Parliamentary Speeches

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-286, An act to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and the Food and Drugs Act. Mr. Speaker, today, I am honoured to introduce Thomas's bill. Thomas was a constituent of mine. He was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given months to live. His anxiety was all over the place. His doctor prescribed psilocybin with counselling, and it worked. It calmed his anxiety so that his mind was put at ease and his body could fight the cancer. He accessed it through the special access programs we have in Health Canada. It was working, for three years, until they cut him off. My private member's bill would allow physicians to prescribe psilocybin counselling to their patients and not have the bureaucrats in Health Canada override them, which is the case currently. I am excited to introduce this bill. I look forward to it going to committee and hopefully passing this, because we face an epidemic of mental health and addiction issues. We have crises in our streets, and there is a solution that could include psilocybin counselling. (Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to table our dissenting report, because what we heard at committee was 10 years of wasted time with these Liberals. Our dissenting report goes through the repealing of the Impact Assessment Act to shorten approvals, eliminate red tape and respect provincial jurisdiction. This is very important, because we have heard of many mining projects that have been shelved because of this act. We also, in this report, talk about the fast-tracking of all current mining-related projects stuck in the federal regulatory queue. That is supported by industry. With the Major Projects Office, one witness warned that “looking to attract investment through the bottleneck of the MPO is unlikely to produce the outcomes that we're looking for.” For that and many other good reasons, we submit our dissenting report on what we should do as a nation.

Mr. Speaker, imagine someone who just kept racking up the credit card bill while actively trying to earn less money. That is what the Liberals have spent the last decade doing, as they consistently increase the debt on the national credit card while doing everything possible to keep resources in the ground. Of course, governments and people are different. Governments can keep racking up taxes on families. These families are feeling the pain of higher taxes, higher inflation, higher interest costs and higher stresses on the family budget. Despite the illusions with the Liberal Prime Minister, it is more cost, more taxes, more debt, more on the national credit card and more of the same. He is just another Liberal. When will the Liberal Prime Minister get serious and end his costly credit card budgeting so Canadians can afford to live?

Mr. Speaker, on March 25, the Liberal Prime Minister told Canadians that affordability is the best in decades, but food prices tell a different story. Apples are up more than 48%, fresh vegetables are up 57% and potatoes are up a whopping 60% compared to 2015. When will the Prime Minister stop making the same promises, end the illusions and deliver results, instead of lecturing Canadians on why they have never had it so good?

Mr. Speaker, last year, we worked with the Prime Minister to get things moving again after a decade of Liberal roadblocks. We helped fast-track Bill C-5, giving him incredible powers to approve major projects that would make Canada richer and more secure. However, no new projects have been approved. If someone goes to the Major Projects Office website, it is pathetic. In Saskatchewan, only the Foran copper mine made the Liberal list and of course, it was halfway through construction before the Liberals even got involved. Way to go, Liberals. The Liberals expect Canadians to believe that the only way to clear through all the red tape and bureaucracy they built is yet another office with endless meetings, but we all know that all this office will accomplish is wasting taxpayers' money. Just this week, the Liberals voted against the sovereignty act, which would have gotten Canada working again. Canadians cannot afford any more of the Liberals' delays. Canadian sovereignty depends on getting the Liberal government out of the way.

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian taxpayer is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the European Space Agency. Canadians could be expected to wonder why so much of their money is being spent on the European Space Agency and its private corporation, Harwell, but do not worry, we know the answer, which is that 50% of the Harwell Science and Innovation facility is owned by Brookfield. That explains it. As always under the Liberal government, if it benefits Brookfield, it happens, but as with so many other projects, from timber to pipelines, if it does not benefit Brookfield, then it goes nowhere.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government is the most expensive in Canadian history. Every dollar the Prime Minister spends comes out of the pockets of Canadians, driving up the cost of everything. Year after year, food costs have gone up and the Liberals want us to pay more for their food packaging taxes. The Liberal tax on food costs Canadians an additional $5.6 billion a year, driving up the cost for fresh produce by over 34%. Why is the Prime Minister keeping the food packaging tax and making everything more expensive for struggling Canadians?

Mr. Speaker, we have heard from experts, since 2015, that if we brought in Liberal bail, we would have problems in our streets. Ten years later, we have premiers from coast to coast demanding to get rid of the Liberal bail. We have heard from police associations that want the Liberal bail gone. We now have lip service from the Liberals about reforming the system. What we really need is to go back to how it was before they were elected, before Bill C-5 and before Bill C-75. I would like to hear the member's comments on why he thinks that the government is so deaf to all the premiers and police associations that are demanding this.

Mr. Speaker, hard-working Canadians spend all day at work, and on the way home, they are not stopping in a grocery stores. They are stopping in food banks. For millions of working Canadians, they have to go to food banks because they cannot afford the hidden Liberal food taxes, such as the industrial carbon tax and the food packaging tax. Food Banks Canada reports a record smashing 2.2 million visits in a single month. Donations are down because Canadians are broke. When will these out-of-touch Liberals admit to driving up the cost of food and driving Canadians to the food bank?

Mr. Speaker, it is frustrating to hear these words out of this member. We know that there are 86,000 people out of work. There are now four million visits to the food bank, and one in four people in Toronto rely on the food bank for food. The Liberals are talking about these major projects that are going to get fast-tracked. A major project near this member's riding in Darlington is the GE Hitachi SMR. Construction started over a year ago, and I just got an update that the project is progressing. Where are the jobs that the Liberals are claiming are going to be protected by this project that has already started?

