Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, the long summertime drought of Thursday questions finally comes to an end. I know much relief is felt not just in the parliamentary precinct but across the land. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the government House leader back after what I am sure was a very busy summer for us all as we were out in our constituencies meeting with Canadians, hearing directly about their concerns and now bringing their issues back here to Parliament. I would like to ask the government House leader if during his travels this summer, he heard from Canadians who want to move past the rhetoric to results and who want the government to actually save them money. We know the government has conceded that gas taxes take a big bite out of the economy and hurt affordability. In order to save Canadians money, will he finally agree to the Conservative plan and not just have a temporary reprieve of the gas tax until January, as we saw with Bill C-38? Are there any plans for the government to make that last longer, all the way to Canada Day? Now that the government has conceded the principle that gas taxes hurt the economy, will it abandon the fuel standard tax and bring in legislation to repeal it? Finally, after all the photo ops, rhetoric and bluster, will there be a single new project that has gone through the Major Projects Office or benefited from the unprecedented powers of Bill C-5? Will we finally get to see things built, or was this summer of press conferences and MOUs just a bunch of political theatre?

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition, signed by over 215 residents in and around the Indian Head area who are protesting the closure of the Indian Head Research Farm. This research facility has over 100 years of data on soil, moisture and crop varieties. The current Liberal government is proving to be anti-science by shutting this site down. The petitioners call upon the Liberal government to save the jobs at Indian Head, save the research that is done at the facility and keep the centre open.

Mr. Speaker, I have a quick point of order. I hate to interrupt the hon. member's speech. Our ridings share a border, and so we are neighbouring members of Parliament. My riding goes all the way to Melville where her riding begins. I have enjoyed serving with her for the last decade or so, and it pains me greatly to have to bring up this point of order during her farewell speech. I will avail myself of the opportunity to hopefully ask a question or make a comment when she has finished her speech. However, earlier today, the Speaker ruled on the admissibility of this motion, which does have several knock-on effects, including what might happen at committee. I want to give notice to the Chair that we may come back later on today to make a submission on some of the dynamics and some of those moving pieces.

Mr. Speaker, I offer my sincere thanks to my colleagues for that accommodation. I think that any time a member is retiring after great service to their constituents in this House, it is appropriate that we show that kind of grace. I want to quickly extend all the very best to my colleague from Yorkton—Melville. We have worked together since 2015. We share a border and have many constituents who travel back and forth between her communities and mine. One of the things I admire about my colleague is her conviction and dedication to her core principles. I was given advice when I first got to this place that we should always know what we are willing to resign over or lose our seat over, that we should always know the limits upon which we cannot compromise, because those are our core values and beliefs. I believe Canadians respect that. They want to see people elected to the House of Commons who do not just go with the flow or read the polls and make decisions afterwards, but have a clear sense of who they are and what they are all about. The fact that her constituents kept sending her back to fight for them and represent them is a great testament to her character, her integrity and everything she brought to representing her constituents and speaking on their behalf in the House of Commons. Very quickly, I would like to wish her, her husband and everyone in her family the very best in her retirement and thank her for all she has brought to the Conservative Party of Canada, the official opposition in Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, I am tabling yet another petition from residents in and around the Indian Head area in southern Saskatchewan who are urging the government to reverse its terrible decision to shut down the Indian Head agricultural research farm. The farm has over 100 years' worth of data on things from soil conditions to moisture levels and all kinds of factors that affect the growing season. This centre has produced hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of economic benefit, not just to the agricultural sector in Saskatchewan but all across Canada, with the valuable research it has produced and innovations in everything from crop varieties to pest management. The Liberal government, which managed to find money for gender-just rice farming in Vietnam, cannot seem to find enough funds to keep this important centre open. The petitioners call on the government to reverse its terrible decision to keep the agricultural research farm open for generations to come.

Mr. Speaker, we have all been waiting since last Thursday for today's Thursday question, the time of the week when Canadian telecom providers have to scramble to add excess capacity as hundreds of thousands of Canadians tune in, anxiously anticipating what the government will bring forward in the chamber for the rest of this week and into next week. With the news that Canada is the only country in a recession under this Liberal Prime Minister's economic plan, will the government finally see the error of its ways and finally start to repeal the bad Liberal legislation that caused the problem in the first place? Can we expect, next week, to see legislation repealing the industrial carbon tax, which only applies to Canadian manufacturers and Canadian businesses? Will we see the Liberals bring in legislation to repeal the fuel standard tax, which adds at least 17¢ a litre to the price of fuel here in Canada, while American shippers and transporters do not have to pay that? Indeed, will they bring in a repeal of the west coast shipping ban, which prevents Canadian energy exports to Asian markets but does not apply to international traffic off the coast of British Columbia? Will they bring in a single piece of legislation to repeal the bad Liberal laws that are plunging Canada, the only G20 country, into a recession? Can we expect any of that relief next week?

