- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- South Shore—St. Margarets
- Nova Scotia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,927.65
- Government Page
- Jun/11/24 5:19:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we request a recorded vote.
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- Jun/11/24 2:59:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the only thing the Liberal minister is doing is bringing in retirement-killing taxes on fishermen. Mrs. J. and her husband from Nova Scotia worked for 50 years to build their lobster and fish-buying business. They sold their business to create their modest retirement income by investing the proceeds, creating a humble retirement.
They paid their fair share of taxes already but Liberals want to take more of their retirement income.
Why does the Prime Minister think that robbing an 85-year-old widow of her hard-earned, dignified retirement income is fair?
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- Jun/11/24 2:58:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, lobstermen in Nova Scotia fish for our food, risking their lives in the winter.
Waves crashing over them, fishing in blizzards and high seas, they risk their lives for 40 years so that they can save a little to retire on the sale of their boat and their licence. The NDP-Liberal latest tax grab on fishermen is to increase, massively, the tax on the sale of their licence, boat and gear, even after the fishing exemption.
Why do the NDP-Liberals think that robbing fishermen of a dignified and honest retirement is fair?
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- Jun/11/24 1:26:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member for Timmins—James Bay is breaking his own rules in his own private member's bill when he excessively uses the term “gaslighting”. What is he going to use—
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- Jun/6/24 11:25:21 a.m.
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You voted against all the summonses.
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- Jun/6/24 11:23:47 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, perhaps the parliamentary secretary will be able to tell us if Navdeep Bains will be part of that process and put some more corrupt Liberals in.
My question is about the statement by the parliamentary secretary that the government acted and supported every single time the investigation into this. That is actually factually incorrect. That member, at the industry committee, opposed every vote we tried to have to do an investigation into this, every single time. It was only through the support of the Bloc and the NDP that we were able, in the industry committee, to do any investigation into this corruption at all.
Why is it that the member would claim that the Liberals actually were in front of this when they were fighting it every step of the way?
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- Jun/6/24 10:59:47 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is true. Like a lot of things with respect to the government, the management of SDTC was not paid for results but for output, which generated the need for its members to get a bonus when they put money into a project. That was not a great way to go forward.
I would say this about the governance structure of the organization, which deteriorated greatly in 2019: When the chair changed the rules with respect to conflict of interest to suit her own benefit, it actually allowed the directors to buy shares in the companies for insider trading three days after the board approved money for those companies. That is how bad the corruption in the organization was under the Liberals.
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- Jun/6/24 10:58:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it was an excellent question the member for Mirabel asked at the committee meeting last night. Of course, the automaton, AI-generated vision of former minister Bains just stuck with the process, and the answer, obviously, was zero, because he would not answer it. What former minister Bains could have done in the first place to prevent this was to not appoint corrupt Liberals to the board but to appoint people with ethical approaches to business and to ensure that when he got the monthly reports from the board with respect to the board meetings and what was going on, he did something to stop the corruption with respect to the 186 times the Liberals voted to give themselves money.
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- Jun/6/24 10:56:42 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I understand why the parliamentary secretary does not want to talk about the scandal we are debating today.
The issue is this: The government claims to have done something, but it was actually the whistle-blowers who exposed this corruption, because the government was not doing its job. Even after receiving word of it, the government did nothing except call for a study. It was the ethics committee, led by a Standing Order 106(4) motion brought forward by our ethics critic, that called for it to be investigated by the Auditor General. The Auditor General's review was done because of the actions of our side, the official opposition, not because of the Liberals, who are continuing to cover up the corruption.
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- Jun/6/24 10:45:38 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to begin with a slight indulgence of the House. This is a remarkable day in history, the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I just wanted to share a brief story because we probably all have family members who, in one way or another, have a connection to World War II.
My mother's cousin Everett Borgald, my second cousin, from Chester Basin, Nova Scotia, signed up like a lot of young men did in 1942. He ended up landing in Normandy a month after D-Day, in July 1944. He was a tank trooper. He went inland and fought in the brutal battle of the Falaise gap, which the allies won on August 21, 1944, one month after he landed.
