- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Cumberland—Colchester
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $134,737.37
- Government Page
- Sep/20/23 3:03:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what the Liberal government would like to do is deflect from the things that are very important to Canadians, such as their inflationary carbon tax. Even the governor of the Bank of Canada has stated clearly that, with the carbon tax announcement that has it going up, inflation increases each year.
The ongoing punishment for Canadians simply trying to buy food, put a roof over their heads, for which the minister is failing again just as he did on immigration, and heat their homes, must stop.
After eight years, the Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost. When will he cancel his plans to increase his inflationary carbon tax?
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- Sep/20/23 3:02:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every member of the House receives emails, letters and phone calls explaining how unaffordable life has become due to the NDP-Liberal government's punishing carbon tax.
After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, everything costs more, and inflation on basic necessities such as food continues to rise. The price of lettuce is up. The price of carrots is up, and the price of potatoes is up, all by more than 70%. Quite frankly, Canadians are fed up.
Will the Liberal Prime Minister cancel his plans to increase his inflationary carbon tax?
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- Jun/7/23 2:16:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government’s out-of-control spending leaves Canadians with the grim reality that money is tighter in their households every month. People in Cumberland—Colchester have contacted me almost daily to express hopelessness and dismay as they watch prices and interest rates climb. Today’s interest rate hike and its effect on mortgages will be disastrous.
The hard work by Nova Scotians for the betterment of the country has been rewarded with eight years of ridiculous inflationary spending, culminating, sadly, in the terrible budget we see before the House now. The Liberals have now approved $60 billion in new inflationary spending, more weight on the backs of Canadian families and businesses. These are people with hopes and dreams that cannot be achieved because of the Liberals' out-of-control spending.
The madness needs to stop now. The Liberals must give us a plan to end the inflationary deficits and spending in order to bring down inflation and interest rates so Canadians can thrive in this country again.
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- Mar/28/23 3:03:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at a time when Canadians are facing being caught in the vice of a cost-of-living crisis, the current Liberal government has done nothing but crank the handle. Rather than merely being content with raising the carbon tax, the tax on everything, the government is still spending millions upon millions of dollars on outside management consultants, and I have been schooled on being careful about that. There is something broken when the current Liberals cannot seem to understand that the spending is an inflationary dollar upon dollar. Why is the Prime Minister more focused on helping his high-priced Liberal consultants than on helping everyday Canadians?
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Madam Speaker, part of the difficulty that Canadians are facing is inflation. We know that interest rates are rising. Some other economic experts think there may even be a recession looming on the horizon. That is absolutely terrifying from an economic perspective.
We understand that generations going forward will not be able to afford homes. That is a travesty. That is not the vision that we have for Canada. We understand that the current generation of adult children are living in their parents' basements because they are unable to afford a decent house. That is a travesty. On the weekend, I met with a great friend of mine of many years. Two of his adult children are living in his basement because they are unable to afford a house. Is that a problem? That is a giant problem that I lay directly at the feet of the Liberal government because, clearly, there is no thought about monetary policy on that side of the House.
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Madam Speaker, the important thing here is that the government needs to begin to understand the significant effects of inflation and increasing interest rates on Canadians and the difficulties that everyday Canadians, not just in Cumberland—Colchester but across this vast nation, are struggling with when trying to feed their families. We know for a family of four it is costing them $1,200 more to feed their family. We realize that.
What I would suggest is that the government needs to do something better. It needs to change its fiscal policies, because we know that is what is putting the gasoline on the inflationary fire. It continues to do it only to, sadly, support its coalition with the NDP, which continues to prop the government up.
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- Sep/27/22 12:24:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House of Commons on behalf of the good people of Cumberland—Colchester. As we found out last night, we were hit very hard by hurricane Fiona. I think it bears repeating that our thoughts and prayers are with all the folks out there who continue to suffer without power and to dig out from the storm.