Mr. Speaker, you join millions of Canadians who are anxious to hear the Thursday question. In fact, data centres all over the country are whirring into action as streaming devices carrying CPAC spring to life. It being Thursday, it is time for the government to update the House as to the business for the rest of this week and next week. In light of the fact that Justin Trudeau's radical environment minister has announced his resignation, and the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie is leaving, apparently, over a rift in policy, it would be helpful for the member to know if he is doing the right thing. Will the Liberals repeal all the radical antidevelopment legislation that the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie was so proud of? Will they repeal the “no more pipelines” bill, Bill C-69? Will they bring in legislation next week to repeal the shipping ban for Canadian exports off the west coast? Will they repeal the industrial carbon tax that drives away so many jobs and so much investment? In other words, will the government prove that it has actually changed its ways, or in fact, is it continuing with Justin Trudeau's radical antidevelopment, "no new energy" agenda? That would be in line with the Prime Minister's book he wrote about himself called Values, in which he called for Canada's natural resources to be left in the ground. In short, will the government bring in legislation to repeal those very bills and those very laws that drove out investment and shut down our energy sector for the past 11 years of darkness with Liberal governments?

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the question of privilege that the Bloc Québécois raised the other day. I would like to add a few comments for the Speaker's consideration. I think the specific situation described by the hon. member for Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères speaks to a worrying, broader trend with the Liberal government and its cozy relationships with corporate insiders. At the root of it is a Prime Minister who remains invested in Brookfield through what is called “carried interest”, despite that company's extensive presence in many fields where the Prime Minister and his ministers have control of powerful policy levers that can greatly influence Brookfield's asset prices and revenue streams. The House's ethics committee heard last autumn about Brookfield executives being able to call up the Prime Minister and secure private meetings with him. That is something the average Canadian certainly cannot do. The government's first major bill in the present Parliament, Bill C-5, was about empowering Liberal ministers to waive red tape for select insiders, rather than getting out of the way of economic development for the benefit of all Canadians. The Major Projects Office, established to provide a concierge service for the Liberals' approved insiders, is being staffed with friends of the Prime Minister from Bay Street whose salaries are being topped up by banking and corporate interests and who very well may stand to benefit from the decisions their loaned-out employees are making. The Prime Minister's approach to bureaucracies he does not like has not been to fix them to work better but to add another layer of bureaucracy and bring in corporate friends to run them. The list of examples goes on, including now the Bloc's observations about Air Canada's getting an inside track on changes to the handling of air passenger complaints. Of course, the Liberals' proposed fix for air passenger complaints is to replace Canadian public servants with European-modelled consultants, adding to the Liberals' unrelenting, multi-billion-dollar addiction to outsourcing as it hands out contracts, hand over fist, to well-placed, friendly consulting firms. There is an age-old saying in this town: “Whenever the Liberals are in office, it is all about who you know and the PMO.” That is probably more true now than it has ever been. These are issues that, quite honestly, vigilant committees need to stay on top of, though I know the Liberals' engineered majority on committees will make sure these issues will not see the light of day. That is why a question of privilege and the proposed referral to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs would be quite timely. I would urge the Speaker to find a prima facie case of privilege in this case so we can get the wheels in motion on a study about yet another apparent cozy corporate crony relationship to the Liberal government and its parliamentary proposals.

Mr. Speaker, the very first thing these Liberals did when they got their backroom deal majority was to stack the deck on committees, and now they are ramming through legislation and cutting off debate. This bill needs proper scrutiny, because it is a budget implementation bill that would add billions of dollars to the national debt. The last projection for this current fiscal year by the Trudeau government was that the deficit would be in the low thirties of billions of dollars. Now the deficit is more than twice that, with $30 billion of extra debt racked up on the national credit card. All this adds to more inflation. This is the same playbook the Liberals were running for 11 years: more dollars chasing fewer goods. Can the minister explain to the House why he thinks things will happen differently this time? We see the very same scenario. The Bank of Canada is buying government bonds. The creation of money, the money supply, the amount of money in circulation has been increasing at a rate of about twice that of the GDP. When we have more dollars chasing fewer goods, we get inflation, which is the worst kind of tax because Canadians have no say over it. Can the minister explain why he thinks things will be different this time?

Mr. Speaker, it being Thursday, it is time for the Thursday question. Maybe we should all pause and allow a bit of time for the millions of Canadians to run over to their televisions and turn on CPAC so they can catch the Thursday question here in the House of Commons. I would like to ask the hon. House leader for the government what the business for the rest of the week will be and, after our two constituency work weeks, when we will celebrate Victoria Day and hopefully spend some time with our constituents and families, if the leader of the government in the House can inform us what the business will be when we come back. I note that there is a lot of chatter in the public about energy regulations and impediments to natural resource development. We have the actual people who do the investments and do the developments and build the projects saying that the Liberal government is shackling them with unnecessary costs and regulation. The Prime Minister, who has had a year with his powers of Bill C-5, the Major Projects Office powers, has gotten absolutely nothing approved through that office. Will the government bring in bills to repeal the antidevelopment legislation that the Trudeau government implemented and that the current government, with the current Liberal Prime Minister, has kept on the books? Can we please start seeing legislation entitled “an act to repeal”?