Mr. Speaker, through you to my hon. colleague, there is a disconnect. Canadians are not buying it. Tonight, unfortunately, someone is going to tuck in their loved ones for the last time, because of what is going on in our streets. If we believe what the member is saying, that crime is down for the people in his province, for those who are watching the evening news, it is hoped that something horrific has not happened out there, but more times than not it does. That is because of repeat violent offenders getting bail, not jail. I would like those members to say if they honestly feel that crime is down in their province, because the constituents that you represent in your province are not feeling that.

Mr. Speaker, this is a case study on how not to build a nation, how to destroy a country from within. To understand how bad this bill and the government are, we need to understand how we got here if we are ever going to get through this as a country. Since day one, the Liberal Party of Canada has been trying to reshape Canada into this weird reality. Many Canadians do not recognize this country, a postnational state that does not have an identity. Over the past decade, Canada has had the worst record on economic growth in the G7. For every category, Canada is dead last because of Liberal policies that have weakened our country and made our citizens poorer. There are countless stats to confirm how far we have fallen. Just look at the over two million people in our country relying on food banks every day just to sustain themselves. This has been caused by Liberal inflation because of terrible policies like printing money, but maybe more importantly, it has also been caused by the laws the Liberals have enacted to ban growth within Canada, such as Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill, and the tanker ban. This has real-world implications; there is real Canadian suffering. I am also thinking of youth, who are facing record unemployment right now. Whole generations have given up on the dream of ever owning a home. The Liberals want a nation of renters. We are a country in decline because of the terrible policies of the government. It is almost as if in every way possible, the Liberals have made us more dependent on the state. We do not talk enough about natural resources in Canada. We should be a stronger nation because of our foundation built on natural resources, but that will never happen while the Liberals are in power. The “keep it in the ground” gang has kidnapped our once proud country. We used to build in Canada. We used to celebrate new production in Canada, not cap it. Our citizens are hard working. We are a country, or used to be a country, of doers. After a decade of decline, the terrible Liberal antidevelopment laws have killed communities across our country. As a country, we have spoken endlessly about the north and the importance of protecting and growing our presence in the territories, but because of new Liberal regulations, the north is hurting. This bill would not address that. I have travelled to the north. I have heard first-hand how Bill C-69 has stalled and ultimately killed every new mining project in the territories. I have been told that in the territories there are two main types of jobs: people can work for the government on the taxpayers' dime or they can work in the mining sector. The government has stalled and changed regulations so that no mines are currently being built in the territories. Soon, there will only be government jobs, and all those mining jobs will be evaporated. Everyone is just going to get on the payroll of the government. That is the strong country the Liberals are building, a country that happily fires its own citizens and ships production and jobs to foreign countries. The Liberals have made our economy more beholden to foreign interests and have made a weaker Canada. Because of Liberal anti-pipeline policies, we do not have ways to move our product to market. This results in America buying our oil at a discount. The citizens of this country own the resources in the ground, all the resources. No one special group has more say over them. We are the owners, not the corporations and not the government; the citizens are, for our benefit. However, this once great country, which owns these resources, has a government that wants to keep them in the ground as long as it can. The manager of the resources, the government, has done a lousy job in managing our assets and our inheritance for the next generation. These brilliant Liberals have layered on so much regulation that pipeline companies such as Brookfield invest in pipelines around the world but not here in Canada. It is elbows up against our own people and resources. We have closed all growth opportunities to export the product that we all own, making it easier for Americans to literally have us over a barrel. We have forced ourselves to sell to the Americans for a discount on every barrel of oil. It is upwards of $15 on every barrel that we just give away because of the crazy policies the Liberals have enacted for our country. If we add that up with the millions and billions of barrels of oil, there is the money to reinvest in schools, hospitals, highways and true infrastructure. We would have the revenue because our economy is growing. We would have the ability to get our product to market, but not under the Liberals. The Liberals have a record of selling out our country for what they claim is the environment. We might just stop that for a minute. The whole idea is that we have to keep it all in the ground and stop everything to save the planet, but just on the oil and gas equation, if the whole world would use oil from Canada, our emissions as a planet would go down by 25%. I am not sure whether they are hurting our country more or the environment more with their crazy Liberal policies. It gets even worse when we talk about LNG. There is not a country in the world that would not want what we have, but we have squandered this opportunity. This is the worst missed opportunity in a generation. I am so embarrassed for our country about what has happened. When the Liberal government formed government 10 years ago, there were 15 LNG plants lined up for Canada. There was not a single taxpayer dime in these projects; it was all private investment that would have driven our economy for a decade. These projects were billion-dollar projects located in coastal communities desperate for well-paying jobs that would allow families to buy a home, raise some kids and retire in a safe community. Those paycheques would have come from liquefied natural gas plants. Unfortunately, the Liberals changed the policies, and only one is progressing. We still do not have it up and operational. If we remember the resource that is in the ground, the natural gas, it is owned by all of us. With what we are doing right now, if we are going to sell an ounce of natural gas outside Canada, it goes to our only customer, the United States of America. America is our sole customer for natural gas. It takes our gas, transports it in the capacity that we do have in pipelines to the States, and it goes to liquefied natural gas plants, some of which are for the same companies that were proposing those plants in Canada. After the Liberals said no, they went to the States. We send our gas to the States, and the Americans get the profit from liquefying it and selling it around the world. The profit and the jobs go to the Americans because of Liberal policies. This is the country the Liberals have built. All those jobs and opportunities have been lost to America because of Liberal regulation. After a decade of crazy Liberal policies that have weakened the country, these crackerjacks are proposing to fast-track a limited number of nation-building projects. It is like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I hope families are not waiting. If someone is in one of the many families that have their careers tied up in a project that is waiting for approval from the government, this is the Willy Wonka magic golden ticket they are claiming. If they are waiting for that, I hope their project will go ahead. This is the kind of sweepstakes the Liberal government thinks is the best way to build a nation. We have a country desperate for growth and all the good things that flow from economic activity. The Liberals only want a handful of those opportunities. This is limiting Canada's growth. The Liberals have weakened our country at the worst possible time. The government has had 10 years to improve interprovincial trade, but it has not. The Liberals have benefited from a divided federation, so no one believes it when the Prime Minister says that the barriers will be coming down by Canada Day. Frustrations with Liberals have never been higher in Saskatchewan, and for good reason. Many families I know work in the uranium sector and do not trust Bill C-5 or what the government is up to. Nuclear energy and uranium mining has been stalled in our country because of layering of multiple regulations. If we want to build a nation, I have a project for us. It is ready to go. It is the NexGen Rook 1 project. There are 1,300 high-paying jobs in northern Saskatchewan ready to go. It would result in over $10 billion in government revenue. This is the project. This is one of thousands of projects across Canada that could actually build a nation. I plead with the Liberals to please put Canada first for a change and get this project done. This is just one of the uranium mining projects that are on the go in Canada and northern Saskatchewan.

