- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Dufferin—Caledon
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 64%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $136,309.03
- Government Page
- Mar/21/24 1:09:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we cannot spend our way to prosperity. That is an absolute, very clear maxim, and it is even clearer for governments. I will tell us why.
Governments do not have any of their own money. They have two mechanisms with which to acquire money. One, they can tax and raise taxes. Two, they can borrow or print money. Unfortunately, after eight years of this incompetent NDP-Liberal government, we have the worst of both of those things, because what we have now is an incredibly punishing high level of taxes in this country, and Canadians know it because they take home less money than they ever have in their lives.
That is the result of the taxation policies of this government, including the carbon tax. If that was it, it would be very bad, but what is worse is this. To fund all of its spending, it has doubled the national debt in terms of all of the years up to this government's coming to power and all of the debt accumulated by every prime minister of every stripe of every government. It has doubled the debt since it has been in power. How did it do it? It did it by borrowing and printing money.
What is the result of all of that spending of this money and the borrowing and the printing of money? We have had two of the worst years of rampant inflation this country has ever seen. Inflation is the insidious thing that takes away the prosperity of the middle class. That is what this government has done. It is taxing them to death. Because of the printing of money and the overspending, we have had an inflationary crisis in this country that has driven the cost of living so high that most Canadians now cannot make ends meet.
We cannot fix all of that today. What we can fix, though, is the carbon tax. What we know about the carbon tax is this. Most Canadians get far less in these fake rebates than they do from the actual cost of the carbon tax. I am going to explain this so that Canadians can understand.
The Liberal government will say that eight out of 10 Canadians are better off. That is from a two-year-old Parliamentary Budget Officer's report that did not take into account the effect of the carbon tax on the economy. It is a drag on the economy. It makes the economy less efficient and more expensive. Canadians lose jobs. It makes our exports more expensive, so we export less. All of these things create a cost in the economy and, at the end of the day, we factor in those costs.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer put out a new report and came to committee a few weeks ago and said that these are the actual costs of the carbon tax. For example, in Ontario, the carbon tax cost is $1,674 for the average family. When we take out their fake rebates, the average Ontario family is $627 worse off as a result of the carbon tax.
What these Liberals do is that they stand up here every day, and the Prime Minister is the worst offender of this, and say that eight out of 10 Canadians will be better off, when they know that there is a new report that says this is not the case. They are effectively gaslighting Canadians with this. They are ignoring the updated report and gaslighting Canadians by saying that they are better off. It is not true. When the carbon tax goes up, again, this is from the PBO, this gap gets worse every single year.
The actual net effect of the carbon tax will make Canadian families worse and worse off every single year. Canadians know this. They know how expensive groceries are because when we tax the farmer, food gets more expensive. When we tax the trucker that picks up the food, food gets more expensive. When we tax the processor that processes food, food gets more expensive. When we tax the grocery store for having the audacity to heat the grocery store, with a carbon tax, food gets more expensive. At the end of the day, Canadians cannot afford to pay for food.
The government has been a disaster for the financial health of Canadians. It is unlike anything we have ever seen before. There is a Facebook group dedicated to people who dumpster dive to find food. Why would they do that? It is because they cannot afford it.
When we look back on the record of the Liberal government, that is the record: record usage of food banks and people going into dumpsters to get food. Here is a tidbit from my riding. The Orangeville Food Bank estimates in the next few years that 5,000 to 6,000 families per month will use the food bank. There are 27,000 people who live in my hometown of Orangeville. Look at those numbers and let it sink in.
What do the Liberals do? They say to stop talking down Canada. It is so outrageous that they say that. They are so out of touch with average Canadians and what they are going through. They tell us to stop talking down Canada. We are not talking down Canada. We are bringing to the incompetent, out-of-touch government what is actually happening to Canadians.