Mr. Speaker, I have yet another petition from concerned residents of the Indian Head area on the closure of the research farm. The Liberal minister is trying to claim he can close this farm down and relocate it, but what he must not understand is that this particular site at Indian Head has over 100 years of soil data. This is an integral part of the agricultural research network across Canada. The centre itself provides jobs for the people in Indian Head. It also provides hundreds of millions of dollars in value to our agricultural producers because of the innovations and advancements it can make in crop health and pest and drought resistance. The petitioners urge the government to abandon its plans and reverse its decision to shut down this research centre.

Madam Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister is racking up billions of dollars on the national credit card. Canadians thought they were getting a different approach with the new Prime Minister, but it turns out he is just another costly Liberal. The more he grows the deficit, the more expensive things get. New data out this week proves that. Statistics Canada confirms nearly 10 million Canadians, or almost one in four, are living in food-insecure households. One in three Canadians are now borrowing money just to afford groceries. Life did not used to be like this in Canada. Instead of delivering a deficit even bigger than Justin Trudeau's, why does the Liberal Prime Minister not end the credit card budgeting so that Canadians can afford to live?

Madam Speaker, the last Justin Trudeau budget projected the deficit this year to be $31 billion. The deficit is $66 billion. That is more than double what was projected, not lower. The Liberals are spending more and Canadians are getting less, and now hard-working Canadians cannot even afford groceries. Here are some facts for the government. Food bank use has exploded to 2.2 million visits every month, up 100% since 2019. A third of those relying on food banks are children. Everything the Liberals brag about doing, they have tried before over the last 11 years themselves. Instead of driving up prices—

Mr. Speaker, this week's costly budget update shows the Liberals are continuing their decade of credit card budgeting: more costs, more debt, more taxes, just more of the same. It turns out the Prime Minister is not some kind of financial expert. He is just another costly Liberal. His deficit is double Justin Trudeau's. He is forcing Canadians to pay more in interest on the debt than on health care. What is the result? They have delivered the worst inflation in 40 years, the worst food price inflation and the only shrinking economy in the G7. When will the Liberal Prime Minister end his costly credit card budgeting so Canadians can afford to live?

Mr. Speaker, workers are tired of seeing their paycheques devalued by Liberal inflation. That is what workers are saying across this country. However, after nearly a decade of the costly Liberal government, Canadians are maxed out while the Prime Minister has maxed out the country's credit card. If we want to play the quote game, do not take my word for it. Even The Globe and Mail wrote, “the Trudeau government did all sorts of things that steadily made matters worse, fiscally and economically speaking, the [new Prime Minister's] government will do almost nothing to make them better.” Again, will these Liberals stop with the credit card budgeting so that Canadians can afford to live?

Mr. Speaker, this is meta-Liberal. The Liberals are stacking the decks on committees with this motion, and now they are moving closure and shutting down debate on that very motion. We had only a couple of hours of debate last week. There are many members who wanted to speak out on behalf of their constituents to raise the alarm on this undemocratic measure, and now the government is shutting down debate. The irony here is so thick that one could cut it with a knife. I have to note that the very first vote these new Liberal MPs will pronounce on will be a vote to shut down debate. Welcome to the Liberal Party of Canada. They can check their souls in at the door and follow whatever the whip tells them to do. Why is the government using this undemocratic tool to shut down debate to stack the decks on committees? Why does it continue to oppose our reasonable amendment to protect the opposition's role on the oversight committees? Those committees have nothing to do with government legislation. They provide the accountability the Canadian people voted for at the ballot box.

Mr. Speaker, the government House leader keeps saying things that are just not true. He says it does not happen often that the status of a government changes from a minority to a majority. It has never happened at the federal level. That is something that has just never happened. He says that there are not two tiers of committees. There literally are two tiers of committees. There is a tier that handles legislation and is chaired by government MPs, and then there is a tier that is chaired by opposition MPs, which generally does not deal with legislation at all but provides oversight. Those two different tiers are literally spelled out in the Standing Orders. He says that these committees would still have the power to produce documents, compel testimony and order information from departments. What he fails to mention is that this would happen only if motions pass at committee, and he is now stacking the deck with two extra Liberals. Would Liberal MPs on these committees keep the government House leader's word and commit to voting in favour of motions to investigate Liberal corruption, motions to compel testimony and motions to demand information from the government, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from very concerned people in the Indian Head area who are expressing their outrage and their opposition to the Liberal decision to close down the Indian Head agricultural research farm. This farm has provided invaluable research for the agricultural sector so many farmers could have access to better crop varieties and better soil management. There have been all kinds of benefits from the research that has happened there, and the Liberals are shutting this research centre down. The petitioners are calling on the government to reverse this decision so that farmers can continue to benefit from the world-class research done there. This is not just about the jobs that are being lost in the Indian Head community. It is about the broader impact on the entire agricultural sector from across the country. If the government is serious about food security and innovation research, it will reverse course. That is what these petitioners are calling for.