Mr. Speaker, the member claims $3.9 billion has been put into this project. How many mines have been built? It is zero. I think back to my province of Saskatchewan. BHP has the largest mine that is getting built right now. The only reason that mine is going forward is that it was grandfathered in under old regulations, not under Bill C-69. This is a failure of the Liberals. They spent billions of dollars on a critical minerals strategy, and potash is one of those minerals, but there are no other mines being proposed and/or being built right now because of the over-regulations that you guys have burdened our industry with. I would not be proud about your mining history.

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure whether members caught all that, but Ottawa has messed things up in our provinces and has dictated to the provinces in their jurisdictions. The courts have ruled how unconstitutionally Ottawa has been treating our provinces, and that includes Quebec and Saskatchewan. Now with Bill C-5, if someone is a Liberal insider, they are going to be successful in this country. It is the Liberals' track record, for the last 10 years, that if someone was a Liberal insider, they made cake. For everyone else, it is too bad, and that—

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is right that Bill C-5 is not a fix; it is how to get Liberal insiders on a select list of projects that will get done. This is ethically challenging, and it opens up a litany of opportunities in which insiders are going to get rich, once again, because of the Liberal government. It will pick winners and losers, versus letting the market decide. To the example that you raised on Bill C-69 and on ways to save it, we do need regulations and we need protections, but what we do not need is what we currently have, with which nothing is getting done. We are in a crisis in Canada, and the Liberals do not have the answers, because they are the ones who actually messed up this country so badly.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and his anti-energy ministers say there are no pipelines in Canada without consensus, but there is not even consensus in the Prime Minister's cabinet. The Prime Minister has stacked that cabinet with ministers who want to kill the Canadian oil and gas industry, but there is not even consensus in the Prime Minister's own head. He said he wanted to make Canada an energy superpower, but he also said, “maybe as much as half of oil reserves, proven [oil] reserves, need to stay in the ground”. In the Prime Minister's head, who gets a pipeline veto?

Mr. Speaker, they are the same old Liberals. Our allies, like Germany, are desperately needing energy. Canada has the energy but, due to 10 years of anti-energy policies from the Liberals, we have blocked all pipelines in Canada and we cannot sell to Germany. The German ambassador says that they will now need to import LNG from America. The Prime Minister is selling out our country by sending our jobs and our wealth to the States. Does the Prime Minister not realize that no one is building pipelines in Canada because of Liberal anti-energy laws, or is it the Prime Minister's plan all along to keep it in the ground?

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to carry on with a question about nuclear, because we know that in the last Parliament, the Liberals actually proclaimed that nuclear was a sin and categorized it as a sin stock, which included many other vice stocks in the mind of government. The government changed the credit system, and nuclear companies could not have access, because they were characterized as a sin. This was as recently as three years ago. I just want to get the speaker's comments. Do you think the Liberals are telling the truth now or when they were declaring nuclear a sin?

Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the Liberal government has unleashed crime and chaos from coast to coast to coast. Nationwide, violent crime has skyrocketed by 50% since the Prime Minister took office, while violent gun crime has increased by 116%, and they are using weapons that were smuggled over our insecure border. Let us look at the numbers closer to home. In Saskatoon, crime has absolutely exploded, and it is the result of the decisions made by the out-of-touch NDP-Liberal government. Violent crime is out of control. For youth, it is up over 113% since 2019 alone, and assaults and robberies saw the largest increase. Already, 2024 is the worst year on record for Saskatoon in the number of murders, and the year is not over yet. The NDP-Liberal coalition does not care at all about victims. Only common-sense Conservatives would bring home safe streets by securing our border and giving jail, not bail, to violent, repeat offenders.

Mr. Speaker, research and innovation are key to Canada's future, yet the disastrous government has caused runaway inflation, unaffordable homes and an explosive deficit, which are hurting the students and teachers we need to do this crucial work. That is not all. The Liberals have looked the other way while anti-Semitism has escalated on campus, and the government's tri-councils have funded studies that have been used for partisan interference in elections. Canadian students, researchers and, yes, taxpayers, expect and deserve better.

Madam Speaker, new data has been released and it is bad. Canadians' economy is on life support. It is so bad that Stats Canada just reported our economy is collapsing. GDP per capita has declined for six consecutive quarters. The United States is eating our lunch. The U.S. economy in the last quarter increased by 2.8%; in Canada, 0.3%; not 3%, but 0.3%. Canadians are going broke and the Prime Minister does not have a plan. When will he get out of the way for a prime minister who has a plan?

