- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman
- Manitoba
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $140,796.07
- Government Page
- May/28/24 10:18:28 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the comments by the government House leader are so disappointing. He is not protecting the sanctity of this place. The House of Commons is our House of Commons, and that is our chair; however, the current chair occupant has proven that he is not fit to be in that chair.
We had a decision by the Deputy Speaker about the partisan activities of the Speaker. I do not know what type of baseball the Liberals play when empowered by their NDP coalition to shut down debate on a privilege motion, but the last time I looked, in baseball, it is three strikes and a player is out. On three different occasions, the Speaker has been involved in partisan activities and given partisan speeches. This is the fourth occasion. It has been found each and every time that he has violated the rules of this place.
We have a question of privilege in front of us. Turning to chapter 3 of the third edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, on page 150, it says:
Once the motion is properly moved, seconded, and proposed to the House, it is subject to all the procedures and practices relating to debate on a substantive motion. The speeches are limited...
The House has considered all the conduct of the member, in this case, the Speaker. It goes on to say:
A privilege motion once under debate has priority over all Orders of the Day including Government Orders and Private Members’ Business. However, the debate does not interfere with Routine Proceedings, Statements by Members, Question Period, Royal Assent, deferred recorded divisions or the adjournment of the House [or other] scheduled...Private Members’ Business...
We have done our orders of the day, but now we have the Liberals, empowered by their NDP coalition partners, shutting down debate and moving closure on a question of privilege that relates to the very confidence that all of us in the House of Commons have in the Speaker.
The Speaker should do the honourable thing and resign. The House Leader should do that instead of forcing us to—
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to rise tonight to talk about the fall economic statement. I came in here actually prepared to talk about the question of privilege. I am shocked that the government would shut down debate in the House on a question of privilege over the partisan activities of the Speaker. Our House of Commons, our institution, is being discredited and undermined by the Chair, the Speaker of the House of Commons. We have to continue to have a fulsome discussion on that, so I am disappointed that the government would use its power to force debate on Bill C-59, the fall economic statement. Last time I looked, it was May 27, and here we are talking in the summer about the fall economic statement from 2023.
I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge.
As Conservatives, we have said all along that we want to make sure that we build the homes, axe the tax, fix the budget and stop the crime. The government has no intention of doing any of that. We know that housing in this country is in a desperate situation, that in the nine years under the Liberal-NDP coalition, the cost of rent has doubled, the cost of mortgages has doubled and the number of housing starts is below that of what we did in 1976.
We say we want to axe the tax, and that is very important to my riding. I was just meeting with some cattle producers from Manitoba, including from my riding, and they were telling me over and over again that every time they have to pay the carbon tax, every time the carbon tax is hidden in all the supplies they buy, it all trickles down, and that means that they are getting less and paying to the government more. Of course when they sell their cattle, for which right now, thankfully, the price is at record highs, people are complaining about the price of beef on the store shelf.
One has to remember that the coolers that store shelves have their beef in are often powered through thermal electricity or natural gas, We know that this adds an extra cost to the price of beef. We know that in the transportation of that beef from the farm to the packer and from the processor to the retailer, it all gets added in and consumers are paying more. Of course, they cannot afford it.
We are going to fix the budget because the government continues to run up huge national debt and larger-than-ever deficits that are actually going to hurt each and every one of us. We know that the Governor of the Bank of Canada has said that this has not been helpful in controlling inflation. It has not been helpful in its being able to bring down interest rates. Of course every time we have a Trudeau as prime minister, we pay record-high interest rates.
With my first farm, which I bought back in 1984 under the former Trudeau, the interest rate on my mortgage was 21%, which was pretty high and pretty impossible, almost, for a 19-year-old young farmer to get going. I had to eat that at the bank because of the out-of-control spending by the Liberal government at the time, from 1980 to 1984. Our young people today are paying the cost because of out-of-control spending and little care for the economic performance of the country under the Liberal-NDP coalition.
Of course, we have to stop the crime. The government has, for nine years, ignored the plight of Canadians who are dealing with increasing criminal activity, including violent crime, which has gone up by over 32% across the country, including in my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman and including in the city of Winnipeg, where the member for Winnipeg North resides.
We see, over and over again, repeat offenders generating 90% of the crimes that are being committed against Canadians. We want safer communities, and that is why as Conservatives under the leadership of our leader, the member for Carleton, we will implement jail, not bail, and keep violent repeat offenders, those who are perpetrating crimes, behind bars and actually reduce crime across the country.