Mr. Speaker, now it is time for everyone's favourite part of the parliamentary calendar, the Thursday question. I was hoping the government House leader could update the House as to the business for the remainder of this week and into next week. Specifically, on the heels of recent data showing that Canada once again under the Liberal Prime Minister has the highest food inflation in the entire G7, can we expect any legislation to provide relief at the grocery store? We would be willing to fast-track legislation that would go the full way to lifting federal taxes off gasoline and diesel, should the government want to introduce that legislation as well. One thing that strengthens a dollar and protects currency against devaluation is investors trying to put money into our country. The two Liberal anti-development bills from the Trudeau era, the “no more pipelines” bill and the “no new development” bill, are blocking investment into Canada. Will the government finally repeal those antidevelopment laws that are contributing to the weakening Canadian dollar and helping drive up prices?

Mr. Speaker, because the government House leader referenced it, I understand he has just made a commitment that he would allow us to bring that document into the House and accept its tabling. I will take him up on that and make sure we get him that list. I do hope he will not just provide unanimous consent to the tabling of that document but that he also gives it to the Minister of Finance so that we can finally get the Liberals to stop causing the inflation that is causing so much hardship for Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, I fear that my counterpart on the government bench has missed his calling to be a speech writer in the politburo, because so many of the things he said there directly contradicted what he had been saying. For example, he said that this is all being done in a spirit of collaboration. However, with the motion, the Liberals would literally be taking away the need to collaborate, by giving themselves a majority. Another falsehood the member stated was that there are not two tiers in committees, yet he referenced the fact that the three oversight committees are in fact chaired by the opposition. That is a different tier of committee. Those committees have always been treated differently by the Standing Orders and by the usual practices of the House, precisely because they are a different sort of committee. They are not committees that legislation proceeds through. They are committees that provide oversight. It is through those committees that the opposition has uncovered Liberal corruption, scandals and the inappropriate use of taxpayers' dollars, and in which the government voted against each one of those investigations. Why not at least preserve the oversight role of the opposition on those three committees: public accounts, government operations and ethics?

