Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, if the United States wants to raise costs on its businesses, we must respond by lowering them on ours so that we can out-compete them, not out-tax them. Conservatives believe in the ingenuity of Canadian businesses to create, invent, produce, expand and hire Canadians, but businesses need the Liberal government to repeal its antidevelopment laws, its capital gains taxes on reinvestment in Canada, and the industrial carbon tax on aluminum, steel, fertilizers, energy and everything else. When will the Liberals adopt our plan and do so?

Mr. Speaker, he must be really upset with the government that has been in power for the last 11 years. Canadians need results. Hundreds of projects and their applications are waiting for federal approval because the government spent the last 11 years piling on red tape and bad laws that kill high-paying jobs. Last year, the Liberals asked Parliament for extraordinary powers to exempt major projects from its own laws so that projects could be built at unimaginable speeds, and yet nothing has happened and there are no results. When will the Liberals clear the backlog, approve projects, get shovels in the ground and save Canadian jobs?

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be back in the House of Commons debating legislation. That is what we are elected to do. That is what we are in the House for. It is good to be here and talking about Bill C-39. The Liberals call it the building Canada strong act, which rings similar to a similar bill we dealt with about a year ago. I will maybe have time to come back to that, but I will start by saying that of course we agree, or that I agree, with the stated premise of the bill, which is to enable Canada to build things, to build Canada stronger. That is certainly something that I not only very deeply believe needs to be done but also that is pretty consistent with what I have spent the last 11 years talking about. At the moment, to be sure, we are confronted with an unprovoked, unjustified, deeply damaging and unnecessary trade war with the United States. We did not choose it. It is not something that Canada chose, but it is the moment we find ourselves in. However, the issues around this, around the necessity of building major projects and building our country back up again, have very deep roots. We have been talking about this for 11 years. We have spent the last 11 years being unprepared for this moment. Before I go too much further, I will say that I am going to share my time with the member for Edmonton Southeast. As I said, we did not choose to be in a trade war with the United States. We did not choose to have our country economically attacked, but for the last 11 years, the government has left us unprepared for the moment. I was elected in 2015, and that year, the very first thing the government did was cancel the northern gateway pipeline. The Liberals are saying today, “If only we had a west coast pipeline.” There was a west coast pipeline approved and already on their desk the minute they took office. The first thing they did, by ministerial order, was cancel it: 525,000 barrels a day. At today's price, that is $50 million a day in economic activity, $20 billion a year.