I know the Liberal members are getting the same emails, but they are so whipped by the Prime Minister and they are so whipped into following what he says, that they are not listening to the people who voted for them. I get heartbreaking emails every single week that say, “I have to choose between heating my home or eating.” Senior food bank usage is up 67% in my riding. This is a result of the carbon tax and the inflationary crisis, all of which was caused by the government.
We can talk about housing hell. The Liberals have done the impossible. They have double incompetency on housing. If someone has a house, they are barely able to afford to pay for it. Because of all the inflationary spending, interest rates have skyrocketed. Every single month, more Canadians have to renew their mortgages at these very high interest rates, and it gets harder and harder to make ends meet. If someone is lucky enough to have a house, they are barely holding on. I get those types of emails and we are seeing a massive rise in mortgage defaults as a result of interest rates, which are a result of the inflation caused by the incompetent government.
However, if someone does not have a house, they cannot afford to buy a house. This is the miracle incompetence of the Liberal government. It now takes 25 years to save for a down payment for a house. Someone used to pay off their house in 25 years. This is the result of eight years of an incompetent government that does not understand basic economics. It does not even understand how its own carbon tax works because it denied the Parliamentary Budget Officer report that shows that most Canadian families are worse off.
The final thing we should talk about when we talk about the incompetence of the government is crime. Violent crime in this country is up 39% as a result of the government. This is from 2015 to now. What happened in 2015? The Liberal government came in. It brought in catch-and-release bail. It brought in soft-on-crime policies, so if someone commits a crime in the morning, they are out to commit another crime in the afternoon. That is the justice system that the Liberal government brought in.
If people actually want to know how out of touch the government is with Canadians, how morally bankrupt the government is, all they have to know is that the government changed the rules so that a serial killer like Paul Bernardo can now go to a medium-security prison and enjoy the luxuries of an ice rink and a tennis court.
Let that sink in. The Liberals changed the rules so a mass murderer, a serial killer like Paul Bernardo, gets to be in medium security. He can go and play tennis. He can enjoy an ice rink after the disgusting and despicable things he did. What do we hear from these Liberal members? Are they outraged? Are they calling for changes? No, they are not. Why? It is because I guess they think that is okay.
What I am saying to Canadians is this: It was not always like this. Canada was not always like this. It is a Liberal government that did all this to Canada and that will change. There is hope on the horizon because a Conservative government will restore Canadians' faith in Canada. It will make lives better for Canadians.
There is hope coming and today is the start of that hope. We have a non-confidence motion in the incompetent and corrupt Liberal government. I will be voting yes. Conservatives will be voting yes. I will tell everyone this: They are going to prop up the incompetent Prime Minister and continue the misery for Canadians, and it is a disgrace.
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- Mar/8/23 7:23:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the carbon tax is an absolute failure. We have to measure it by two metrics, and the first metric is whether it reduced carbon emissions. On that metric, it is absolutely clear it is a failure, because carbon emissions have gone up under the Liberal government every single year. That is strike one.
The next thing is whether it is supposed to give more money back to Canadian families. The PBO report is unequivocal on this. When we factor in the cost of the carbon tax to the Canadian economy, most Canadian families actually end up behind on the carbon tax. If we factor in things like the cost of the carbon tax on farm families, we have an absolute and unmitigated disaster.
The carbon tax is a complete failure, and the Liberal government's plan is to increase it. It is not stopping climate change, it is not reducing emissions and it is financially hurting Canadians, and the government's decision is to increase it. Why is that relevant? I will give three statistics.
In my hometown of Orangeville, the number of seniors using the Orangeville Food Bank is up 415% since the government took over. That is the number of seniors who say, after eight years of the Liberal government, they cannot afford to feed themselves and now have to go to the food bank to help themselves out.
Twenty-five per cent of Canadian families are saying that if they get a $500 expense, they cannot pay it. Think about that. That is one-quarter of Canadian families. What is going to happen? The carbon tax is going to go up, and it is going to make things even worse.