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the last thing the government House leader said, because I think this is the nub of the misleading nature of what the government is doing here. He said that they could not find an example where the makeup of committees did not reflect the makeup of the House. Yes, that is precisely because there has never before been a situation where a government has changed the fundamental nature of itself through floor crossings and backroom deals. Every other time, the makeup of committees reflected the makeup of the House, because that was what happened at the election. The makeup of committees reflects the democratic expression that the Canadian people provide through the ballot box. It is very telling that the very first thing this government has done with its newfound majority powers is not to make life more affordable for Canadians, not to fully lift gas taxes, not to stop inflationary money printing or repeal anti-development laws that chase away investment and block jobs from being created here in Canada. No, instead, the very first thing they did was to make life easier for the government itself. Those are not just my words. They are words that Liberals have said as to the justification for why they are doing this. This means that they will have an easier time getting their agenda through and, most importantly, they will not have to face the type of scrutiny that opposition parties are able to provide for Canadians when the opposition makes up a majority in the House. The committee makeup reflects the makeup of the House as the Canadian people elected it. No Canadian has been able to pass judgment on the floor crossings or endorse the deals that were offered those members who changed parties so soon after an election. These are all individuals who looked their voters in the eye, ran on a platform, a party and a leader, and then, for their own personal gain, again, their words not mine, made a decision to join the government. Again, Canadians have had no opportunity to examine what those negotiations or those talks were all about or what promises may have been made to entice members to cross the floor. The government has made so many false statements. The government House leader says that there is no such thing as two-tiered committees. The context of that is what my colleague from Barrie South—Innisfil, with whom I am sharing my time, is going to do in a few moments. He is going to propose an amendment that would at least preserve the oversight capabilities of three very important committees: the public accounts committee, which is tasked with poring through, line by line, every dollar that the government spends; the government operations committee, which examines all kinds of government operations, making sure that Canadians understand who is getting paid, why contracts are being given and why funding decisions are made or not made, again, a very important oversight committee; and, of course, the ethics committee. This is the committee that is tasked with investigating government corruption, and this is the true reason why the government is not going to agree with our request. Every other committee deals with legislation. If we have a bill to change the airports act, that would go to the transportation committee. If we have a bill to change the way natural resources are developed, that bill would go to the natural resources committee. Legislation does not go through those three oversight committees. All this talk about getting results for Canadians, getting things done and working in a collaborative manner does not apply to those oversight committees. We know what happens when Liberals get majority on these committees. Another falsehood that the government House leader has said is that members of Parliament still have the power to send for documents, compel departments to hand over information and compel testimony. That is false. Members of Parliament do not have that right individually. They only have that right when a committee or the House passes a motion. Should the Liberals have a majority on those committees, we already know that they would block those efforts. We know this because that is what they have done in the past. When the Liberals had a majority in the 2015‑19 Parliament, it took a whistle-blower, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to shine a light on what Justin Trudeau was doing, trying to inappropriately pressure her to intervene in a criminal court proceeding. After just two meetings, we had heard from Jody Wilson-Raybould and the then prime minister's chief of staff, and then committee members wanted to hear from Jody Wilson-Raybould again so she could respond to what Gerry Butts had said. What was the first thing the Liberals did when they got the floor on March 13, 2019? They moved to adjourn. They had the votes, because they had a majority, and they shut down that investigation. There was the WE Charity scandal. This is where the Liberals gave a sole-sourced $912-million contract to an organization that had paid Trudeau family members through speaking events. The Liberals filibustered for dozens of hours and voted to shut down the investigation and stop documents from seeing the light of day. There was the arrive scam app. This app, initially budgeted at $80,000, ballooned to an estimated $60 million. The Liberals tried to block committee investigations and hide their connections to their favourite Liberal IT contractors, GC Strategies. Let us think of all the corruption this House has unearthed just in the last few years of the Liberal government precisely because the Liberals could not block those investigations. Because the opposition parties collectively had a majority, we could compel that kind of information. Had the Liberals had a majority on the ethics committee, the public accounts committee and the government operations committee in the last Parliament, there is no way we would have seen the head of GC Strategies in this House at the bar being admonished for the misappropriation of taxpayer money. There was the Winnipeg lab scandal. Again, the Liberals blocked document production orders and even took the Speaker to court to try to block information from being released to parliamentarians. There was the Liberal green slush fund with its widespread Liberal corruption. This is where Liberal insiders were sitting around as an entity that allocated tax dollars the government had collected. Liberal insiders were placed on that board. Do members know what they did once they were on that board? They funnelled money to their own companies. They wrote themselves cheques off the backs of taxpayers. When the Conservatives led the charge to shine a light on this kind of corruption, the Liberals blocked it. They voted against it. That is what this is all about. The Liberals do not enjoy transparency. They do not enjoy when Canadians find out the truth about how they are running the government. That is why they are pushing this motion through. All the arguments about collaboration are totally false. Our party, after the last election, said that we are facing a lot of global challenges, but we are also facing a lot of terrible Liberal policies that are driving up costs and inflation, making our country weaker when it comes to dealing with global threats. We said we would roll up our sleeves and get to work. Where we have had agreement, where there has been common ground, members have seen the opposition co-operate and ensure that things that, at the very least, do not do any further harm to the Canadian people get passed. We have also helped fix terrible Liberal legislation. Do members remember Bill C-2, the very first bill that the current government brought to the House? It was because the government did not have a majority that it was not able to ram that bill through. It was because opposition parties got together and said that there were many things in the bill that should pass, but also many things that were huge government overreaches, such as the invasion of people's privacy, the ability to open people's mail, the banning of cash transactions and all kinds of things that empowered the state and infringed on individual liberties. We were able to block that and force the government to abandon those aspects that were huge government overreaches while at the same time passing the common-sense parts that the Conservatives have long been calling for. This is a solution to a problem that does not exist. If the government is looking for obstruction and game playing, it need look no further than its own benches. The Liberals have filibustered for the last two weeks at the ethics committee to prevent an investigation into the finance minister's potential conflict of interest. They filibustered their own legislation at the justice committee by insisting on debating a bill that was dividing parliamentarians and was very divisive for the Canadian public, while we were calling on the justice committee to focus on real measures to make Canada safer. At the end of the day, what the Liberals call “silly games”, Canadians call “transparency and accountability”. Every time parliamentarians tell them that there is a conflict of interest and that they have shovelled money into their own friends' pockets and their own companies, they say that it is partisanship. Any time a light is shone on their nefarious activities, they have to project and they have to demean and insult those individuals who are trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Canadian tax dollars. We make no apologies for fighting for transparency and for respecting that taxpayer dollar. I am urging the government to rethink its rejection of our amendment. When my colleague proposes it, I hope the Liberals will get on board so they can show the Canadian people that it is not about using their power to shut down investigations.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do miss working with the member for Burlington when she was House leader. We had lots of productive conversations. It is always spirited, and it is always a pleasure to respond. It is a little bit of a misleading question. First of all, let us address something. The Liberals did not get their majority because of by-elections. That is false. Every seat they won in the by-elections was a seat they already had. They got their majority through floor crossings. In those by-elections, not every Canadian got to vote. In the general election, when every Canadian voted, they voted for a strong opposition. They voted for a minority Liberal government. I can assure the member that had the Liberals gotten a majority through the ballot box, we would not be having this conversation. When Conservatives get our majority at the ballot box, we will not need a motion like this. They only need this motion because they are trying to overturn the results of the last election through the committee makeup.