Mr. Speaker, I am being heckled by the member for Winnipeg North, who says that there was something misleading in that statement. There is nothing misleading. That is exactly what happened. There was a conditional approval that the Liberals rescinded by ministerial order, so here we are today without that pipeline. It would have been built years ago. In 2016, the Liberals introduced the carbon tax. They also spent 2016 failing to champion the Keystone XL pipeline, another one that has not been built. It was cancelled by Biden later on. The government did not champion it and did not see it through to get it built when it had the chance. In 2016, the Liberals chased off TransCanada PipeLines, which wanted to build the energy east pipeline. Not only did it abandon that pipeline because of changing regulatory goalposts, but it also changed its name to TC Energy because “TransCanada PipeLines” did not fit what it was doing. It had to move its business to build pipelines in Mexico and the United States, where the opportunities were. That is the legacy of the government. I am up only to 2016. In 2017, the Liberals brought in the clean fuel regulations, which is a misnomer. It is really just a tax on fuel. In 2018, they brought in Bill C-48, which banned shipping traffic on the northwest B.C. coast. Again, we are talking about wishing we could export our products to the Asian market at full global price. The Liberals passed a law banning the shipping traffic to be able to do that. In 2019, Bill C-69 became law. We all know what Bill C-69 is. It is the “no more pipelines” bill. That was what they passed. There have been no major pipeline applications under that law. They even made changes to the Fisheries Act that made it impossible to get a hydro project approved. We heard about that at the natural resources committee yesterday. The head of WaterPower Canada told the committee that under the 2019 changes to the Fisheries Act, it is impossible to get a hydro project approved in Canada. The Liberals will not even allow hydro projects to go forward under the current government. In 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau told the world that there was no business case for Canadian LNG to Europe. In a way, he was right, but the reason there was no business case was because of all the red tape and regulation, which the government imposed, that killed the business case. So, yes, we need to build Canada. If only we had spent the last 11 years building Canada, we would not be in such a precarious position today. We agree with the government that we need to build things. Major projects need to be built, and it is not just oil and gas. I have spent a lot of time talking about pipelines, which is a really important one, but there are terrible deficiencies in our ports. We have among the worst ports in the world for efficiency. We have everything from ports to rail, airports, electrical transmission lines, etc. We have a need for major projects, and so we do support this stated purpose to build Canada. It is funny that the fanfare with which the bill before us was tabled rings familiar, which is because the Liberals said many of the same things they said about 18 months ago when Parliament first sat following the last election. It was last spring, in June, that they passed Bill C-5. It was a bill that Conservatives supported a little reluctantly, because it granted extraordinary powers to ministers to interfere politically and cherry-pick and decide politically which projects they wanted to exempt from their own laws that they had passed. It was not quite the approach for us. We would rather they stripped away all these bad laws, but we said, “Look, we have to build something. If this is a way to get something done, we will support it”, and we did. Here we are, a year later, no major projects approved and no shovels in the ground. It did not seem to make any difference. Now, we have this latest bill that is more about bureaucratic structures than getting shovels in the ground. This is a 250-page bill the Liberals dumped on Tuesday afternoon, a little less than 72 hours ago, and so I have not gone through all 250 pages with a fine-tooth comb. We are going to take the time to make sure that we understand the bill fully, but part of what I understand about it is the movement from the Impact Assessment Act to the Canadian Energy Regulator on certain projects, which is probably not a bad idea. The structure of Bill C-69 was there to kill projects. The idea that the bill before us would give certainty to industry is quite misleading. The bill would give ministers the power, but would not compel them to make a decision within a year. It would give them the latitude to hit the pause button on how long that year takes. It would give them the power to extend the year. It would give the power to say, “No, I'm going to take extra time.” This is not going to give the certainty that industry needs. We heard yesterday at the natural resources committee about how important it is to have regulatory certainty. Regulatory uncertainty makes the country uninvestable, and we have seen investment flee this country under this government. We do not need new laws. We do not need summits. We do not need announcements. We do not need speeches. We do not need vague MOUs. We do not need photo op signings. We do not need slush funds under political control. We do not need corporate welfare. We simply need to undo the approach that, for 11 years, has prevented major projects from going ahead in Canada. We need major projects. We need pipelines. We needed pipelines 10 years ago, 11 years ago, and we need them now. We need better roads. We need better ports. We need better infrastructure. We need all these things, and we are still waiting.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot to unpack there. The Liberals never talk about the investment outflows when they talk about inflows. The net has been an outflow of this country under this government. I am really glad that the member brought up Trans Mountain, because I had meant to and did not quite have enough time. The Trans Mountain pipeline was a pipeline that a private builder would have built. They started under this government, and the regulatory uncertainty chased Kinder Morgan out of Canada. That is what happened. The government nationalized the project and built it at a 500% overrun of what was projected. That is the Liberals' approach on building pipelines. The Harper government bequeathed the government a balanced budget. The New York Times described Canada as having the most wealthy middle class in the world and two approved pipelines, and the Liberal government blew it.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with much of what the member said. I do not think it is a good thing that the public money has to prop up any private project that would otherwise, in a proper regulatory environment that had clear criteria, make it investable. I do not agree with the government's approach. I do not agree that it has had the right approach on infrastructure at all. I could go on. I could talk about the failure of the Infrastructure Bank. The Liberal government has chased private capital out of energy during its 11 years in office.

