- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,927.65
- Government Page
- Nov/7/23 3:01:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the revolting Atlantic caucus and the panicking, plummeting Prime Minister now have two coalitions with which to flip Canadians the bird. There is the costly coalition with the NDP to drive the cost of everything up. Unfortunately, Canadians know too much about that. The other, according to the Quebec media, is with the separatist Bloc that committed to keep the Liberals in power for another two years.
The costly coalition Prime Minister is not worth the cost. Will the Prime Minister release his full carbon tax coalition agreement with the separatist Bloc?
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- Nov/6/23 3:39:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as a point of clarification, as a witness—
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- Nov/2/23 3:10:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is hard to imagine is that, after eight years, the plummeting Prime Minister panicked last week with his carbon tax announcement. However, Nova Scotians who made the decision to convert to cleaner propane have been exempted from that announcement and will have to pay 61¢ a litre more on their home heating.
The flip-flopping Prime Minister has finally admitted that he is not worth the cost. Will the Liberals admit that they are going to quadruple the carbon tax on Atlantic Canadians after the next election, or will they join the Conservatives on Monday and vote to axe the carbon tax on all home heating?
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- Nov/2/23 11:45:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is incredible that the member for Halifax and the member for Kings—Hants think that 20¢ to 30¢ a litre on home heating oil is pennies. That is $200 to $300 a tank, times four tanks a year, which is $1,000 for people in carbon tax, and they are dismissing it. The great promise the member for Kings—Hants is so proud of is that the government will delay that to a 61¢ increase after the election.
Can he tell me why he thinks that is better than axing the carbon tax altogether for all home heating oil to give everyone an equal chance at saving money in this expensive, inflationary period the government has caused?
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- Nov/1/23 3:15:00 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the panicking Prime Minister is plummeting in the polls and the nervous Nellie Atlantic Liberal MPs are whining to please help save them. The NDP-Liberal government's solution is to put the carbon tax up 61¢ after the next election. In other words, people should vote Liberal to quadruple the carbon tax after the next election or vote Conservative to axe the tax. The flip-flopping Prime Minister now admits he is not worth the cost.
Will the Prime Minister come clean and tell Atlantic Canadians how much the carbon tax will cost after the next election?
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- Feb/14/23 12:45:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Hamilton Centre and I do have some spirited conversations, which I enjoy.
I will say that the cost of our energy in Atlantic Canada is driven by the fact that we have to buy Saudi Arabian oil. However, I am always curious that the members of the NDP, part of the NDP-Liberal costly coalition, seem to hate any type of profit. Without profit, the member would not have the Apple iPhone that he carries around with him, because it creates innovation and jobs. I would like to hear NDP members once in a while get up and say it is great that we are able to move forward and produce better medicines, produce better technology and produce a better lifestyle for Canadians and for the world through profits and innovation.
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- Feb/14/23 12:31:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in this House to speak to this important motion that our party has put forward on the issue that is of most concern to Canadians today.
I know all of us in the House, and I am sure government members are hearing it as much as we are, receive calls and emails to our offices every day from struggling working people having trouble paying their bills. People who live on fixed incomes are having to make the most difficult choices in life, like the choice between paying for heat, paying for food, paying for medication or paying for gas in the car to go get food. These are the choices that people are making as a result of the actions of the Liberal government after eight years.
We are in an unprecedented situation of a 40-year high in inflation caused by the policies of the government after eight years. After eight years, people are working harder, but they are falling further behind. I know members of the Liberal Party love it when we raise Pierre Trudeau, so I will raise Pierre Trudeau. We have not had inflationary numbers like this since Pierre Trudeau was in government. That was a difficult time in the 1970s and 1980s for people. The sins of the father are now being delivered through the sins of the son.
Housing prices are now twice as high as they were in 2015. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the cost of groceries is up 11%. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, half of Canadians are cutting back on groceries. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 20% of Canadians are actually skipping meals. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment across Canada in the 10 biggest cities is $2,213 per month, compared to $1,171 per month when the Liberals were elected.