Forty-five per cent of Canadian families are within $200 of not making ends meet. This is after eight years of a Liberal government. This is the wonderful world the Liberals have created.
They are going to say they have put in place programs, and they are going to list them off. They will say, “We did this to OAS. We did this to GIS. We did this; we did that.” Well, despite all that, the trail toward poverty for Canadians continues, so everything the Liberals are doing is not working.
What will make this worse is increasing the carbon tax yet again. What does that mean? It means farmers will pay a higher carbon tax. It means food coming from farms will cost more. The tractor that ploughs the field will have a carbon tax. The truck that picks up the food from the farm to take it to the processing centre will have a carbon tax. Taking the food from the processing centre to the grocery store will have a carbon tax. Heating the grocery store will have a carbon tax.
The multiplier effect of the increase to the carbon tax is going to make things even worse for Canadian families. What the Liberals are doing is not working. Their programs are not stopping Canadians from not being able to make ends meet. Will the Liberals finally see the light? Will they finally say they are going to cut the carbon tax so Canadians can pay their bills?
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- Feb/16/23 2:37:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister has some nerve to quote a 9% reduction. What he does not tell Canadians is that the economy contracted by 5% at the same time. If the Liberals' plan is to reach a 45% reduction, that means the economy has to contract 25%. When they say who they are, believe them. That is their plan for the economy.
When will they admit this disastrous program is only hurting Canadians?
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- Feb/7/23 3:35:32 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if we want to talk about some numbers, I will start with this number: 415%. The Orangeville Food Bank, which is in my riding of Dufferin—Caledon, has just put out information saying that the number of seniors accessing the food bank in Orangeville has gone up 415%. That is the result of eight years of the Liberal government.
The Liberals will say that we should stop talking about how expensive things are and stop talking about how difficult things are for Canadians; everything is great. Well, everything is not great after eight years of the Liberal government. Forty-five per cent of Canadians are within $200 of not being able to make ends meet. That is another inconvenient number for the government, but it is also the result of eight years of the current Liberal government.
Then we get to the question of why we are here. Why do so many seniors have to go to the food bank? Why are so many households within $200 of not being able to make ends meet? It is because life has gotten so much more expensive under the Liberal government. Why has that happened? I will today look at one thing. I will talk about the carbon tax.
The carbon tax is the mother of taxes because it is put on everything. We have heard today many Conservative members talk about the effect the carbon tax has on agriculture. My riding is a proud agricultural producer. It is the number one driver of economic activity, and guess what. The carbon tax is punishing farmers.
The government will say erroneously that eight out of 10 Canadians will get more money back from the carbon tax than they pay in. I will deal with that a little later in this speech, because it is quite frankly not true. In the context of farming and agriculture, there are farmers who get carbon tax bills for drying grain and doing other things on the farm that add up to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30,000 to $40,000 per year. What is their rebate? It is $800.
They are not getting more money back than they pay into the carbon tax. Farmers from coast to coast to coast are being absolutely crushed by the Liberal carbon tax. We could say that it is their problem, but let us think about what that actually means. When a carbon tax of $40,000 is put on an agricultural producer, they have to pass on the cost of it. They cannot just absorb it and go bankrupt. What does that mean? It means that when families go to the grocery store, everything is more expensive, and it is a lot more expensive.
Maybe when there is a 415% increase in the number of seniors going to the food bank, there might be a connection. Food is getting much more expensive because of the carbon tax, and seniors are going to a food bank. Forty-five per cent of Canadians are within $200 of not being to make ends meet. Why is that? It is because everything is more expensive. Their food is more expensive because producers are paying this gigantic carbon tax.
It does not end there. Yes, producers are paying the carbon tax, but the carbon tax is also put on the vehicles that get driven.
I neglected to say that I am splitting my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent.