Madam Speaker, new damning data has been released confirming the results of nine years of economic vandalism by the NDP-Liberal government. We saw the worst decline in living standards in 40 years. Consumer debt has hit an all-time record high and today we learned that GDP per capita fell again for the sixth straight month. Americans are threatening a 25% tariff and the Prime Minister does not have a plan. When will he get out of the way for a prime minister who does?

Madam Speaker, it is incredibly dangerous to be right when one's government is so wrong. The NDP-Liberal government is wrong, and it is ignoring Canadians. It is ignoring the science, common sense, the cost of living crisis it created and the courts, when it tries to ban plastics. The NDP-Liberal government hates the facts on plastics. If Canadians are suffering now with skyrocketing bills, wait until the full ban of plastics is in effect. Plastics make modern life affordable, reliable, practical and enjoyable. There are no Canadians left who can say the same about the Liberals. Wet, limp and utterly useless are paper straws, which Canadians are forced to use. They suck. Paper straws have a higher carbon footprint than plastic ones, making them worse for the environment. All the environmentally conscious people on the other side of the aisle, and we are conscious of the environment on this side, should remember that emissions are higher with a paper straw, and paper straws are worse for people. Square this one for me: Canadians are suffering with the high cost of heating right now, which was driven up on purpose by the carbon tax to lower emissions. Although it is not working, that is the Liberals' intent. The same government is banning common consumer goods that have lower emissions than their replacements. The government is driving up emissions. Someone please make sense of this. Grandma is turning down the heat this winter to lower emissions so the radical left can force Canadians to increase emissions in other parts of their lives. Does this make sense? It is not just for the environment that paper straws suck; they are worse for our health. The science shows that the chemicals that coat paper products, making them somewhat waterproof, also unfortunately leach chemicals into our food and drink and then ultimately into our body. This is what the NDP-Liberals are forcing Canadians to use instead of plastic straws: an inferior product that is worse for their health. Is that not wacko? What they are doing is completely wacko. Even as the science shows that the policy would hurt the environment and Canadians' health, it is also bad for Canadians' pocketbook during a cost of living crisis. Paper products cost more money than plastic ones. The ban would also make food more expensive because plastic extends the shelf life of food. That is why plastic-wrapped cucumbers last over two weeks longer. Banning plastics would only drive up food costs, sending even more Canadians to the food bank. We know that over two million Canadians have to rely on a food bank because of the situation they find themselves in with the policies from the Liberal-NDP government. Conservatives will stop this soon. Do we want to make things cheaper for Canadians? We need to stop banning more affordable products. What Canadians really want is a ban on banning things, and the courts agree. For the millions of Canadians who are thirsty for a common-sense change, dawn is breaking. There is a failing regime that is desperate to attract the most radical environmentalists to its cause. It has gone too far. Common-sense Canadians will soon punish the Liberal government, during a carbon tax election, for ignoring the science, ignoring the facts, ignoring the common sense, ignoring the provinces, ignoring the Constitution and ignoring its citizens. I believe that is why most Canadians are ignoring the Prime Minister. In the end, it is not really about straws that suck or do not suck, or about flat wooden spoons, weird forks or even plastic itself. It is about power and control and about an out-of-control Liberal government that does not want to find practical solutions to problems but wants to virtue-signal for its shallow political interests; that is all the government is about right now. It is using the heavy hand of government to get its way. We need a new government that is about practical solutions and not about feelings and virtue signals. Does the government even care about the garbage in our environment? This is the most infuriating thing for me: There is an issue here, and the government is addressing it with a ban that obviously has had zero effect on our climate and our environment. Between 88% and 99% of the garbage in our oceans comes from 10 rivers in the developing world. Instead of the millions of dollars that we have wasted on the ban, what if we took a bit of that money and tried to introduce a waste disposal system in the developing world, which has the 10 rivers that are causing the majority of the problem? That is a common-sense approach: not to ban waste but to manage it, reuse it and ultimately recycle it. I have a couple of common-sense—

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are being greasy. They are the greasy Liberals. This is why we are here. For everyone watching today online or in the galleries, they are fighting to not turn evidence over to the RCMP. That is what this is. We just heard from an hon. colleague from the NDP, which has been propping up the Liberals. Its members talk a big game that they are going to force that evidence over to the RCMP. We will see if they stay true to their word, because we have seen it, time and again, when the NDP gets in a pickle. Do members know what its number one priority is? It is not Canadians; it is the leader's pension. We know we are not going to have an election until after February of next year if the NDP and the Liberals get their way. A part of that is to shut down debate and motions, such as the one we are debating today. Let us recount what happened. There was a tech fund set up, the green slush fund, that functioned, before the Liberals arrived on the scene, quite properly. We had an independent board that did not have conflicts of interest. We had professional bureaucrats who administered the fund. We need to be thankful for those professional staff because it was through them that we found out how greasy the Liberals have become. We found out from whistle-blowers how badly this fund was mismanaged for the benefit of board members and the chair. We learned that over almost $400 million was doled out improperly in 186 examples of conflicts of interest. I am old enough to remember when a $16 glass of orange juice, which was mistakenly expensed, was the headline news, from cover to cover, for weeks on end. If we fast-forward to today, it is not a $16 glass of orange juice we are debating, but $400 million of Canadian tax dollars that went to Liberal insiders, and projects that did not even qualify for the green slush fund got that money. If Canadians are upset, they should be, because the Liberals have been robbing them blind and are doing this now with the help of the NDP. We are going to watch this closely because this is what will happen. The NDP leader loves his pension, and there is no way he is going to break up with the Liberals. We saw this earlier. We heard these big enunciations that he had ripped up the agreement. Just in the last 24 hours, we heard how the New Democrats are going to side with the Liberals just a little, only temporarily. That is the problem. There is no temporary divorce within the Liberal-NDP coalition. It has always been there. It is always there. It wants big government, a big taxing government, that spends money on everything and does not worry about who is picking up the tab. There is good news for Canadians. Hope is on its way. Dawn is breaking and we are seeing the difference across Canada—