Madam Speaker, Canada is in a recession, but the Liberals, and even some of their apologists among the punditry, say that it is only a technical recession. Allow me to get technical for a few moments. Technically, economic growth is shrinking, and that is how we measure the strength of a national economy. Technically, 40,000 more Canadians are out of work so far this year. Technically, the cost of living has left millions of Canadians unable to afford basic necessities, like food. Technically, under the Liberals, Canadian families are the most indebted in the world, which means they are tapped out, and cannot lead the way out of a recession through increased consumption. Technically, young Canadians are giving up on the dream of home ownership, and with it, the dream of starting their own families, because Canadians technically have the most unaffordable housing among peer countries. Technically, over the last 11 years, the Liberals have passed a series of laws and ministerial orders that have prevented Canada from bringing its resource wealth to world markets and provide high-paying jobs for Canadians. Technically, the Liberal finance minister would make Chrystia Freeland and Bill Morneau blush over the fire hose of new spending and federal debt that young Canadians know they are going to be on the hook for. Technically, the PBO said the finance minister misled Canadians in his budget. Today, we are having a debate about the recession that the Liberals are responsible for and we demand specific actions in response. I can already hear the howls of protest from the Liberals saying things like, “What about the tariffs? What about the war in Ukraine? What about the war in Iran?” These global events affect every other economy in the world. Let me say something before I hear even more howls from the Liberals claiming, “Do the Conservatives not know that Canada is more vulnerable because we are more trade dependent on the United States than those other countries are?” They are the same Liberals who claimed that their leader would have a trade deal with the United States by summer 2025. They are the same Liberals who spent the last 11 years actively preventing Canada from diversifying its export markets by systematically preventing the construction of the energy infrastructure necessary to export Canadian energy to the world. Canadian oil and gas is by far Canada's most valuable export. It dwarfs everything else. Oil and gas exports are worth $160 billion a year. The Prime Minister said that he had the experience for this moment and assured Canadians that he would be successful in defending Canada's interests by negotiating a deal with the Americans while diversifying our trade. What has the Prime Minister done? He teased Canadians by saying it was time to get things built. He teased Canadians by claiming that his government would see that major projects would be built at speeds thought unimaginable. I thought that might mean that a year after he made these claims, there would be some kind of approval on the horizon for a pipeline project. I could easily imagine that. In fact, I could imagine maybe one like the Pacific north coast pipeline that the previous Conservative government approved and that the Liberals cancelled only a few days after they were sworn in, in November 2015, a decision endorsed by the current Prime Minister at an energy committee meeting in 2021. He said then, five years ago, that he supported cancelling northern gateway, and now all of a sudden, he is scratching his head saying, “Yeah, maybe we should build some major projects,” but the projects are not being built. The northern gateway pipeline that the government cancelled and the Prime Minister opposed did not get built. If it had been built, it would be carrying 525,000 barrels a day today to world markets. At today's prices, that would bring about $20 billion per year to the Canadian economy. Would we be in a recession today, if the Canadian economy had another 525,000 barrels a day in exported production? I do not know, but it would be better than what we have now. What if Canada had built an east coast pipeline too? Let us think of what that would mean for world energy security and what it would mean for the Canadian economy. The opportunities squandered by the Liberals contribute to the recession we are in now. They have prevented Canada from being part of the international solution to world markets that are cut off from the Middle East and from those that want to defund Putin's war machine. So far, all the government has done is create a so-called Major Projects Office that will have incredible sweeping powers of exemption from Canadian law. It was set up nearly a full year ago and there are no major projects. On top of the economic self-harm the Liberals have imposed on Canada, 11 years of incessant debt, deficits and money printing have left Canadians deeply in debt and unable to afford necessities. As bad as Bill Morneau and Chrystia Freeland were, the current finance minister is even worse. He might end up challenging Allan MacEachen and Marc Lalonde as perhaps the worst finance minister in Canadian history. Do members remember those guys? They ran up deficits in the eighties that were so big that by the time the Liberals were defeated in 1984, Canada was literally kiting interest payments by issuing new debt just to cover the interest on the existing debt. That disastrous time under the Liberals took successive governments, Conservative, Liberal and Conservative, to restore sanity to Canada's finances. Now the current government is threatening to take us back to those dark times. After Pierre Trudeau, there was a consensus that balanced budgets matter and ought to be every government's goal. The Liberals have blown it, despite their 2015 promise. Last week, there was a series of terrible reports that challenged the very credibility of the government and the finance minister. The Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report that said that the deficit would be billions of dollars higher than the finance minister said in his budget. It would be higher this year, higher next year and every year in the projection. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said that spending would be higher. She said that borrowing would be higher. She said expected income tax revenues would be lower because she expects Canadians will have less income than the finance minister projects. She said that, based on the government's stress tests, which, “draws on decades of Canadian economic and fiscal history, including, recessions, financial crises, oil price crashes, and runs thousands of combinations to show the range of possibilities....that the likelihood that the deficit-to-GDP ratio will decline...is less than 1 per cent.” That was the Liberals' latest fiscal anchor, the one they came up with when their last fiscal anchor was cut loose. They said that the deficit would decline as a percentage of GDP every year through 2031. The PBO said that the odds of that happening are less than 1%. After 11 years, they have made promise after promise about fiscal anchors and guardrails and have broken every single one of them. The finance minister is like a sailor who forgets to connect the anchor chain to the boat, then drops the anchor in the water and has to go back to the chandlery to get a new one while everybody on the dock laughs at him. I can only imagine what next year's fiscal anchor is going to be. This latest anchor, the one that is already on the bottom of the ocean with no chain allowing the budget to drift toward the rocks, was never even a good anchor to start with. In fact, the PBO notes that the IMF thinks Canada would be better off with its old anchor of a declining debt-to-GDP ratio, but that anchor is also overboard on the bottom of the ocean. It has been dumped overboard without a chain I do not know how many times. Canadians are increasingly asking why the Liberals cannot table a plan to return to the balanced budget they started with in 2015. Many witnesses at the finance committee have called upon them to do so. However, the minister, in his arrogance and hubris, refuses and lectures those who ask him to simply do what his government promised to do way back in 2015. It is not just the PBO, not just the finance committee witnesses and not just Conservatives challenging the wisdom and credibility of the government's budgets; two of Canada's major banks have dropped reports downgrading their forecasts for the Canadian economy to below 1%. Given the fact that Canada is in a recession and the government's budget outlook is deteriorating and lacks credibility, Conservatives ask this House to call on the government to reverse its 11 years of continued deficits and broken fiscal promises, and rein in its spending and borrowing before things really do spiral out of its control.