Two days later, in the subsequent pushing back of the German army, his tank was attacked by two 75-millimetre shells that pierced the turret and mortally wounded my second cousin. His best friend, who happened to be part of the crew, pulled him out of the tank, but unfortunately he did not survive. He passed away on August 23, 1944. Like many others, I am thinking of family members who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom we have, and I just wanted to acknowledge that.
Today we are debating a motion to have the Liberal government produce SDTC documents and send them to the RCMP. SDTC is a foundation set up 20 years ago by a Liberal government to invest in pre-commercialized green technology. The organization was doing good work. In fact in 2017, the Auditor General did a governance audit and found that it was complying with all of the best practices.
Unfortunately, after that, the chair of the board at that time started to criticize the government publicly around the breaches of data and weak privacy policies, appearing before a parliamentary committee. Former minister of industry Navdeep Bains and his office phoned the president of the green slush fund, as it has become known, and asked them if they could get the chair to stop criticizing the government.
The chair was not taking orders from the government and continued to criticize it. After an appearance at a parliamentary committee two days after that, the former minister's office phoned and said, for some reason, it was going to change the chair, and gave two names. The minister's office told the president to check it out. Former minister Navdeep Bains phoned the president personally and said that they were changing the chair because he was saying things they did not like. They had not been able to keep him quiet, so they gave two names and asked that they be checked out.
The president, Leah Lawrence, testified in industry committee that she checked the two names out. The first person declined because they had a conflict. The second one said they were willing to do it even though they had a conflict. The president advised the assistant deputy minister, Mr. Noseworthy, who was the liaison who sat in the board meetings, that it was an inappropriate appointment of a chair because the appointee was conflicted. She was conflicted because the green slush fund was already doing business with her company.
However, Ms. Verschuren had no problem with being in a conflicted position, because she was doing the same thing at an organization called MaRS in Toronto, which I said also helps with the finance. The former minister came back through the ADM a couple of weeks later and said they were changing them. They phoned the then chair, Mr. Balsillie, and told him he was out. Three days later, Annette Verschuren was in, over the stringent objections of the organization. This included its head of communications, who, only a few months earlier, was working in the Prime Minister's Office, and they phoned the former minister's office to say that this was inappropriate. This is all in testimony.
What happened? It was the fourth or fifth appointment that the then minister Bains had made. It is quite a record of insider dealing and trading, the billion-dollar slush fund. The Auditor General audited a small portion, only five years' worth, and released a report this week. The AG found that board members voted to give companies money, and in 186 of the transactions, board members had an ownership interest in the companies. The Auditor General pointed out that in 90 of the transactions, board members did not even declare the conflict of interest, and that money alone totalled $76 million. The situation led whistle-blowers to go to the government a year and a half ago to seek help and to stop the corruption.
The CFO from the industry department is quoted as saying that this is the biggest scandal since the sponsorship scandal. Actually, that was a Liberal scandal as well, in a previous government. The current scandal is huge in terms of dollars, compared to the earlier one. Almost half of all the transactions in the period of time that the Auditor General audited were transactions in which the board voted money to companies that they owned, almost half of the billion-dollar slush fund went to them, feathering their own interests.
Public office holders have to comply with the Conflict of Interest Act, which says that public office holders cannot financially benefit from any job they are appointed to by the government. The SDTC act, an act of Parliament, says that individual board members cannot participate in and benefit from, for them or their families, any decision that financially makes their situation better, yet the directors did it 186 times while the senior departmental official sat in the meeting. The departmental official briefed his deputy minister at the time, who I am sure briefed the minister, former minister Bains, who did nothing for 46 months. The current minister, over the 46 months this was going on, did absolutely nothing until the whistle-blowers went public.
To give the House some idea of the graft and corruption, Andrée-Lise Méthot, a director appointed in 2016 by former minister Bains, while she was on the board, her companies that she has an equity investment in, received $42.5 million from the green slush fund. Before she was appointed to the board, her companies received $143 million from the green slush fund. She should never have been appointed to the board. She had an immediate conflict of interest. It was in breach of both the Conflict of Interest Act and the SDTC act to appoint her.