Mr. Speaker, we can talk about the member's leader's pension and how ridiculous it is that a country is held hostage until his pension is vested in February. More and more Canadians are finding out about this. They think it is a travesty. It is an insult to democracy that an unholy coalition is holding this place hostage because of its members' ideologically bent ways. They would like to tax everything. For anything that moves in Canada, they want to make sure it is taxed. If it is still moving, they make sure they are regulating it. If it is not dead, well, there is MAID. This is a little bit of what we are facing here in Ottawa. The Liberals are hell-bent on enriching their friends. That is what we are here debating, the green slush fund. We know that the chairwoman of that fund gave money to the company she owned. It is not just the Liberal insiders; the Liberal Minister of Environment gave Cycle Capital, his company, millions of dollars. How are Canadians accepting this? Really they are not. That is why we are here today, for the countless people who have written in and emailed me, encouraging me to find the answers about where their money went. It is Canadians' money; it is their $400 million. Canadians are waiting in line at food banks right now to get food to provide for their families. Where could that meal have come from? It could have come from some of the $400 million that went to Liberal insiders. It had nothing to do with the program parameters that were set up. Real, Canadian tax dollars were being wasted. Meanwhile, one in four Canadians is foregoing meals because of the cost of living crisis caused by the Liberals. The Liberals have spent money in ways that the green slush fund was not meant to, which is to enrich their friends and Liberals themselves, people from the governing party, which is wrong. That is why, in the second half of my speech, after question period, I am going to go through some of what the whistle-blowers have reported to us that transpired in this fund. Stay tuned; I will be back after QP.

Mr. Speaker, well, folks, the NDP-Liberal coalition is back. Did it ever really break up? I do not think so. Remember when the NDP leader said, “the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people”? He just announced that he has confidence in the Liberal Prime Minister until February 2025. I wonder what happens then. Canadians cannot afford this. Now the government is trying to bribe Canadians with their own money with a sudden two-month temporary tax break, but Canadians will not be fooled. Here is a common-sense solution: Axe the carbon tax on everything, for everyone, forever. Will the Prime Minister call a carbon tax election today?

Mr. Speaker, Liberals have been ripping off Canadians for the last nine years, and Canadians will not be tricked by this most recent trickery. Food prices have risen 36% faster in Canada than in the States. We have over two million people using the food banks every month. In Saskatchewan, food bank use is up over 42%. Now the Liberals are promising a temporary two-month tax break. Here is a little solution for these guys. What they need to do is axe the tax. That is all we are calling for: the carbon tax to be axed. Will the Prime Minister call a carbon tax election today?