When we are taking a crop by truck from a farm to where it will ultimately be consumed, it is going to be subject to a carbon tax. At the grocery store where that food is, someone will have to heat the grocery store. The heating is subject to the carbon tax, so the store increases prices. All along the line and all along the food chain, everyone is charging more. What does that mean? It means the farmer charges more, the transport company charges more and the grocery store charges more. It also means everyone is paying much more for the basic necessity of eating.
When one talks about heating one's home, it is the same thing. Many constituents come to me and say, “Look at this bill. Look at the carbon tax on my bill. I cannot afford it.”
The government tells them to stop. It says that it is giving them some money, so they are going to be better off. Of course, I will get back to that.
They are not better off. If they were better off, 45% of Canadians would not be within $200 of failing to make ends meet. If the carbon tax is so wonderful, as the government says, and if it pours so much money back into the pockets of Canadians, why do we have statistics like this?
The rhetoric does not actually meet with reality.
Let us talk about the effect of the carbon tax on trade. I will go back to agricultural products. Canada is a proud exporting nation. Over 60% of our GDP is from exports. Agriculture is a huge part of that.
When we make our farmers incur $30,000 or $40,000 in carbon tax, guess what? Their agricultural products are more expensive. It is harder for them to access foreign markets.
What does that mean? Less profit comes back to Canadian farmers. Then, they cannot invest in new machinery, new equipment and everything else.
The carbon tax is a tax on life. It is making life unaffordable for Canadians across the entire economic spectrum.
Only a Liberal government would say that it is going to take dollars through the carbon tax and give back dimes and that we should be grateful, that we are better off. That is the message to Canadians every single day, that they should be so lucky.
If the carbon tax were actually doing something, one might be able to justify the senior going to the food bank or the family with the thermostat down to 17°C in the winter. One could say that it was actually doing something, but guess what? It is actually not.
Under the Liberal government, carbon emissions have gone up every year. It will say, no, they went down in 2020. Yes they did go down during the pandemic, when the economy was shut down. If that is the plan, the government should be honest with Canadians. If it wants emissions to go down by 9% and it is therefore going to have the economy contract by 5%, just stand up and let Canadians know so that they can decide how they want to vote in the next election.
It is causing enormous pain in this country. It is causing inflation.
Even the Bank of Canada has admitted that the carbon tax is inflationary. We have an inflation problem in the country, but they will keep saying that we are against the carbon tax, that we do not care about the environment and that we do not care about climate change.
Actually, they are the ones who do not seem to care, because the carbon tax is doing nothing to reduce Canadian carbon emissions. On that very simple formula of whether it reduces emissions, the unequivocal answer is no, it does not. It is an absolute failure.
Let us turn to the final piece of the puzzle. They will say that eight out of 10 Canadians are better off. They get more money as a result of the carbon tax than they pay into it.
There was a report that said that. However, then the PBO did another report called “A Distributional Analysis of Federal Carbon Pricing under A Healthy Environment and A Healthy Economy”. It showed that when we factor in the effects of the carbon tax across the economy, which I was just talking about, it makes everything more expensive and leads to unemployment. Most Canadian families lose.
It is like saying that I have an A in science because I got an A on the mid-term and an F on the final. That is effectively what they are saying.
The first report is irrelevant because the PBO dug deeper. I know it is hard. I mean, it is 20 pages, so they might not have the intestinal fortitude to read it. Pages 18 to 20 make it abundantly clear that the carbon tax is hurting Canadians.
Why will they not scrap it?
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- Feb/7/23 1:46:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to my friend's speech, and all Liberal members' speeches. They talked about the PBO saying that more Canadians would get money back. There was a report that said this, but are any of the members of the government side aware of the second PBO report, which is the distributional analysis of federal pricing?
In that report, on pages 18 to 20, and I know it is 20 pages and a lot to read, it is exceptionally clear that most Canadians actually do not get more money back. It is like we get 80% on the mid-term, then fail the final and say that we achieved 80% in the course.