After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, 45% of variable mortgage rate holders say they will have to sell or vacate their homes in less than nine months due to current interest rates. After eight years of the Liberal Prime Minister, the average monthly mortgage costs have more than doubled to now over $3,000 a month.
We can see that these costs are going up and that is why we are getting these calls. I am going to relate it a bit to what we experience in the Maritimes. Mr. Speaker, as a Nova Scotian, I know you are getting calls along these lines. The policies of the government have killed the investment in most industries in Canada. Bill C-69 is affectionately known as the “no pipelines bill”. I call it the “no capital bill” because it has really killed all capital investment.
The result of that is that in Nova Scotia and in New Brunswick, and my predecessor who spoke, the member for New Brunswick Southwest, has the same issue, we have to burn oil from Saudi Arabia to heat our houses. To give members an idea of what that costs, because of the policies of the government, it costs $1,800 to fill a tank of oil. Half that tank will be burned in four weeks.
These are the expenses that are killing people on fixed incomes in my part of the world and making them think about selling their houses. We have good, clean, ethical Canadian oil and natural gas that we could be bringing to Atlantic Canada to reduce our cost of living, but the government has brought in policies to stop that.
Of equal impact on inflation is the fact that the Liberals never saw a tax they did not like. What is the first thing they did? They thought they could put in carbon tax, a tax they thought would stop everything that goes on in the world with regard to weather. Carbon tax is inflationary by its nature. If it were to work, which it does not, the design of it is that it has to make everything much more expensive in order to cause people, theoretically, to change their behaviour.
In my rural riding, we do not have transit. We do not have options for how we get around, how we take our kids to school, how we get to work, how we get groceries, or how we go visit our parents and family members. We have to drive. Transit is not an option that we have. The Liberals believe that imposing a carbon tax would actually change the fact that we have to drive everywhere in rural Canada.
The imposition and tripling of this new tax, which would come into place this year in Nova Scotia, because the Liberals have not had enough of destroying our economies with their taxation, will make fuel cost an extra 40¢ a litre by 2030. For the mom taking her kids to hockey practice or taking her kids to school, this is a huge amount of money, on top of having to burn gasoline produced from oil from Saudi Arabia.
That tax costs families thousands of dollars a year when they are trying to make healthy meals and trying to figure out how to heat their houses. Heating houses, and this may come as a shock to the Liberal government, is not optional in Canada. We actually have to do that, and a tax that makes home heating more expensive for seniors living through our frigid winters is nothing short of cruel.
I am talking about the Liberal carbon tax, the tax on everything, the tax making everything more expensive. If the Prime Minister was serious about making life more affordable for our seniors, workers and families, he would cancel the carbon tax imposition in Nova Scotia, and he would cancel the tripling or quadrupling of the carbon tax that he is planning to do to make life more unaffordable for Canadians.
Instead of freezing that obscene tax, the Liberal government is raising taxes on the people who are struggling to make ends meet. Of course, the Liberals pretend that somehow, magically, in their world of math we could actually get more money back than we pay. That math does not add up in grade 6, but apparently it adds up for the Liberals.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, in his reports on the carbon tax that exists now, has actually pointed out something the Liberals tend to ignore. I will read from the report: “most households in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing” by 2030. That is a little different from the lines we hear. By then, the carbon tax levy will have increased to $170 a tonne. The moment we decide to decarbonize the economy in a relatively short period of time with a tax, if it were to work, we are talking here less than 10 years to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is clear that there is going to be a cost.
The PBO goes on to report, “Most households...under the backstop will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing under the HEHE plan” in 2030-31. The Parliamentary Budget Officer continues by stating, “Household carbon costs—which now include the federal levy and GST paid...and lower income...—exceed the rebate and the induced reduction in personal income taxes arising from the loss in income.”
