They continue to reward gatekeepers rather than getting them out of the way. They refuse to work with provinces, and they continue to tread on provincial jurisdiction. The one place where they can actually make investments is in military housing on military bases, which is on federal land. They have not done that.
In the budget that we have before us right now, the government says that we are short 6,700 houses. The government has built only 38 military homes in the last two years, and the budget has zero dollars for military homes. In the forecast for the next budget, under the DPU, there are zero dollars for building military housing. We know that, going forward in the next five years, the government has only $8 million to build houses. How would $8 million over five years build 6,700 homes? We will be lucky if it builds 20 houses. It is a joke.
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- Feb/1/24 3:07:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, those are actually not the facts. Nearly 4,500 serving military members are currently awaiting housing, but the Liberals are building fewer than 20 homes per year for our troops. To add insult to injury, that Liberal minister just cut a billion dollars from the defence budget, and a leaked report confirmed that the minister is hiking the rents for our armed forces members.
Our military heroes know that those Liberals are just not worth the cost, so why does the Prime Minister always shovel money into the pockets of consultants and Liberal insiders, but cut spending on the backs of our troops?
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- Jun/5/23 5:12:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary knows full well that we are debating the budget bill. This has nothing to do with the budget.
Second, because this has relevance, the Speaker, on Friday, committed to looking into all the problems we had during that vote.
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Mr. Speaker, I will remind the member for Winnipeg North that they are going backward, not forward. They went from 1.34% down to under 1.29% of GDP this year.
They have also gotten very creative with their accounting. They added in veterans' pensions, Global Affairs Canada costs and Coast Guard costs, which we never added in. If we added all of those things in when we were government, we would probably have had 1.5% during the time that we were in Afghanistan.
Yes, we did take a bit of a fall in spending after we pulled out because we were balancing the books, something that the government has no plans of ever doing as it continues to saddle our kids and our grandchildren with its reckless spending.
I will just say this on Ukraine: This budget only has $200 million in it. It is nothing for Ukraine. We supported everything that the government has done in the past, but it is doing nothing in this budget, and that is shameful.
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Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join the debate on the budget implementation act.
There are some interesting numbers in this budget. Total revenues coming in to the government are $456.8 billion and expenses are $446.6 billion. On the surface, when one looks at that, one would think that is not too bad. There is actually some money kicking around, but the problem is the government has run up our national debt so high that the debt charges alone are just shy of $44 billion this year, and they are going to increase to $50 billion. That is creating a deficit this year of $40.1 billion, which is $10 billion higher than what was originally projected.
Why is the interest rate so high? That is because the government, under the Liberal Prime Minister, has run up our national debt so it is now twice as big as what it was when he took office, at $1.2 trillion. That is a travesty, and it is shameful what the government is doing to our taxpayers today and in the future. Our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay off this spending binge that the Liberals have been on for the last eight years.
As shadow minister of national defence, I want to talk a bit about the expenditures in this budget. If we look at the budget and the estimates today, Liberals are going to spend $26.4 billion. That is down from last year's $27.58 billion. Despite the rhetoric coming from the Liberals, they are not spending more, they are spending less. The Prime Minister, we know from leaked documents, has no intention of ever reaching the NATO target of 2% of GDP being spent on our national defence.
However, the Prime Minister has no problem spending $6,000 a night in luxurious hotel rooms in London. He has no problem wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to go on his luxurious vacations in Jamaica and the Bahamas. It relates back to the Prime Minister just not prioritizing our national defence and how important it is, not only in protecting Canadians here at home, but also in standing up for our allies around the world and having serious relationships.
The Conference of Defence Associations Institute just wrote a letter, signed by 60 prominent Canadians. In it, they say, “Years of restraint, cost cutting, downsizing and deferred investments, have meant that Canada’s defence capabilities have atrophied.” They go on to say, “the recent federal budget was largely a summary of previous announcements without any acknowledgement that the Government must accelerate program spending, and make significant additional funding available to address the long-standing deficiencies in military capabilities and readiness.”
Our safety is not a luxury. We have to make sure we are treating national defence like we do in our homes by buying home insurance and fire insurance and paying the premium. Investment in our military is a premium that we have to pay to protect us at home. In the letter from those 60 prominent Canadians, they said, “Canada cannot afford to conduct 'business as usual'”.
Part of the responsibility we have in national defence is to stand up for our democracy and protecting democracies around the world. For 426 days, we have watched in real time the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine and have witnessed barbaric war crimes and atrocities being committed by Putin's war machine. For 426 days, the people of Ukraine have now only stood up to the Kremlin's genocidal attempt to Russify Ukraine once again.