Have the Liberals read the second report and will they finally acknowledge that when we factor in all the costs throughout the economy that most Canadians lose on the carbon tax?
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Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak to the fall economic update.
“Canadians have never had it so good,” is the message we get when we listen to Liberal members talk about what is going on in Canada. They say things are great, that Canadians should be grateful for everything that is going so wonderfully here in this country. They talk about how it is so wonderful because of all the money they have spent. The answer to every problem in Canada, if one is a Liberal, is to spend money. That is the solution, so spend they have.
The Liberals have doubled the national debt. The amount of debt of every prime minister up to the current Prime Minister, the Liberals have doubled. Every prime minister before accumulated a certain amount of debt, and the current Prime Minister and government doubled it in a few short years. They say that as a result of that, things are great.
Maybe we should talk about how great things are as a result of all this spending. First of all, we just heard from the Auditor General that a lot of the spending did not really go anywhere that it should have. There were $4.6 billion in confirmed overpayments during the pandemic and $27 billion in suspicious payments, so we are looking at $32 billion of money that went who knows where, not where it should have gone. This includes the fact that 1,500 people in jail received these benefits.
To this point, there is absolutely no real plan to get any of this money back. Liberals say they are working on it and the wheels are in motion, when they are not saying the Auditor General was pushed into making this report by the opposition and trying to undermine the Auditor General. It is an interesting position for a government to take, when it appointed the Auditor General.
We look at all that spending and at the issues across the country from coast to coast to coast. Many members have been rising in this chamber to talk about the issues in hospitals all across the country. The premiers have said the federal government should be transferring more money to the provinces for health care, and the government is saying that the cupboard is kind of bare.
I am thinking that $32 billion, if it had been properly managed, would therefore have been available for health transfers, but that ship has sailed and the government is doing virtually nothing to get that money back.
There is $27 billion a year now being paid in interest on the debt, which has doubled over the course of the last number of years under the Liberal government. That is $27 billion every year that could be spent on things like health care. Right away, if we put those things together, one year of the massive interest on the massive debt plus the $32 billion spent on who knows what, and we would have over $50 billion for health care.
There are some hospitals and some provinces across the country that would very much be interested in receiving some of that money, but of course they cannot, because the Liberals have spent it on other things.
The interest on the debt is actually going to go to $43 billion a year by 2026. Let us think about that number. It is staggering: $43 billion a year simply to pay interest on the credit card.
When one raises issues like this, the government says it spent so Canadians did not need to spend. Well, Canadians are spending now, through their taxes, paying $27 billion a year in interest, which is moving to $46 billion. However, that is okay, because everything in this country is fantastic. Canadians have never had it so good.
Right now, inflation is at a 40-year high. People in this country are having to choose to eat or to heat their homes, but Canadians have never had it so good.
In one month, 1.5 million Canadians used a food bank. It is unprecedented. The struggle of Canadians after seven years of spending by the government is worse than it has ever been, so the rationale that we have spent all this money and things are great is completely debunked, because things are not great.
There are so many Canadians who are within a few hundred dollars of not being able to make ends meet, and inflation is eating into that every single day, but, right, everything is great. The money was spent to make the lives of Canadians better, except that their lives are not better. By virtually every measurable index, the lives of Canadians now are worse than they were 10 years ago.
There is no apology from the government on this. It will say things like, “Yes, but we are going to pay this benefit here or this little benefit there.”
When a person is $200 away from not being able to make ends meet, a one-time payment of $500 is not going to help. It might get them through the first couple of months, but there are 10 other months in the year in which we have to try to make ends meet.
One in five Canadians are skipping meals, but all this spending was so great for Canadians.
The result of the economic policies of the government has been to impoverish the nation, and that is where we are when we look at all the statistics that are adding up.
There is absolutely no recognition of this by the government. There is no apology for it. It simply says, “We have this little program here. We have another program here. That is all Canadians need.”