As members know, I am the shadow minister for national defence. I am very concerned by the way the government has ignored our Canadian Armed Forces and how it has gone from a proud, honoured institution to where it is now, again, in a decade of darkness, which occurred, of course, under the Chrétien era. We are living that again. Members and veterans of the armed forces have told me that they are actually in a decade of disaster because of the dithering and delays being carried out by the current government.
We know for a fact that the world has gotten much more dangerous. We know, and it is not just because of Russia's invasion in Ukraine, that we are seeing increased sabre-rattling by the Kremlin with NATO members in the Baltic region, which we just witnessed this past week with its redrawing of boundaries along Estonia and Russia and between Finland, Sweden and other Baltic nations with Russia. That type of aggression and provocation by President Vladimir Putin and his kleptocrats in Moscow continues to undermine our security.
We know that the Communist regime in Beijing and the People's Liberation Army continue to sabre-rattle with Taiwan. The rhetoric coming out of Beijing this past week after the inauguration of Taiwan's new president was deplorable. We know that its ongoing aggression against the Philippines in the South China Sea and around the Second Thomas Shoal continues to undermine security co-operation and peace and prosperity within that region. We know that Japan, South Korea and other Indo-Pacific countries are more and more concerned about China's growing disturbances in the region.
We know that the government has failed to make the investments in the Canadian Armed Forces to meet our NATO target, and the Washington Summit is coming up. There has been a lot of concern expressed by our allies, especially since the defence policy update came out, that there is no plan to meet the NATO target.
The Minister of National Defence has said that the Canadian Armed Forces is in a death spiral. He has said that our equipment is worn out and unsustainable. At committee today, the Minister of National Defence said that our Victoria-class submarines are no longer serviceable. We know that the greatest proliferation of weapons systems in this country outside of air-breathing missiles, which are hypersonic; intercontinental ballistic missiles; and the advancement of more cruise missiles and drones, outside of that domain, the next biggest growing proliferation of weapons is submarines. The best way to defend against a submarine is to have a submarine, and the minister is saying today, essentially, that we no longer have serviceable submarines to defend Canada in our maritime approaches.
We have to make sure that we are standing up for our troops. The minister said that we are short 6,700 housing units. We hear stories of members of our Canadian Armed Forces living rough. They are living in cars, tents and campers. They are couch-surfing in places like Halifax, Esquimalt and Toronto. We know that they need to have proper housing.
We cannot recruit because the government, under the NDP-Liberal coalition, has not put the troops first and foremost in its minds, making sure they get the kit they need. The government will say that it gave a recent raise, but in giving that raise it also increased the rent of military housing. We actually passed a motion here just two weeks ago calling on the government to reverse that decision. Of course, the Minister of National Defence and the Liberals voted against it. This has affected our recruitment capabilities, and that is why we are still short 16,000 troops.
We know that readiness continues to be undermined. All of us remember Gen. Andrew Leslie, a former army commander who was also the whip for the Liberals for some time. He has come out and stated that he is “not aware of any other [NATO] army, which will be deploying troops to the front line of a possible confrontation with Russia, who are not 100 per cent trained according to a variety of battle test standards.”
He is saying that the defence policy update, the most recent budget by the Liberals and the main estimates that we are dealing with at committee have undermined our overall readiness. We are now at only 61% standing ready. We are not training our troops like we are supposed to be at CFB Wainwright in Alberta before we deploy to places like Latvia. We are no longer doing fighter pilot training in this country. We have farmed that out to places like the United States and Italy. We do not have base training here. We do not even have enough pilots in the Canadian Air Force to fly our current fleet of fighter jets.
I would just say that based upon the comments we heard just this past week from multiple U.S. senators and from the ambassador, Canada is an outlier in NATO. Eighteen percent of the countries will meet the 2%, and 13% have a plan to get to 2% within the next couple of years. Canada is the only country that will never make it, and that is because we have a Prime Minister who actually said that we will never be at 2%.
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- Apr/17/23 3:04:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is dodge, dither and delay. That is the Liberal way.
This is a call for action from former Liberal and Conservative politicians, as well as non-partisan defence experts. They say, “Russia's brutal war...in Ukraine...as well as the continuing expansion of the military arsenals of authoritarian regimes...should have prompted a re-assessment of our defence posture.” Sadly, well-connected consultants, big bankers and wealthy bondholders get more from the government than our troops do.
When will the Prime Minister take our defence and national security seriously and safeguard our peace, prosperity and way of life?
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