Madam Speaker, the member brings up the Trans Mountain pipeline and, again, Conservatives were not calling upon the government to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline and build it themselves. They were calling upon the government to stop moving the goalposts on their approval process so that Kinder Morgan would commit and build it at its own expense. Conservatives do not believe in the public sector taking over and intruding on that which should be left to private investors. Let us just get the government out of the way, so that actual private investors, with their own money, will invest in Canada's energy infrastructure and allow our production to increase. This is not about subsidizing anything. This is about getting the government out of the way.

Madam Speaker, the Liberal government simply seems oblivious to the struggle of real Canadians, whether they are seniors, young people or really anybody. The Liberal government seems more focused on these large bureaucratic structures, giving itself more power to use public money to interfere in what would normally be private investment decisions. I can only imagine where its sovereign wealth fund is going to take us in the world of corporate welfare and insider enrichment. I do not believe that the Liberals are in touch with what is going on on the ground.

Madam Speaker, I do not know, it probably is. We did not ask the federal government to borrow public money to build that pipeline. We asked it to get out of the way, so that a private business would invest its money without a hit to the public treasury and allow the thing to get built on its own. I do not know why the Bloc seems keen to call on Conservatives to defend that decision. We never defended that decision.

Madam Speaker, in his speech, the member called upon the government to turn down the arrogance a bit. The Liberals have a majority and they can win any vote they want. They could start being just a little more humble about their performance. I would note that the Minister of Finance recently appeared at the finance committee. He did not answer any of the member's questions. He did not answer any of my questions. He ignored the questions that were put to him by opposition members. Does the member have anything else to say about the government's performance and the need for a little humility, given that performance?