Mr. Speaker, “call in the cops”. That is the stage we are at in this most recent Liberal scandal. Why are we here? There is evidence that the Liberals have on the SDTC green slush fund. They are refusing an order from Parliament. There is no higher power than the 338 men and women who get sent here to represent the 40 million Canadians. With how our Constitution is written, there is no higher power than the majority will of this space. This space has voted that the Liberals have to turn over the evidence to the RCMP. They are refusing. That is why we are here today. If anyone is tuning in for the first time and wondering what this SDTC is all about, it is about Liberal insiders getting rich. We are now at the point where they are getting caught, because the evidence is out there. We know that there is a stink around this fund. We know that the chairperson of the fund was caught funnelling money to her own company. We know that the environment minister has funnelled money to the company that he owns as well, which stinks, but it does not shock anybody. Anyone who has been watching this place knows that, in the end, the Liberals got caught funnelling money to Liberal insiders. When the Liberals got elected, they got rid of the board and appointed members they support, or, more importantly, members who support the Liberals. Then the money flowed. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. On the scale of all the scandals that the Liberals have been involved in, the $40-million sponsorship scandal, all the other scandals that the government has been known for, this one takes the cake because of the whistle-blowers. This is where, I think, the Liberals are the most concerned about evidence going to the RCMP. We know some of the evidence that has been released, which has been pretty bad. For the people who are tuning in, we know how corrupt the Liberals are. Some of the people they put in place, obviously, are put there to influence and to enrich fellow Liberals. We then have the bureaucrats out here who are trying their best to minister to the will of the government. It does not matter who is in government. Their job is to minister to the will of whoever is in government or whatever majority decisions come out of here from members. These people have been around. They have been around scandals before. They have been around the town. They have been around Liberals before. It should not shock us but we would not believe what some of these whistle-blowers have been saying about these Liberals. We have one whistle-blower who said, “Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.” When we have whistle-blowers making a statement that the RCMP will find acts of criminal misbehaviour, it is telling. This whistle-blower also said that “if you bring in the RCMP and they do their investigation...they [will] find something”. That is it. That is what the Liberals have shut this place down over. They cannot hand over any more evidence to the RCMP. That set off alarm bells throughout the Liberal government and party. They were concerned about which of their relatives got rich in this scandal or which minister, while sitting at the cabinet table making decisions on where to spend Canadian taxpayers' dollars, decided to spend it on his own company. How criminally, morally and ethically bankrupt are these Liberals? Let us hear another quote from people who work closely with the Liberals: I think the Auditor General's investigation was more of a cursory review. I don't think the goal and mandate of the Auditor General's office is to actually look into criminality, so I'm not surprised by the fact that they haven't found anything criminal. They're not looking at intent. If their investigation was focused on intent, of course they would find the criminality. We have long-serving servants of government of all stripes in Canada ringing alarm bells on what happened here. This is a pattern where Liberals get themselves into a pickle; they find a solution for their troubles, not for what troubles Canadians; and they utilize their power of position to sweep it under the rug. We have seen this before on foreign influence. We have seen this on other scandals. We are bringing this up because the scandal is $400 million, but it is just the latest of the new scandals. I think of some of the times we have caught these Liberals in questionable activities. I think of the Liberal WE scandal, where they gave half a billion dollars to a children's charity that turned around and gave half a million dollars to the Prime Minister's mom. This is at the top. This is where Liberals get their lessons on morals and ethics. It is from the Prime Minister. We have a Prime Minister who has been caught breaking the law on conflicts of interest. We all know of his famous trip down to the islands to party it up on the taxpayers' dime. The Prime Minister is a man who spends his whole day preaching to Canadians on how we have to change our lives for our carbon emissions and we have to change our footprint. Meanwhile, he jet-sets all over the world, exposing his hypocrisy on the emissions of his plane out the rear end of it. It is so hypocritical of him to lecture regular-day Canadians: “How dare you turn the heat up in the middle of winter? How dare you even think you need to feed your family before you pay your carbon tax?” This is the ridiculousness of what has transpired in Canada over the last nine years. We are a farce of the country that we used to be. There are real problems in our country and our society. I go back to the motion at hand: all this criminality and theft from SDTC. I go back to the purpose of this fund. It was to help with projects around Canada that would bring more sustainable, environmental and technological solutions. I have met with dozens of organizations and projects that would qualify for this, fabulous projects. I am just going to update the House on a couple of them. Their response from the green slush fund was, “No, you cannot have support for your initiative.” I think of the Calgary Co-op and Leaf. The company Leaf brought to market a consumer bag that has no plastic. It is decomposable just in one's garden. The company brought it to Ottawa. The bureaucrats said, “We cannot have this. It looks wrong. It does not look right for what we are trying to do.” It is not the science, but looks. It is always about looks with these guys. What did that corporation do? It thought, “Why do we not bring a consumer bag to the market that is biodegradable, that people can use however many times they want, but when it gets wet and thrown in the compost bag, it decomposes?” That is a way that we think we should be tackling some of our challenges in the environment. It is through technology, not taxes. Now, we had a technology fund, SDTC, that should have been funding just that. It should have been funding technology so we got those answers, and instead, it was funding Liberal insiders, who were getting rich. This is what happened in Canada over the last nine years. I know my time is almost up. I believe I have five more minutes. That is fabulous because we have some more scandals to go over. Another one was the arrive scam. Why this is important is that these are real taxpayers dollars. Think of the people waiting at a food bank, maybe right now. Maybe right now they do not have the means to provide for their families. We know there are lots out there. Over two million Canadians are relying on a food bank because the Liberals have made the cost of living so expensive in Canada. It did not have to be this way. There are tens of millions, if not billions, of dollars of waste in Ottawa that could be refocused into helping Canadians get through this terrible time we are suffering as a country. One classic scandal had to do with the $54 million wasted on the arrive scam. That was an app that could have been built in a weekend with under $50,000. That is what the private sector would have done. Do colleagues know what these Liberals did? They had to make sure their Liberal insiders got paid. In that scandal, numerous tech companies did zero work but billed for tens of millions of dollars. That was just the tip of the iceberg of things we have kind of wasted money on. This goes right to the ministers of the Crown. It has been highlighted how the environment minister secretly funnelled money into his company. We have the international trade minister, who gave over a $16,000 contract, sole-sourced, to a friend, just a friend. “You know what, we will just make that $16,000 payment go to whomever we would like.” Nickels and dimes make dollars. It all adds up. We talked about $10 million here, $54 million for ArriveCAN and $400 million for the green slush fund. The waste goes on and on. At committee, we have been studying some of the waste in post-secondary education. We have some silly studies we have funded as Canadian taxpayers. If someone is struggling right now in Canada, they should know their tax dollars went to UBC to study gender politics and Peruvian rock music. That was $20,000. If someone is one of the working poor, barely getting by and wondering why they have to pay all this federal income tax, it is because someone has to study gender politics and Peruvian rock music. Another study is “Reframing Gender and Race in Music Theory and Its Pedagogy”. It is unbelievable that we are spending this kind of money out there. There is a new study entitled “Suitably Dressed: Finding Social Justice through Distinctions in Modest Fashion for Men, Women and Transgender People”; that is $35,000. If someone is struggling today and wanting to know what is their government is doing, this is some of the stuff it is spending money on. Another one is about large-scale archaeological video analysis, out of the U of C, for $280,000. Here is another one, kind of timely: “Narco-Animalia: Human-Animal Relations in Mexico's Narco-Culture”. That was $9,266. I see my time has wrapped up. I thank everyone for paying attention and look forward to questions and comments.

Mr. Speaker, it is very telling that the Liberals get triggered by this. The member brought up the $16 glass of orange juice, and he is right; it is an outrage. The expensing of dollars that are not owed to oneself is wrong, and we had wall-to-wall coverage on this. He brought up the F-35 and the monies the former government looked at spending for that plane. Guess what happened. Liberals bought it years later for more. That is how the Liberals' scandals go. They find more ways of pissing away taxpayers' money at every chance they get, and the latest one is this green slush fund for $400 million.