Annette Verschuren was the chair. We went through that. She has a company called NRStor, which was receiving government money. She was appointed to the board and should not have been. Guy Ouimet admitted in committee that he sat in committee and voted $4 million to his own company, which he owns equity in, and nobody in the government stopped it. That was a direct conflict of interest. Stephen Kukucha, the organizer for the current Liberal leader in British Columbia and a former Liberal staffer to an environment minister, was on the board, and while he was, his companies received almost $25 million.
This is massive corruption and fraud on a scale not seen in Canada in my recent memory, which is longer, I think, than that of some of the people here; at least, I am told that frequently.
What we have is a situation where last night we actually summoned, and it was the only way we could get him, former minister Navdeep Bains to the industry committee. He now works for Rogers, the largest and most expensive cellphone company in Canada, or the most expensive in the world. He was the minister who was supposed to reduce cellphone prices but actually ended up selling out and joining the most expensive company in the world in the last two years.
I think Mr. Bains was actually zooming, but it looked more like he was some sort of avatar that was programmed with only two answers: that it is a public and open process and that he had nothing to do with it. Obviously, if the former minister had nothing to do with it, then he was directed by the PMO to appoint the Liberal hacks, cronies and swindlers to the board.
He betrayed and said he does not have anything to do with it. His chief of staff said that he himself did not have anything to do with it either. They played the Hogan's Heroes Sergeant Schultz card and said, “I know nothing. Talk to somebody else.” It is typical of the government, and everybody in the government. It is never the fault of the person who made the appointment. It is somebody else's fault. It is the “the dog ate my homework” government.
We are asking the House to pass a motion saying that the corruption has to end, and that not only does it have to end but it has to be investigated by the RCMP now that we have the Auditor General's report. I would ask and encourage all members to please show the ethics necessary for us and for Canadian taxpayers, and ensure that any illegal activity is dealt with by the police.
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- Jun/6/24 10:44:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the most shocking things in the Auditor General's report is that she classified two groups of conflict of interest decisions. The first group involved 96 occasions where the board members declared a conflict of interest but then awarded themselves money. The most shocking part is the $76 million, which is another 90 times when these board members did not have the courage to share that they had a conflict of interest. That is 186 times, half of which they hid.
Could the member comment on why someone would be appointed to the board with that kind of ethic?
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- Jun/5/24 2:18:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General's report on the Liberal green slush fund is shocking.
Liberal cronies overseeing the slush fund voted 186 times to send taxpayer money to companies they own. That represents over 40% of the projects approved. Even worse is that the Liberal swindlers gave themselves $76 million and hid their conflict from the meetings. The rot started from the top when, in 2019, the Liberals knowingly appointed a person whom the green slush fund was already doing business with to head up the board. They were warned, but they appointed their conflicted cronies anyway.
Tonight, Liberals have a chance to come clean. The former Liberal minister and PMO staffers responsible for hand-picking these slush fund swindlers will testify before committee to explain why they knowingly appointed Liberals with conflicts and did nothing when they funnelled themselves taxpayer money.
As Canadians struggle to pay the bills, Liberal cronies get rich on taxpayer money. Only common-sense Conservatives will stop the Liberal corruption and bring back common sense to Ottawa.
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- Jun/4/24 2:55:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister did nothing for 48 months, even though he had officials sitting in the meetings. The Auditor General's explosive report on the NDP-Liberal green slush fund shows that personal friends of the Prime Minister funnelled obscene amounts of money into their own pockets. The Auditor General confirmed that, an incredible 186 times, with almost half of all the green slush fund projects, Liberal swindlers voted themselves hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to their companies.
Will the Prime Minister call in the police and make these Liberal swindlers pay back this money?
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- May/31/24 2:07:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we request a recorded vote.
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- May/31/24 11:58:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister's green slush fund chair resigned after lining her pockets with taxpayer money, another NDP-Liberal green slush fund director was caught funnelling $42 million of taxpayer money to companies she owns, and now the Minister of the Environment, before his election, lobbied the PMO more than 25 times to help the director put that $42 million in her pocket. I know you are going to say he was just like John McClane saying he was just “[getting] together [to] have a few laughs”.
Will the Liberals investigate every taxpayer dollar the environment minister stuffed into the corrupt director's companies?