Mr. Speaker, I agree. The Liberals talk about the percentages reflecting the makeup of the House. They have given themselves a much larger percentage of committee makeup than they have in the House. Even in their own actions, they contradict themselves. They contradict themselves on the need for this at all, because there is legislation that has moved through the House. They contradict themselves when they talk about two-tier committees. There are two tiers of committees. There are the oversight committees, which are specially treated in the Standing Orders and have their own conventions and practices, and then there are the rest of the standing committees, which provide for oversight on departments and deal with legislation. The member is right. In this very motion, the Liberals are not reflecting the makeup of the House in committees. They are giving themselves about eight percentage points more. I agree with my hon. colleague, and I hope he agrees with our amendment to at least preserve the oversight role of the operations, public accounts and ethics committees.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out that the member is right. This was done through backroom deals. Not a single one of those floor crossers would have won their own elections if they had run as Liberals. They got elected only because they were running under the Conservative banner and the Conservative leader. That is a fact. No government has ever gone from a minority to a majority at the federal level through these kinds of backroom negotiations. We believe that the makeup of Parliament and the checks and balances that Canadians voted for at the ballot box should be respected.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot solve a problem if we deny that it exists. The Prime Minister rejects the fact that Canadians are struggling. He said, “Affordability is the best it has been in...a decade.” Yesterday, he doubled down. Let us take a look at the facts. Rent for a one-bedroom unit has doubled since 2015. The typical Canadian house is up 51%, and in fact, over the last 10 years, housing prices have outpaced incomes in Canada by 29%, which is the worst drop in affordability in the entire G7. Now that he has had time to learn the facts, is he going to keep telling Canadians that their struggles are all in their imagination?

Mr. Speaker, we are are in favour of lowering taxes and prices and fighting Liberal inflation. That is what Conservatives are all about. Maybe Liberals believe times are not so bad because their friends around boardroom tables have never had it so good. Lobbyists and consultants are raking it in. Meanwhile, since 2015, visits to food banks in Canada are up 77%. Food prices are up 42% since 2015, and just this week, the newest data confirms food inflation continues to be the highest in the G7, and overall inflation had the worst one-month jump in over a year. If the Prime Minister still does not believe that grocery prices are rising, maybe he could ask the guy who buys his strawberries for him.

Mr. Speaker, I have here a petition signed by dozens and dozens of residents near Indian Head, Saskatchewan. As members may know, the Liberal government has decided to cancel the funding for the agricultural research centre located at Indian Head. This facility does world-class research into crop development, drought resistance and pest resistance. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has decided to close this facility and a number of other research centres across the country. The petitioners point out the good work that this centre does to help improve agricultural commodities and the benefits it has to the agricultural and agri-food sectors. They are calling on the government to reverse the cold-hearted and anti-science decision to close this research facility.

Mr. Speaker, it is the time of the week when I am told CPAC has to have extra server capacity on standby for the surge of attention to the chamber's proceedings. However, it being Thursday, it is time for the update from the government on the business for the rest of this week and into next. I was hoping the government could address a shocking report that came out this week that $1 trillion of investment has fled Canada since 2015. Now, something happened in 2015: The Liberals took office. Ever since then, there has been a flight of capital from our country. RBC today calculates that at $1 trillion. That is a trillion dollars' worth of investment leaving our country and weakening our dollar. This means it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of goods. It also means there are fewer jobs and opportunities for Canadians and less revenue for government to invest in core services. Will the government be bringing in any kind of legislation to undo the bad Liberal laws that chased away that investment, such as repealing the “no more pipelines” bill, the “leave it in the ground” bill and the shipping ban off the coast of western Canada? If the government was going to announce today that it would be undoing the terrible decisions of the last 10 years of Liberal rule, Conservatives would do everything we could to quickly pass those pieces of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, after weeks of Conservative pressure, the Liberals finally admitted that their high fuel taxes are hammering Canadians at the pumps, but, in typical Liberal fashion, this Prime Minister has proven to be just another Liberal, keeping more windfall taxes for government than for providing relief for Canadians. The Liberal announcement today is simply not good enough. It is going to provide only a third of the relief for a third of the year. The Conservative plan is to scrap 100% of federal fuel taxes for the entire rest of the year. If the Liberals are going to admit that the Conservatives were right all along, why not just go all the way and adopt our full plan?