Mr. Speaker, a two-month temporary tax trick is all it is. For two months, the Liberals are going to do a little trick and save a bit of money. The problem they have is the comments they made, and that the finance minister made last year, that driving up the deficit is only going to make inflation worse. What a surprise; we are in a cost of living crisis because the Liberals kept spending more and more money, driving inflation up higher and higher. We were very happy last year when they had seen the light, understood that having deficits would drive inflation higher and said they would not run a deficit more than $40 billion. Guess what; they are. They are massively overblowing their targets. The temporary two-month tax trick is going to cost billions of dollars, which is going to drive up inflationary pressures on Canadians when they can least afford it. Bah, humbug.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank every man and woman who works in our public sector. Public service is an honourable calling, and I thank all the men and women who work in our public service. I especially thank the ones that call out corruption and improper management of funds. That is what we had at SDTC. We know that these workers are feeling abandoned by the NDP. The Conservatives have a plan to bring back common sense and powerful paycheques so that they can finally provide for their families.

Mr. Speaker, what is going on here is the pain that Canadians are feeling because of the NDP-Liberal coalition and a cost of living crisis that is out of control because the Liberal-NDP government is finding new and creative ways to blow taxpayers' money. This one is $400 million, and that is gone. It is actually not gone because we never had the money to start with. It is on the credit card, and someday this credit card bill is going to come due. Just like it is for everybody else in Canada who might feel like they are richer than they think when they fire it on their credit card, in a month's time, that bill comes and the other bills come. This is the crisis that we are facing in Canada. There is no money left to pay the bills. Out here, what governments do when they run out of money, and the government has done it a lot, is print money, quantitative easing, to the tune of $700 billion. As we know, every dollar that Ottawa prints makes a dollar in Canadians' pants worth less. Unfortunately, the Liberals continue to make things worse for everyday Canadians. The motion we are debating right now is not just talking about a $16 glass of orange juice. It is $400 million of Canadians' money, which these guys funnelled into their buddies' pockets.

Mr. Speaker, love it or list it. When the Prime Minister's old media buddy, Tom Clark, got to New York, he was disgusted with the 2,700-square-foot, cramped penthouse condo on Park Avenue with only 12 rooms and five bedrooms. Tom took one look at the dump and called his friend, the Prime Minister, and demanded that this property be listed. What is on Tom Clark's must-have list for his New York penthouse condo? Well, Italian marble, of course, a handcrafted copper soaker tub, a $5,000 coffee machine and, yes, even a golf simulator. I am sure that the Prime Minister's media buddy, Tom Clark, loves his new $9-million penthouse condo. However, if we ask anyone who is living in the 1,400 homeless tent encampments in Toronto or the millions of Canadians who cannot afford a home, they say: List it.

Madam Speaker, what does my hon. colleague make of the shortage right now of medical isotopes? Last year, there were some critical shortages that unfortunately may have cost lives in Canada, and we are very grateful for Chalk River. Some of the developments of utilizing the CANDU reactor to make medical isotopes would not have been possible without Chalk River, so I thank the men and women who work there for their innovation and hard work to perfect how to make isotopes with the CANDU reactor. I am just wondering what my colleague's answer would be for the shortage of isotopes, not just in Canada but around the world. We are back-filling some countries that have difficulties creating isotopes; does the member not think it would be wise to pursue this more?