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- May/30/24 11:27:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would request a recorded division, please.
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- May/30/24 11:09:58 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government's policies have caused 78,000 ordinary people to lose their jobs in the oil patch, which has driven investment per employee in this country down and our productivity to 40% less than that of the United States, making the cost of living for everyday individuals much more difficult.
It is literally crazy that despite our competitive advantage as a nation with natural resources, the NDP-Liberal government says we should shut them all down and hope that somehow fairy dust in other industries with government taxpayer money, which is raised by the oil industry, by the way, will somehow correct or change how our economy operates and how we lead families to a successful life. The great policies they enjoy in Canada have to be provided by profits from businesses, which create jobs and innovation.
I would ask the hon. member to take another look in the mirror.
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- May/30/24 11:08:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, why does it not come as a surprise to me that the NDP continues to speak for the elites at universities rather than ordinary blue-collar working people?
I know this is inconvenient for the NDP-Liberals, but looking to the experts, the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer says the tax will cost families $1,500 more a year than they get back in fake rebates. This is a convenient way for the NDP-Liberals to ignore experts. They choose their elite university economists as the group they believe in.
I would ask the member to take another read of the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report so that she has a fuller understanding of the effect of this tax on families.
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- May/30/24 11:06:31 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, forgive me if I do not believe the math of the Liberals, who have not met a single budget target at any time and have said the budget will balance itself. Maybe when the previous member, the member for Kingston and the Islands, who brought it up, did the math, the kilometres were based on the $150,000 Ford Lightning he drives. He should try using a normal vehicle, like most Canadians drive.
I understand why the member is embarrassed by that fact, but the Liberals made the carbon tax go up on April 1, April Fool's Day, by 23%. They are continuing to do that and plan to make it go up by 65¢ a litre by 2030. The Liberals have no compassion for people who are suffering because of their tax policy.
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- May/30/24 10:55:27 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a little intimidating to speak after the Leader of the Opposition, but I will give it a shot.
The motion is a really important one for all members of Parliament to show they have a bit of a heart, caring and understanding of what Canadians are going through. It made me reflect on my childhood, growing up, and this time of year, approaching the end of school in June. There was excitement that I would have the freedom to do all the things that I liked to do in the summer, such as ride my bike and all the stuff I would do with my friends. The summers seemed to last forever back then.
One thing my family would do was summer road trips. My parents struggled each month to decide which bill to pay or not pay, but they always found the money to take the four kids on a holiday. Sometimes, we would simply go across the Annapolis Valley from our house in Halifax and stay at my grandmother's house in a place called Paradise. It was paradise as a kid. Other times, they would have enough to take us to Toronto on a car trip. We would stay at my aunt's, go to the CNE and do great things.
Once in a while, we had enough money to go to the United States; we would go to Washington or visit Disney World in the summer, believe it or not. Those are great memories, and we were fortunate enough to do those things; we did not understand that our parents may have been struggling a little with money.
However, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, the dream of doing that for millions of Canadian families is gone. Canadians are going hungry and having trouble even paying their rent or mortgage. Last year, food banks had to handle a record two million visits, and they are projecting an additional million this year. Can members imagine? There were three million visits, a record number, to food banks in Canada. Feed Nova Scotia estimates that, in my province, food bank usage went up 27% last year alone; the record for every number it tracks has been broken.
Last weekend, I went to the Souls Harbour Rescue Mission, which provides meals for the homeless in Bridgewater in my riding. They did not have to do that two years ago, and now they have to cook meals for the homeless. The hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac met with the folks there who are doing that great work. Last year, 36% of food banks had to turn people away because they ran out of food. Canadians are homeless because they can no longer afford the cost to own or rent a home under the NDP-Liberals.
Rent has increased 107%, and now it takes Canadians 25 years to even save for the idea of a down payment on a house. We know homeless encampments have grown everywhere, in small towns and large towns; there are 35 of them in Halifax. In 2015, there were only 284 homeless people in the city of Halifax. Today, there are over 1,200. That is a 326% increase under the NDP-Liberals. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that, since 2018, the number of people who have been continuously homeless has increased by 38% nationally. They have been homeless for more than a year. For those who are recently homeless, the increase is 88%.
