- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- 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/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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- 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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- Sep/27/22 1:31:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not know how that one slipped by, but I thank the member for Winnipeg North. I will repeat the sentence altered.
The Liberal tax is bad for Nova Scotia. It will have no effect on the excellent work that Nova Scotians have done and will continue to do to reduce the carbon footprint. There is an alternative to the dogmatic approach of Ottawa, which was proposed by Premier Houston. If the Liberal government was serious about tackling climate change, it would encourage innovation and new approaches to the problem. Instead, it has a rigid set of rules that do not allow for programs that go beyond the realm of its tax agenda.
As families across the country struggle to make ends meet, dirty oil continues to be shipped to ports in Atlantic Canada from places like Saudi Arabia. This means human rights-abusing dictators are getting rich on Canada’s oil needs while a single mom in my riding cannot afford nutritious food. There is, of course, a solution to the problem. By unleashing Canada’s natural resource sector and approving good Canadian projects, global emissions will be reduced, which is our goal. That is because we have some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world.
The oil cultivated and extracted in Canada is the cleanest, most efficient energy in the world. On top of that, the emissions produced by shipping oil across the Atlantic Ocean to New Brunswick from the Middle East completely negates any benefit from a carbon tax. Let us green-light Newfoundland and Labrador’s planned increase in oil production, which will allow us to fully replace every single barrel of oil we are importing from abroad to Atlantic Canada within five years. Let us tackle climate change by unleashing Canada’s mining of minerals needed to produce the batteries for electric vehicles. Let us make Canada a place where nuclear and hydroelectricity generation is welcomed and not admonished.
The carbon tax does not work, and it is time for it to go. Canadians just cannot afford the government.
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- Sep/26/22 11:55:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands talked about the promise of help versus the delivery of help. We have seen that this is a concern in the debate here. We experienced it after hurricane Dorian in 2019, when the help that was promised did not arrive for a lot of our municipalities. We heard about the floods last year in B.C.
Could the member expand more on that issue and where she has seen that happen, where the issue seems to fade and the money does not flow?
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- Mar/25/22 12:48:24 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-8
Mr. Speaker, the speech by my colleague for Calgary Midnapore dealt with the issue of how we finance these expenditures. One of those ways, obviously, is the preferred way of the NDP-Liberal coalition, which is to borrow money and burden future taxpayers. The other, as the member pointed out fascinatingly in her speech, was the increased revenue that is coming in to the federal government as a result of higher oil and gas prices.
I live in a part of the world where we have to burn oil from Saudi Arabia because the coalition decided that it did not want a pipeline called energy east. We also have to burn electricity from Colombian coal in Nova Scotia. That is where we get our energy: from Saudi Arabian oil and Colombian coal, because of the policies of the government.
I would like the member for Calgary Midnapore to please comment on what she thinks about the preference for us to burn energy and oil from places, such as Saudi Arabia, with repressive regimes compared with clean, ethical Canadian oil.
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- Dec/2/21 1:49:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I found that issue concerning, but also enlightening. Nobody wants to see the member for Kingston and the Islands living naked in a forest, including himself.
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