- 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/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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- Oct/17/23 3:00:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberal minister is talking about search and rescue when Canadians cannot put food on their tables.
Melody Horton of Bridgewater had to sell her dream home because of the increase in her mortgage costs. She does not agree with these Liberals that they have never had it so good. The new projected deficit of $46 billion for this year means higher costs and higher monthly payments for Melody and for all Canadians, including that Liberal minister's constituents.
The Prime Minister is not worth the cost. When will the Prime Minister stop harming Canadians with his inflationary deficits and balance a budget to lower costs on Canadians?
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- Oct/17/23 2:59:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the minister of industry has just admitted that 40 million Canadians are struggling to put food on the table. Eight years of out-of-control spending by the NDP-Liberal government has caused that inflation. This harmful inflation has pushed up interest rates, doubling and tripling mortgage payments and rent. Ninety per cent of Maritimers are having to make tough choices between eating, heating and paying the rent.
When will the Prime Minister stop harming Canadians with his inflationary deficits and balance the budget to lower costs on Canadians?
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- Sep/21/23 3:05:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the NDP-Liberal carbon tax is driving up the cost of food. University student Walt McDonald must choose between eating his food bank meal for breakfast or for lunch. The Dalhousie Student Union food bank says that 10 years ago, it served just extra snacks to students. Now, students are using the food bank for their weekly meal plan. After eight years, the Prime Minister is just not worth the cost.
Will the Prime Minister stop forcing students to use food banks and axe his inflationary carbon tax, yes or no?
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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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- Feb/6/23 2:58:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, the Liberals clearly do not know how to fix what they have caused. Maynard made $21,000 last year. That is $1,000 over the allowable limit for the Liberals' one-off programs, but if he did qualify, the one-time payment would do nothing for him for the next 11 months. The carbon tax, by design, is inflationary.
An easy cure to help make eating and heating more affordable for Maynard would be to cancel the Liberal plan to impose a cruel carbon tax on Nova Scotians.
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- Dec/8/22 1:26:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to follow my colleague who gave a very entertaining speech. It is always a great honour for all of us to stand in our place to speak on behalf of the communities that elected us.
The debate today is about a motion we put forward that we think is very reasonable in the economic crisis we are experiencing right now, this cost of living crisis. It is a motion that calls on the government to remove the carbon tax on all those input costs of the food processes we have, whether it is through agriculture, or in my part of the world, elements that are affected by the pricing on fishing.
It is important because the carbon tax is really a tax on everything. Most people are probably aware of that, but the primary reason we are having this inflationary, some say a just inflationary, type of period is that we have a tax that is applied to everything, and it is pushing the prices up, combined with government spending.
I would like my colleagues here to understand a little bit about the effect of these costs. Some here, as we are paid a fairly good salary, may not feel the pinch the same way as people in my community do, where the median individual income is $20,000 a year and the median household income is only $44,000 a year. We are forced, in our province, to heat with either oil, 53% of which is oil that comes from Saudi Arabia, so dirty Saudi Arabian oil, or with electricity, which is generated in Nova Scotia with coal, of which 60% comes from Colombia. Therefore, we do not have the choice, because of decisions of the government, to use clean Canadian energy in our province. We are forced to use these methods, which is dramatically increasing the cost of living. When one has a median income of $20,000, these increases are huge.
Some of the constituents have written to me, and we are all getting calls, I am sure, on all sides of the House, from people who are suffering. I will tell members what Jeff Kinar from riding wrote to me.
He said that he was absolutely shocked to pay over $2 a litre for diesel for his truck. He is a pensioner living in a rural area of Nova Scotia trying to enjoy what he considers to be a well-deserved retirement. He did his time in the public service and has a modest pension income. Fortunately, he has few medical issues and he does own his own home, but these fuel prices are unbearable for those who are living in rural areas who must make regular trips to town for groceries, prescription drugs and medical appointments. He said that it was shocking to see that almost the entire crew of Liberals jaunted off to Europe while exhorting, or extorting, the Canadian public to do their part in the fight on climate change.
Now, Nancy Celic in my riding wrote—
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- Dec/8/22 1:04:12 p.m.
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I am being asked what this has to do with the motion. It is inflationary spending, which has led to the cost of living crisis that we are in.
Could the member explain the need for prisoners and public servants to be paid CERB, or for high school students living at home to be paid CERB? I wonder if he could explain to the taxpayers of Canada why that was necessary.
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