After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, it is not just low-income families that are suffering. Middle-class families are now both working and using food banks because all their income is going to pay the mortgage. Why did this happen? It is not something that happened because of Europe, as the government claims. It is a made-in-Canada, NDP-Liberal creation. Years of inflationary debt and taxes led to Canada's record inflation rate, which reached 8.1% at one point in the last two years, with the fastest growth in inflation in Canadian history.
These inflation hikes have hit countless Canadians who are now facing mortgage renewals. They are already facing historically high debt and a cost of living crisis. Over the next two years, 45% of outstanding mortgages in Canada will be up for renewal. These represent homes built at record-high prices and at record-low interest rates. The homeowners could see a 30% to 40% uptick from the interest rate they received only a few years ago. For a $500,000 mortgage on a home over a five-year fixed term for 25 years, this will mean an increased payment of nearly $1,000 a month.
In addition to that, we know that food costs are up 23% since 2020; gasoline costs are up 30%. The years with the greatest decline in food purchasing power for Canadians were 2022 and 2023.
Unfortunately, for Canadians, these records are not records they seek from their government, but their government nonetheless brags that inflation has come down to 3%. The government is bragging that prices are still going up, and these are shocks that Canadians cannot afford.
As Canadians are struggling, the NDP-Liberal government increased taxes by increasing the carbon tax by 23% last April. That means the average Nova Scotian family will now pay $1,500 more in the carbon tax than they get back in fake carbon rebates according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It is estimated that in 2024, the average Canadian family will have to pay $700 more for food than they paid last year.
Canadians cannot afford these increases. Despite the dangerous misinformation that the NDP-Liberals spread about how great Canadians have it, they are not better off because of the government. They are suffering dramatically. That is why premiers in almost every province of this country have asked for the government to get rid of the carbon tax. The government says it care about provinces, but it ignores every request from them.
A poet named Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. The foolish consistency of the NDP-Liberal government is continuing to spend money, which is driving up inflation, driving up interest rates and driving up food costs. The government thinks that somehow, after nine years, that is going to result in an outcome other than having poorer and poorer Canadians. That is the foolish consistency of the government. I will let members judge the issue of little minds.
I will also leave it to members to consider that Canadians are demanding a break. The number one question we all get is, when are we going to get an election? It is not because Canadians love elections. It is because they want to get rid of the government. Canadians need a break from the hurt, the pain and the hunger caused by the NDP-Liberals.
We are proposing to give Canadians a temporary break so that the great privilege that some of us had in our summers in our youth of getting into the family car, going on a vacation and having a great adventure can happen this summer too. What is the best way to do this? Our motion today says the following:
That, in order to help Canadians afford a simple summer vacation and save typical Canadian families $670 this summer, the House call on the NDP-Liberal government to immediately axe the carbon tax, the federal fuel tax, and the GST on gasoline and diesel until Labour Day.
That is a reasonable request. It would save Nova Scotians $542 this summer. Some in this place may not think $542 is a big deal, but $542 will help someone pay the gas to drive from Halifax to Toronto to take their kids to a Blue Jays game or visit the Hockey Hall of Fame. That would be a great treat for many of the struggling families in my province. They could even go to the Canadian National Exhibition and watch the fantastic air show that it has on Labour Day.
However, that is out of reach for families in my community in Nova Scotia, with an average income in my riding of $30,000. The $542 is tax that the NDP-Liberals will keep taking from their pockets while they suffer and try to put food on the table. This would be the difference between taking a vacation and what unfortunately has become normalized under the government, which is the staycation. The staycation means someone cannot afford to take a holiday, so they just stay at home. That is not a vacation for families.
We are asking the government to show a little compassion and a little heart. We would not be in this situation if the government just followed our common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Particularly, this summer, the Conservatives want the government to axe the tax on all fuel costs and call a carbon tax election, if it believes in it so much, so that we can deliver what Canadians are asking for. I challenge the government to do one of those two things. If the Liberals do not have the guts to remove federal taxes this summer to give a break to Canadians, at least they should have the guts to call an election and let Canadians decide.
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