Madam Speaker, those watching this debate today should be thanking a nuclear worker. We thank the nuclear workers for keeping the lights on. Nuclear energy is the one technology that we have that has proven to have zero emissions, and it is low in cost and reliable. It is because of the workers, the men and women who work in nuclear, that this is possible. I thank them from the bottom of my heart. It is the technology that is going to get us through the challenging times right now with the Liberals. We have a lot of things to be thankful for when it comes to nuclear, the supply chain that we have in Canada and the CANDU technology. Lights are on right now in this building, and 60% of electricity in Ontario comes from nuclear. It is true that we were able to phase out coal in Ontario and eliminate smog because of nuclear, but there are still some radicals who do not like nuclear. Some people just never change. However, it was nuclear that got Ontario off coal. Nuclear is in a renaissance right now because of security. We have war in Europe and hot spots around the world. Its energy security is what future societies will need. Nuclear is positioned well to take advantage of that. Another great benefit of nuclear is medical isotopes. There are literally millions of lives saved because of nuclear, and we are very grateful for the medical isotopes and the research that is done at facilities across Canada, especially at Chalk River. Some of the breakthroughs out of Chalk River have been a game-changer, as described to me by oncologists and other specialists in the medical community. We have a debt of gratitude for all the workers in the nuclear supply chain as well. It keeps the lights on and drives our economy with powerful paycheques. It is something that should be championed, not disparaged. Those same workers have been getting a little whiplash with the current government. Sometimes, it is very cold to nuclear, calling it a sin stock and refusing to fund nuclear in the ways that it should be funded. It is typical. Something was mentioned earlier in the debate about SDTC, which is the Sustainable Development Technology Fund from which the Liberals got caught funnelling $400 million to Liberal insiders: Those dollars were to go to technology. I cannot think of a better one than nuclear. Whenever we have an election and there is a change in government, the workers out there will be respected for the good work they do in providing clean, affordable electricity for all Canadians. We will see that change as soon as we elect common-sense Conservatives in the next election. Another big change that is going to happen is for Conservatives to get rid of the carbon tax. People have probably heard this many times: It is technology, not taxes. There are a lot of different technologies to pick from. Renewables have a place in our grid, but there are issues with renewables. The waste that comes from renewables is the biggest issue, but we will get into that in a bit. A newly elected Conservative government will axe the carbon tax and invest in such technologies as nuclear, which has emissions-free electricity that has powered Ontario for decades. Now, with the right support and environment, I believe that nuclear can make the next renaissance here in Canada. This is a stark difference from what the NDP-Liberal government is promising to do. It is talking about quadrupling that tax to 61¢ per litre. When that happens, there will be economic carnage from coast to coast to coast. We are all suffering in a cost of living crisis, and they are planning to quadruple the tax. A better solution would be to invest in nuclear. We should be having the conversation on what is the best way to encourage more nuclear power production across Canada. It is happening. Today, the Liberals might be a little bit warm on nuclear; I know that many mistrust them in the industry, and it is for good reason. There is a long history of a lot of lip service from the Liberals but not a lot of the action that is required to fully fulfill the promise that is nuclear in Canada. We talked about the SDTC green slush fund the Liberals set up. Right now, we have such companies as Cameco and Westinghouse out of Saskatoon developing an eVinci microreactor that could be used in northern Canada to meet the electrical needs of industry or consumers, or for security. If we only had a government that believed in nuclear, it would have allowed an eVinci reactor to access some of those funds; instead, the funds went out the side door. Some funds went to the chair of the board itself. A Liberal insider gave money to herself, which is just horrendous when we know that there are solutions out there. There is great hope at Darlington with GE Hitachi and the SMRs. I am really excited to see how they come onto the grid scale. That is a technology that SDTC could have helped bring to market quicker; instead, the money went to Liberal insiders. There is the CANDU reactor itself, the Canadian-owned pride of the nuclear world. Our contribution is CANDU. What could we do with that technology if, instead of utilizing the green slush fund for Liberal insiders, we actually invested in CANDU? Could members imagine, for the men and women who work on that reactor, the refurbishments and the supply chain, if we had a government that actually had common sense and used a fund like the SDTC not to get their friends rich, as the Liberals have done, but to invest in technology? That is where this has to go. We talked about waste. There is waste. Roughly, if we used nothing but nuclear electricity for our whole life, on average, it would be enough. The waste would be only one cupful. That is a concern. We have technologies for how we properly store that, but we do not have a proper way to recycle some of the other technologies out there. We know that solar panels are mostly created in China and shipped over to North America. They may be assembled on a structure or a house here, but that is not really helping the economy in great numbers. However, it is a technology that, in remote areas and for select grids, could provide a solution. I would say that the worst thing about it is that there is no way to recycle the panels, which are the waste that comes from solar. We have to compare that to alternatives, and we will get to nuclear waste in a minute. However, the panels are just buried. The leaching of the chemicals found in the solar panels is a real concern; we should be debating that, talking about it and figuring out how to fix it. For some of the other renewables, such as the blades on wind turbines, there is no way of recycling them. We dig a hole in the ground, put the blades in there and cover them up. That is the end of life for those renewables. It does not have to be that way. How did nuclear get it right? There is a service charge embedded in our power rate. In Ontario, a portion of the rate we pay for that power goes into a fund that takes care of the waste. That sounds pretty good versus renewables. It is probably going to come down to the taxpayers or the environment that will pay if we rely solely on them. There has to be a balancing act. One is not better than the other in all circumstances, but for baseload power generation, there is nothing that beats clean, reliable nuclear. The debate today is a bit about what we do with Chalk River. It has managed our nuclear research. It has facilitated breakthroughs in medical isotopes. The smartest people working on nuclear are working at Chalk River. They live in and around that area, upstream or downstream, and they know the positive impacts that the Chalk River laboratory has had on the environment, not just locally, but internationally. Earlier we heard another speaker talk about the export of the CANDU technology, which is wonderful. We should be encouraging more of that. I want to come back to the workers in nuclear and make this commitment to them. The new, common-sense Conservatives respect them and their technology, and we appreciate the work they do. We thank them for keeping the lights on.

Madam Speaker, that is a lot of hot air coming from that politician. There are no words to describe the hypocrisy of this. We have a Prime Minister who jet-sets all over the world, not worrying about the carbon he is emitting, and then lectures us to turn down the heat, to not drive our car and to be better for the planet. His boss is jet-setting everywhere and anywhere he wants to go. The carbon footprint of the current Prime Minister is larger than the footprints of every other prime minister combined. It is the hypocrisy in the Liberal Party, which is worried about brown smoke coming from stacks. They have to look at what is coming out of the back of the Prime Minister's jet to understand how much of a hypocrite these guys are.

Madam Speaker, on the question on SMRs, the GE Hitachi reactor being developed at Darlington is the very first of its kind. We do not know what the price is actually going to be on that SMR, just as when we have innovations and we try a new model of something. The story she recapped, that NuScale SMRs were actually leading the campaign to bring a grid-scale reactor online, is accurate. I would not celebrate anyone's failure, but this is almost a good thing for Darlington. Once we prove the technology with GE Hitachi, as is hoped, we will know its cost and reliability. We will then be able to lead once again in nuclear, as when we brought forward CANDU.

Mr. Speaker, we heard some nice words from the Liberals today about nuclear energy, which nuclear workers are used to. It is a lot of lip service but very little support. That is historical. It goes back decades and decades. The Liberals say one thing to one group and then something different to another group. I am encouraged by the member's new and profound love of nuclear energy. I know the nuclear workers will probably be a little suspicious of the Liberals for a while now. However, where was he two years ago when his government labelled nuclear companies as sin stocks?