Mr. Speaker, good times are almost here, just a little over the horizon, but right now there are no smiles on motorists' faces, because they were expecting 100% relief at the pumps. Under the Liberal government's plan, the government will still continue to collect windfall taxes, and hard-working Canadians will have to pay more at the pumps. The Liberal government is keeping the GST on fuel and the fuel standard tax, which alone adds seven cents a litre. It is providing only a third of the relief for a third of the year. We do not give a pharmacist a high-five when he gives us only one third of our prescription. Why not just go all the way and reduce, scrap and eliminate 100% of fuel taxes for the—

Mr. Speaker, it used to be that when oil prices went up, the Canadian dollar went up along with them, but it is not. Why is this? It is because the government is attacking our energy industry. Its industrial carbon tax drives investment out of the energy sector, and despite massive new powers, it has still gotten no new pipelines built. Even the Liberal Prime Minister has said when our dollar is weak, food becomes more expensive, but he does not realize that it is his job to give Canadians a strong dollar. Liberals never change. Will the Prime Minister reverse his radical environmental agenda so our dollar can be strong and Canadians can eat, heat and house themselves?

Mr. Speaker, even the Liberal Prime Minister acknowledged, “one thing impacting...food prices is the fall in the Canadian dollar”, but it is his job to give us a strong dollar. He has chosen to keep his industrial carbon tax that drives investment out of Canada. This is not the first time he has racked up a record like this. His tenure in the U.K. was described as, “characterised by stagnant growth, stalled living standards, and declining productivity”. Does this sound familiar? The Liberal Prime Minister is great at getting important jobs, but is just terrible at actually doing those jobs. Will he reverse his radical environmental agenda so our dollar can be strong and food can become more affordable?

Mr. Speaker, it being Thursday, it is time for the Thursday question. Before we go back to our constituencies to engage in important constituency work and to spend time with our friends and family over the Easter break, I want to wish everybody across Canada a very blessed and meaningful Good Friday. Of course, I am looking forward to the wonderful news of our Lord's resurrection on Easter Sunday, something that brings Canadians together from coast to coast, from all different cultures and backgrounds. However, before we break, I would like the government to give us an update as to what we will be dealing with when we come back after those two constituency work weeks and whether or not there will be any legislation introduced in the House to repeal the industrial carbon tax, which is driving out investment in Canada's energy sector and contributing to the collapse in the fall of the Canadian dollar, which is, of course, a big culprit in the rising prices that Canada faces.

Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations, so I hope you will find unanimous consent for the following motion: That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, Special Order or usual practice of the House, in relation to the report stage of Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places), Motion No. 1, standing in the names of the Members for Brantford—Brant South—Six Nations, Brampton West and Elgin—St. Thomas—London South on today's Notice Paper, be replaced with the following: “That Bill C-9 be amended by deleting the Short Title.”

Mr. Speaker, it is a little over a week before another terrible April Fool's trick by the Liberal Prime Minister will be played on Canadians. The illusion that he would like everyone in Canada to believe is that the carbon tax is dead and buried, but what the Liberal Prime Minister is not coming clean with Canadians on, and what he does not like to talk about, is the fact that the industrial carbon tax is still lurking behind the shadows, and on April 1, that carbon tax is set to go up to $110 a tonne. Right now, it is about $95 a tonne. That is almost a 16% increase. That industrial carbon tax trickles down to consumers in so many different ways. Every company in Canada that produces something, and every company, business and factory that uses energy, has to pay that carbon tax. Those costs get passed down to consumers. Every farmer who buys fertilizer and equipment, who has to pay for fuel to haul back and forth between the grain elevator and the terminal or who picks up supplies and inputs as we enter the growing season, has to pay that carbon tax. All of that gets passed on to consumers. The truckers who have to transport goods from the processing centres to the distributors have to pay that carbon tax. In fact, when the industrial carbon tax was set at $40 a tonne, just a few years ago, studies showed that the effect of that on a Toronto to Montreal food haul added about $2,000 a year to the cost of just the trucking. That does not include any of the processing or energy costs that those companies involved in making or processing food pay. That is just the transportation alone, and that was at $40 a tonne. On April 1, when that jumps to $110 a tonne, that represents almost a threefold increase to the industrial carbon tax from just a few years ago. I said that the industrial carbon tax was lurking in the shadows, and I use the word “shadow” for a very specific reason. It is because the Liberal Prime Minister, before he ran for Liberal leader, was often out on the world stage saying the problem with the carbon tax was that people noticed it. He actually said this over and over again in interviews, on panels and in his book Values: Building a Better World for All. He said that the consumer carbon tax was divisive and that people saw it when they filled up their cars with gas and when they paid their utility bills, so his solution was to hide it. He actually said in an interview that the right way to do it was to take it off of the receipts that Canadians had to pay and bury it on the back end. He literally said that we need, in effect, a shadow carbon tax, and that is exactly what he has done. He wrote that book Values, and I reference that book for a reason. If I had written a book called “Values” where I defined myself as a human being on almost a moral level and professed my love of a carbon tax and my desire to leave oil and gas in the ground, when I decided to run for politics, people might not believe me if I suddenly claimed to have had a conversion and disavowed everything I had ever written. The Liberal Prime Minister does not want to develop our natural resources. He believes in the radical, most extreme form of net zero, which would leave our natural resources in the ground. He actually said in an interview with the media that the best course of action for Canada is to leave up to 50% of our natural resources in the ground. Why will the government not finish the job and eliminate the industrial carbon tax so that Canadians do not have to pay this useless tax on the consumer side or the industrial side?