In other words, this is not what the Liberals say during question period, that somebody magically pays into taxes to Ottawa and gets more back. I do not think anyone has believed that existed since the temporary imposition of income taxes when they first came in. It is just about as believable.
An additional element of this high-priced system that the Liberals have brought in is that we have fallen behind the U.S. in our per capita economic output. In 2015, we were equal to the United States, and now we are 40% less. That is $100 billion a year lost to the Canadian income, according to the IMF. I know the Liberals like to make up their own numbers, but the IMF says that is $100 billion a year that is lost to our income relative to the United States because of the policies of the government. Up until 2015, we were fairly equal.
I have many more issues, which I am sure I will get to address in the question and answer period, particularly with the member for Kingston and the Islands. I look forward to those questions.
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- Dec/8/22 1:30:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the NDP member from the costly coalition is obviously very sensitive to any accusation that his friends and fellow caucus members are putting up the cost of everything.
I will go back to what my constituents have written to me. The member for Kingston and the Islands, I am sure, is getting emails like this. Nancy wrote to me to raise the issues facing those on a federal disability pension. The member for Kingston and the Islands is obviously not aware that people live on disability pensions.
She continued with asking us to please raise their pension. She wrote that her oil bill was over $700, and she gets $895 a month. She cannot afford prescriptions, power, cable, phone or Internet, to say nothing of food. She lives in rural Nova Scotia, so everything she needs, she has to drive to, but she cannot afford gas. She says she is usually home anyway, but this is ridiculous. She goes on to talk about her medical needs, and she says she is living a life like the early days of the pandemic because she cannot get out and misses appointments.
She then says that the government is giving away millions of dollars, and she understands why it has to do it, and she does sympathize, but she asks about Canadian citizens. She questions if the government cares about them. She then says that she finds it hard to see her mom, as she is 35 kilometres away, and Nancy cannot afford the gas to visit her. Her mother is on an old age pension too and cannot afford food.
I would think that the Liberals would care about these issues and vote for the motion.
We are seeing, for example, that food inflation is up 10.8% because of the policies of the government. Fish, which is very important in my riding, is up 10.4%. Butter is up 16%. Eggs are up 11%. Margarine is up 37%. I am not buttering members up on this. The reality is it has gone up by 37%. Bread and rolls, which is something we butter up, have gone up 17%. I can go on. The food costs have grown enormously.
Fishing is an important part of my riding. It is lobster season and the winter has just started. It is a dangerous job, fishing in the north Atlantic for lobster in the winter during storms, with waves and snow. There are dangers when people are out to sea, 40 to 50 miles off shore.
I know I am going to get scoffs from the other side, but the cost of diesel for a fishing boat is $2.70 per gallon, which is triple what it was at the start of the season last year. It is tripling. It is because of the policies of the government that we no longer have access to the necessary bait. We are not allowed to fish mackerel because of the decisions of the government. The reality is they have to buy bait from Europe and Norway, and the bait has now doubled to $1.40 per fish.
There are people who have a loan from the provincial loan board. They are young entrepreneurs who have gotten into the fishing business and have upwards of a million dollars of loans, so they could buy their boat, their licence and their gear. Their loans have just rolled over this fall. Do members know what they are now? They were paying 2%. What do members think they have gone up to? They have more than tripled to 7% on a million-dollar loan.
This is an incredible burden on and cost increase to the food that we eat. That is why we are putting forward this motion. We are saying we have to give people relief. The government has to give relief to Canadians to stop the cycle of inflation it is causing, which is driving up food prices and making our constituents have to choose between heating and eating.
How did we get here? Those tiny deficits were promised in 2015 and balanced by 2019. Before COVID, we had $110 billion of deficits spent by the government, which was supposed to have balanced budgets. Then during COVID, over $200 million was spent on issues that were not related to COVID, which added more debt to the country than all other prime ministers combined in the history of this country.