The other glaring omission from the government has been any meaningful response to the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States. It is a transformational document on how the United States is going to have its economy move going forward. No, we cannot match, dollar for dollar, the kinds of programs the United States is offering, but it offers these things in very clear ways. It offers tax incentives for governments. It offers production incentives for businesses.
What we are being promised here in Canada are programs. There is going to be a program here that a business can apply for, an opaque program. At committee, we heard industry representatives say that these programs are given according to a naughty list and a nice list. If one is on the naughty list, one has no idea why one is on the naughty list, and one does not get the funding.
When the government is picking winners and losers in business, everyone loses. The response is not sufficient, and the response it is offering is not going to help Canadian businesses.
We have heard over and over again from witnesses that this is a game-changer in the United States and that the government needs to act quickly. Well, my definition of “quickly” is not waiting for the budget in two, three or four months to announce some measures, sprinkling a couple of things here in the update and then saying to businesses, “Do not worry. Everything is going to be fine when the budget is released.”
Businesses cannot wait three, four, five, six or seven months. Investments are happening in the United States right now.
The government has impoverished Canadians over the last number of years, and now it risks losing out on the manufacturing bonanza for electric vehicles, etc., that is coming, because it is just acting so slowly.
This is an update that we cannot support and Canadians cannot afford.
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- Sep/21/22 6:31:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the carbon tax is an absolute failure, and we know that because there are two metrics by which we can measure the carbon tax.
The first metric is to ask if it reduces emissions. Emissions under the government have gone up every single year. It has not met a single emissions target ever, so the first metric is whether the carbon tax is an effective way to reduce emissions. The answer to that question is absolutely not. But wait, there is a second part. This is like one of those late-night television shows with “But wait, there's more”. There actually is more.
The Liberals said that more people will get more money back in their pockets as a result of paying this tax, but they did not. The Parliamentary Budget Officer made that abundantly clear in a report. In fact, when we factor in the effect of the carbon tax throughout the economy, because it does affect the economy, most Canadian families end up paying more in carbon taxes than they get back. This is not baseball, so they do not get three strikes and they are out. This is the real world, so two strikes and they are out. The carbon tax is an absolute and utter failure.
I swam on the Canadian national team a long time ago, and when we were training, the big thing our coaches always said to us was “no pain, no gain”. It is kind of the mantra. The Liberals tried to get that. They heard about it somewhere, but they got it wrong because the carbon tax is all pain and no gain.
I had a question for the Prime Minister, and it is even more relevant today than it was in the last session of Parliament. Canadian pocketbooks are running dry. We have an affordability crisis going on in this country. Many Canadian families are a couple of hundred dollars away from not being able to pay their bills at the end of the month, yet the government is going to jack up the price of the failed, miserable carbon tax, making life even more unaffordable for Canadians.
My question tonight, a reiteration of my question in the last session, is this: Are they going to scrap the carbon tax, or at the very least stop the increase in the carbon tax? By every metric, it is an absolute failure.
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- Mar/29/22 2:25:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is not when the cost to the Canadian economy is factored in though, right? They cannot even do that simple math. Eight minus four is all they can do.
Let us talk about some other Liberal math. The Minister of Environment and Climate Change said at committee that they have spent $60 billion to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 2016. Guess what. Emissions have gone up. If the Liberals are going to spend $60 billion to increase carbon emissions, how many trillions are they going to spend to ruin the financial security of Canadians with this plan?
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- Mar/29/22 2:23:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today the Liberals released their 2030 emissions reduction plan, which is their attempt to reduce emissions across the Canadian economy, but last week the PBO showed that the Liberals did not actually account for the cost of something simple, such as the carbon tax, across the Canadian economy.
If they were that lazy and sloppy in their examination of the carbon tax, how can Canadians have any faith that a multi-sector approach will not be a disaster for Canadian jobs and pocketbooks?
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