Mr. Speaker, there is so much wrong with what that member just said. I wish I had more time. First of all, this grocery rebate was the exact same policy that the Justin Trudeau Liberals tried. It failed because when the government creates more money, when it borrows more money to give out on the demand side, it causes more inflation. It is monetary policy that causes inflation, not global factors. Inflation is not like the weather. It is not something that just happens because of natural phenomena. It is because of domestic policies, including deficit spending bankrolled by the creation of money. Do not take my word for it. This is exactly what happened in the previous Liberal government. It is what is going to happen today. The proof of that is the fact that every other country in the G7 is also facing those global factors. Under this Liberal Prime Minister's government, under his policies, Canada has the highest food inflation because it has the worst domestic economic policy. The parliamentary secretary talked about the fuel standards, and their not mandating an increase, but the effect of the policies will be that increase. It is going to be 17¢ a litre. Canadians cannot afford that. Farmers cannot afford that. That is going to add to price increases.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for the Thursday question, the day on which all of CPAC's servers experience a massive spike. We hope its IT department is well prepped for what is about to happen. I wonder if the government House leader could update the House as to the business in the chamber for the rest of this week and the week after our constituency work week. I am especially curious to hear whether he is going to be tabling any kind of action plan to not just ban new IRGC agents from entering the country but deport the ones who are in this country, who are causing so much harm to Canadian citizens and security and, of course, funding a terrible regime in Iran. I also wonder if he could update the House as to whether the Liberals are going to repeal any of the hidden taxes that add to the cost of groceries, like the industrial carbon tax and the fuel standard tax, which adds seven cents a litre and is rising to 17¢ a litre. In this affordability crisis that the Liberals have caused, will they at least bring in some legislation to provide relief at the grocery store for hard-working Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, we cannot control what happens abroad, but the Liberals do control the policies they are imposing that make life more expensive, like the Liberal fuel standard. This is effectively another kind of carbon tax, which adds seven cents a litre and will rise to 17¢ a litre, meaning more costs for drivers, farmers, fishermen and those who transport our food. The Liberal Prime Minister is also hiking the industrial carbon tax on steel, aluminum, plastic and farm equipment. These costs are imposed at home, not abroad, and paid for by Canadians. When will the Liberals accept responsibility for what they can control and cancel their policies that make life more expensive for Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, let us look at the facts. As for the G7, under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada now has the worst food price inflation and the only economy that is shrinking. All of this has gotten worse since he became Prime Minister. Instead of helping lower prices by cancelling Liberal taxes, he is driving them even higher. When companies that process, transport, store or sell food pay more, who does he think all those costs get passed on to? We cannot control what happens in other countries, but we can absolutely control whether to drive prices higher with tax increases. Why not at least give Canadians a break from Liberal taxes and cancel the fuel standard tax and the industrial carbon tax?

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has created a sentencing discount system for foreign criminals. The Prime Minister claims that they have the system under control. Let us look at the case of Rajbir Singh. This criminal sexually assaulted a young woman and received a conditional discharge so he would not have a criminal conviction registered against him so he could stay in the country. Under the Liberal Prime Minister's sentencing discount policy, not only are dangerous criminals allowed to stay in the country, but they get released early. When will the Prime Minister fire his immigration minister, or does he think that she has it all under control?

Mr. Speaker, if they had confidence in the immigration minister, then she would be answering these questions herself. Let us take a look at another case. Joyson Lewis assaulted his girlfriend. He grabbed her, tearing her shirt in the process, threw her to the ground and hit her again. The judge in the case sentenced this foreign criminal to nine months of probation specifically so that the conviction would not be entered into the record and he could stay in Canada. Why is the Liberal government doubling down on a policy that gives sentencing discounts to foreign criminals, and when will the Prime Minister fire the minister?

Mr. Speaker, the government's own data shows that building bureaucracy does not actually get results. The Liberals also have it backward with respect to the auto sector. Over the last 10 years of the Liberal government, the number of vehicles produced in Canada has fallen from 2.3 million cars to 1.2 million. Their plan is to force working Canadians to send their tax dollars to subsidize the purchase of EVs that most Canadians cannot afford, and the vast majority of those EVs sold in Canada are not made in Canada. That means some of the biggest winners of this subsidy program are American auto workers. Instead of forcing Canadian workers to subsidize foreign-made vehicles, why do they not adopt the Conservative plan and remove the GST on all new vehicles in Canada?