Primarily, we need to think of the carbon tax as exactly what it is. It is a tax. It is another tax that businesses and individuals have to pay. We are here now, of course. If other parliamentarians are not aware of this, then they must be living under a rock, but we are at the highest rates of inflation in decades. It harkens back to those days in my life in 1999 when we were coming out of those very high inflation years. Indeed, in 1990, when my wife and I bought our first car, we needed a loan and interest rates were at 18%. My lovely father-in-law was a great accountant and someone who always needed to teach one an interesting lesson. Interestingly enough, he was kind enough to give us a loan for 12%. Those kinds of things are where we are headed to now.
A big concern that I have is the cost of living. If we are talking about raising taxes, we cannot do so without talking about the cost of living. Every day, my constituency assistants receive calls from people who are unable to afford their lives. As we might say, they are being priced out of their own lives. I have spoken in the House previously about people who have had to sell their wedding bands in order to buy food.
We know that where I live, in rural Canada, it is going to be important to understand that winter is coming. I know that is a bit of a cliche from a TV show, but winter comes every year, and it is still coming. I think we need to understand what it costs to fill a barrel of oil now. Many people in rural Canada still live in single-family dwellings with oil heat, especially in Atlantic Canada. It is going to cost about $1,500 to fill one barrel of oil. Of course, if we get a bad winter it may last six weeks, but it may only last a month. When we are talking about $1,500, we all know that is a significant amount of money.
We also know that people at the current time cannot feed themselves. We have heard multiple times that the cost of groceries has gone up 10%. On top of that, the carbon tax, of course, will add many more difficulties and much more hardship on the people who live in Cumberland—Colchester. Another thing of interest is that I am very perplexed as to why the government would continue to have only one solution for a complex problem. Why continue to beat Canadians over the head with more taxes, more taxes and more taxes to fund the free-fall spending of the Liberal government? I fail to understand that.
Previously, I was a physician. What we do know is that for complex problems there are often multi-faceted solutions. For instance, when people suffer from cardiovascular disease, we know that people may take medications. We could suggest that they just take their pills, go out, eat whatever they want and live their lives. Is that appropriate? Could it make them live longer? Yes, but does it make people any healthier? I would suggest to the good folks out there that it would not actually make them healthier. How do we help people become healthier? We ask them to exercise more. We ask them to get better sleep. We ask them to help their mental health problems.
The stretch here, of course, is to understand that climate change is real and to question how we will solve that problem. They continue to push tax upon tax to solve a problem. In my mind, and I think in the minds of Conservatives across this great country, people understand that that is a solution based on only one facet of the problem. Clearly, we know it is, given the significant cost-of-living challenges of Canadians at this time and what they are really unable to afford. As, my great colleague from Mégantic—L'Érable pointed out, gasoline it is costing another 40¢ a litre.
In parts of Atlantic Canada, buying a car still poses a great difficulty. There may be many people in larger cities, and perhaps across the aisle, who can afford fancy electric cars for $60,000, $70,000 or $80,000, but we know that in parts of rural Canada there are people who buy cars for $2,500 or $3,500 because that is what they can afford. We know now that adding on top of that is going to be difficult.
One of the big concerns I have is that people in Cumberland—Colchester are going to be specifically and proportionally disadvantaged by having to pay more for gasoline. We do not have mass transit. We do not have subways. We do not have those kinds of things. People rely on themselves to get to where they need to go, because that is where we have chosen to live. Therefore, should we be disproportionately affected by another 40¢ per litre on gasoline? To me, that is not really a possibility.
One of the other important things to figure out is who is paying this tax? We understand very clearly from the government that large corporations can apply for an exemption from the carbon tax. That does not really make a lot of sense to me, because we know small businesses are not eligible to have an exemption from it. We also know that small businesses are the backbone of Canada; they are the economic drivers. Therefore, small businesses have to pay the tax and large corporations do not.
We also know that individuals will end up paying more. We know that an average household is now paying $1,400 more annually for the carbon tax.
I always look at this as a shell game, that game where the ball is hidden under shells, then they are moved around and we guess what shell the ball is under. We want to know where that shell is, who is paying the tax and how much is it. These elusive answers make it more difficult to find any type of support for a carbon tax.