That excessive spending puts more cash into the market, and it is chasing fewer goods, which means our paycheques cannot buy what they used to. It is basic economics. However, if we had a government that understood or paid attention to monetary policy, it would have understood that and saw it coming, as we did two years. We warned the government that this was going to happen. The Minister of Finance said she was worried about deflation. Do members believe that? She did nothing about understanding the basic economics of our economy.
I have a lot more to talk about on the wasted government spending that has led us to this point where we are calling on the government to give some compassion and relief, so people can afford to buy food and do not have to choose between food, heating and prescriptions in my province, and in some cases selling their houses.
I have asked questions here, and I had Debbie on the phone. Her mother has to sell her family house. She has to sell the family house because the price of home heating has gone up from $200 to $400 a month. We get calls every week from people having to sell their houses because they cannot afford to heat them anymore, and they have to make the choice between maintaining that home or eating, so they have to sell the home.
We are calling on the government to show a little compassion and reduce or eliminate its failed carbon tax, which has not met a single carbon target it has set out. The Liberals have not reduced carbon outputs in this country since they have been in government. It is an inflationary tax intended to drive up inflation, and it is not working, so we would urge all members in the House to please support this motion today. It is a brilliantly crafted motion, which would really help Canadians suffer through this terrible economic time we are in.
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- Nov/28/22 2:54:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what is interesting is that Nova Scotia Power does not allow homes to have a heat pump as their only source of heat. What is interesting is that home inspectors and insurance companies in Nova Scotia will not allow heat pumps as their only source of heat. Do members know why? The Canada building code prohibits them from doing so because they have to maintain a house at 20°C or more, which they cannot do in cold weather.
Will the government stop its fairy tale programs and stop forcing Nova Scotians to pay for unhelpful and—
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- Nov/22/22 2:48:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, those Liberals are proud that, in 2023, they are going to add $360 to a tank of home heating oil. In the 2015 election, the Prime Minister said that provinces that did the hard work of reducing carbon emissions would not have the carbon tax imposed, yet Nova Scotia has already surpassed the 2030 carbon reduction targets of the Liberal government.
I will ask again. When will the Liberals live up to their campaign promise and stop forcing their failed carbon tax on Nova Scotians?
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- Nov/22/22 2:46:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Nova Scotia surpassed the Liberal federal government's 2030 emission targets already and will reach net zero by 2050 without a carbon tax, but those Liberals today are imposing one. That carbon tax is going to add $360 to a tank of home heating oil when 40% of Atlantic Canadians are living in energy poverty. The Liberals seem more focused on ineffective taxes than they are on actual results.
When will the Liberal government stop forcing Canadians to have the failed carbon tax?
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- Nov/21/22 3:06:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, heat pumps do not work when it gets below -10°C. He should do his homework.
Liberal inflation is causing the Hortons to have to sell their home and move to a smaller place. They are working harder and falling further behind. They want to save a little money at the end of the month, but home heating increases are eating up their paycheques.
Melody Horton has a simple question: Why will the Liberal government not do the right thing and cancel its planned carbon tax on home heating?
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- Nov/21/22 3:05:10 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Hortons could not afford a home in Ontario, so they found their dream home on a lake in Nova Scotia. The kids love skating and swimming on the lake. Life was good until this year. The increased cost of everything, like a 68% increase in the cost to heat a home in Nova Scotia, forced the Hortons to have to choose between paying their mortgage and heating their home.
The Hortons want to know why the Liberal government will not do the right thing and cancel its planned carbon tax on home heating.
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- Oct/20/22 11:12:08 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the parliamentary secretary's intervention on the opposition day motion, it seems to me she is having a “let them eat cake” moment. She did not really speak to the motion, which is that the government's policies are creating massive inflation that is causing people in my community and my province to have to choose between heating and eating.
If members do not know what heating from oil looks like, they can look at my visual here. It costs more than $1,000 now to fill an oil tank. It has gone up 52% since the summer, and over 53% of Nova Scotians heat this way.
Could the parliamentary secretary actually address the issue of the day, which is why she and her government will not give a break on home heating taxes so people in my province do not have to choose between heating and eating?
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