This is a war of attrition. Vladimir Putin is prepared to play the long game, turning this war into a frozen conflict to let war fatigue overtake western resiliency. Unfortunately, it may be working. I just never dreamed that Canada would be the first ally to show signs of war weariness. One may ask what the proof of that is. In the Liberals' recent budget, the finance minister, surprisingly, offers Ukraine little more than platitudes. So much for her being a champion for Ukraine.
Despite President Zelenskyy asking for more assistance and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who was just here, hoping Canada would donate more armoured vehicles and ammunition, budget 2023 provides only $200 million in new spending in military equipment for Ukraine. Much of this is a bookkeeping exercise to account for the eight Leopard tanks that we have donated to Ukraine. We can only hope that the Canadian Armed Forces will use that money to buy new tanks to replace the ones we just donated.
Regrettably, the Prime Minister and his Liberals have spent our fiscal cupboards bare. After eight years of the Liberal government, our national debt has doubled to $1.2 trillion. Our federal deficit is $10 billion higher, and it will soon reach $50 billion, which is more than what we spend on National Defence. The size of our government is $151 billion bigger than it was in 2015.
The Liberals have increased spending on just about everything in this budget except National Defence. A case in point is that they have spent a whopping $22 billion on consultants. As our Conservative leader pointed out in his reply to the budget, “Now the interest costs on the national debt have doubled. We are spending double the national defence budget on the interest costs on the national debt. It is ridiculous.”
Sadly, well-connected consultants, big bankers and wealthy bond holders will get more from these Liberals than our troops will. This is all bad news for taxpayers, and it inhibits Canada's ability from helping allies such as Ukraine or investing in our National Defence during these troubling times in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and our Arctic. To be clear, as His Majesty's loyal opposition, we have supported the military, humanitarian and financial assistance provided to Ukraine by the government, but Canada's Conservatives believe the government can and must do more to help Ukraine win this war.
Conservatives have strongly advocated to increase the production and exportation of our ethical oil and natural gas, along with other energy products, to Europe to displace the Russian oil and gas that is fuelling Putin's war machine. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine 426 days ago, Conservatives have consistently called on the government to send more lethal weapons. In fact, since March 2022, we have been asking the government to donate to Ukraine our armoured ambulances; Harpoon missiles; Role 3 mobile hospitals; sniper rifles; and our soon-to-be-retired fleet of light armoured vehicles, also called LAVs, specifically the Bison, the Coyote and tracked LAVs, also known as M113s.
National Defence confirmed in writing, in its response to an Order Paper question tabled in this House, that it has 149 LAV II Coyotes; 142 M113 tracked LAVs, and 196 LAV II Bisons. These LAVs will soon be replaced with 360 brand new LAV armoured combat support vehicles, which are currently sitting in London, Ontario. Instead of decommissioning our old LAVs and turning them into war memorials or selling them for scrap, the Ukraine defence forces would gladly welcome them. A case in point is that the U.S.A. and Australia donated 130 M113s last summer to Ukraine, and they were crucial in the liberation of Kharkiv.
The Liberals have sadly argued that our Coyotes, Bisons and tracked LAVs are too old, too worn out and have not yet been declared surplus. DND had noted that 62 of the Coyotes were deemed reparable, but they would take 220 days to procure the parts and put them back into service. That was 309 days ago, back in June of last year. Did the Liberal government act? Are we able to donate those LAVs now? Unfortunately, the answer is no, so Ukraine does without.
Regardless of the Liberals' apathy and excuses, I remain confident in the resiliency and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people. I know that if we sent our fleet of older LAVs to Ukraine, the Ukrainians would immediately put them to good use. What works, they would fight with; what does not, they would cannibalize for parts. This is not a novel idea. Just ask our Royal Canadian Air Force. The Liberals stuck it with 18 old, worn-out F-18 Aussie fighter jets, and they had to buy another seven broken fighter jets for the spare parts.
The black, fertile plains of Ukraine are soaked with the blood of millions of innocent people who were murdered during the Holodomor and the Holocaust. We must stand with Ukraine and stop today's genocide being committed by Putin's war machine. Canada must not waiver. We cannot grow weary. We must not falter. During difficult times like these, we remember great leaders such as Sir Winston Churchill, who said in his famous “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech, “victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” Ukraine must survive. Ukraine must win.
As I said earlier, with respect to National Defence, the Prime Minister does not seem to care. His rhetoric does not match his actions. In the leaked documents that came from the Pentagon that were on the Discord app, it said, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told NATO officials privately that Canada will never meet the military alliance’s defense-spending target”. It goes on to say—
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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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