We need to look at other technological examples of how to do that. We know that our western partners in the great province of Alberta have the cleanest oil in the world. We also know that there are other technologies, such as carbon capture and storage. We also look to things like small modular reactors to produce pollution-free electricity.
When we look at those kinds of things, it becomes very clear that there are multiple solutions to a problem as opposed to continuing to talk about a carbon tax, which we know very clearly was originally promised at $50 per tonne and is now set to more than triple to $170 per tonne.
I would also be remiss if I did not talk about the specific situation in Nova Scotia. We know that it has made significant strides in greening its economy and reducing greenhouse gas. We also know that Premier Tim Houston has sent very pointed letters to the Minister of Environment to help understand better what Nova Scotia's position is.
To quote Premier Houston, he said that his government would outpace federal greenhouse gas reduction targets while costing Nova Scotians less than what they would pay with a federal carbon pricing system. He said, “our path to 2030 is more effective, it’s more affordable and it’s more visionary than a carbon tax.”
According to provincial documents, Nova Scotia's legislated greenhouse gas reduction target is to be at least 53%t below 2005 levels by 2030. The objective of the federal carbon tax is to be 40% to 45% below 2005 levels.
The other part of this is that it behooves us to understand that if we are to continue to not allow the provinces to be creative and if we are to continue on with this Ottawa-knows-best approach, this again is absolutely untenable. Why would Canadians believe in this carbon tax when clearly, as I have stated in multiple different ways, there are other ways to reach these targets? Continuing to bash Canadians over the head at a time when inflation is at a 40-year high is really an untenable position.
Canadians are hurting. Our offices hear from them every day. I am absolutely astounded that the members across the aisle are not hearing from their constituents as well to understand how difficult it is to function in today's world from a financial perspective. Therefore, I would suggest that perhaps the members opposite need to listen to their constituents to understand how difficult it is and then, as we might say in the vernacular, axe the tax.
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- May/13/22 11:56:33 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, recently I spent time in Springhill. All the businesses had concerns about the state of our economy. They need workers, both unskilled and skilled. They need regulatory changes for their products. They need relief from extreme inflation. They need answers, not talking points about the United States or the rest of the world, and they need the government's hand out of their back pocket.
How will the government create good policy, not more handouts, and let small businesses flourish?
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- Apr/26/22 1:02:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we cannot use “just” anymore. I will try to fix that somehow. I will learn some new English.
One thing for certain is that it is inflation, and it is a huge problem that is at the highest levels in over 30 thirty years. These spend-DP-Liberals can go on and say that this is a global crisis and things like that, but it is a lot of foolishness. Quite frankly, I do not believe for one second that my constituents are terribly concerned about what is going on specifically in Germany, France or anywhere else that these spend-DP-Liberals want to talk about. That is nonsensical.
When they call me, email me or drop into the office, they are concerned about how they are going to put food on their tables here in Canada, which is the government's responsibility and the Prime Minister's responsibility, not just any other problem. They are concerned about the highest inflation that Canadians have seen in over 30 years. They are concerned about the prices of everything they see, from home heating fuel to groceries to gasoline for their vehicles, which go up on an almost weekly basis. To get to the question that Daniel would like answered, perhaps by the Prime Minister, what is the government going to do about the affordability crisis that Canadians are now facing?
Finally, Canadians ask me every day how we are going to pay the incredible debt that these spend-DP-Liberals continue to accumulate. I look back to August 1994 when my eldest daughter was born. At that point, an individual's share of the debt was $16,000, and today that has now ballooned to $31,255. Of course, if we want to use approximate math, that is double the amount in 28 years. As this number continues to climb, there is a major concern I hear from everyday Canadians with this out-of-control spending: How are we going to saddle these Canadians with that as they go forward in the future and cannot even afford a house?
To summarize, this budget has failed everyday Canadians like Daniel, important and vital industries such as agriculture, future Canadians like my eldest daughter, who are going to be saddled with this huge national debt, and, finally, all Nova Scotians. There was next to no mention of my home province in the budget and certainly nothing of substance for the constituents of Cumberland—Colchester. Therefore, it will come as no surprise that I have no confidence in the government and there is no way I can support the Prime Minister's budget 2022.
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