Madam Speaker, the member spoke earlier in the debate on Alto, and I know how sensitive the people in his riding are about expropriation. Going beyond the expropriation issue, just some cocktail-napkin math here, if it costs $90 billion and, as the McGill study said, there are only going to be 12 million annual passengers, and they borrow the money at, let us say, 4%, that is about $300 a ticket. Does the member think that the Liberals have done their homework in any way on what the actual cost would be in order for that project to be financially viable?

Madam Speaker, under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada is the only G20 country in a recession. This was reported last Friday, based on Statistics Canada's negative growth data. Then, yesterday, the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported that there is only a 1% chance that the Liberal government's fiscal anchor will hold. The PBO also said that the Liberals are borrowing $72 billion this year, not $65 billion as they budgeted. Yesterday, the Montreal Economic Institute said that the deficit is on track to “hit $117 billion by 2035”, even if they do not add any new spending programs. Scotiabank and the Bank of Montreal both released dismal economic growth projections. Stats Canada also reported labour productivity is falling. The Prime Minister promised fiscal restraint. He promised competent management. He promised Canadians that he was the man for this moment of crisis, but under his leadership, Canada is in a Liberal recession. His budgets have no credibility, and it is Canadians who have to pay for it.

Madam Speaker, last Friday, we learned that under the Liberal Prime Minister, Canada is the only G20 country in a recession. Yesterday, we learned that there is only a 1% chance that their latest fiscal anchor will hold. The Liberals have, so far, refused to acknowledge their own government's reports. Will they admit today that they caused the only recession in the G20 and that they are already breaking their latest fiscal anchor, or are they going to say that it is all just a technicality?

Madam Speaker, of course we believe in Canada. We believe in Canadians. We do not believe in the Liberal government, because it is the only government in the G20 to lead its economy into a recession. This week, we also learned that the government is borrowing $72 billion this year, not $65 billion as stated in the budget. The Montreal Economic Institute said that the deficit is on track to exceed $117 billion by 2035, and that is even without new spending. Will the finance minister admit that this week's reports have destroyed whatever fiscal credibility he thinks that he might still have?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to table a petition on behalf of 556 people, mostly from Calgary, who have signed a petition calling on the government for the restoration of diplomatic relations with Venezuela. The petitioners acknowledge that there are tremendous human rights abuses that are ongoing in Venezuela and that Venezuela does not yet have free and fair elections. The lack, the absence, of diplomatic relations makes it difficult for Canadian citizens to access services and to interact with Venezuela and Venezuelans. Therefore, they call for the restoration of diplomatic relations.

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak to opposition motions. Today Conservatives call on the House to recognize that the Liberal Prime Minister has given Canada the only recession in the G7. It is so sad that it has come to this and that we have to call on the House to recognize the sad fact that Canada is in a recession and is the only country in the G7 for which that is the case. Why is Canada alone in the G7? The government has blamed international events and continues to blame international factors for Canada's poor economic performance, but I point out to the House that every other G7 country faces the same international factors. The Liberals cite war in Ukraine, in the Persian Gulf and in Iran, but this affects all countries. They talk about the trade war that we certainly do not want and did not ask for in Canada, but I point out that the United States is tariffing itself. It faces tariffs. It has made the decision to make its own citizens pay tariffs on what it imports, yet it is not in a recession. It is Canada alone among G7 countries that is in a recession, so we have to look at other factors driving this. The Conservative motion calls on the government to recognize that Canada has the worst household debt in the G7. There was devastating testimony at the finance committee about a month ago. Equifax and TransUnion, two of the businesses that track consumer debt behaviour, informed the committee that indebted Canadians are getting deeper in debt. They are going further into debt, and the credit balloon is continuing to expand but not with additional players. It is not that Canadians are buying homes for the first time, or this kind of thing, and becoming new participants in credit. No, indebted Canadians are getting deeper in debt. They are coping with this not with higher salaries and higher incomes to pay their debts. They are stretching out their payments, refinancing their loans, skipping out on essentials, cutting back on other expenses and exhausting their savings. This is not sustainable. This is not going to give us a consumer-led recovery, because consumers are tapped out. In fact, Food Banks Canada just released a report that says that among lower-income Canadians, food, other essentials and housing combined are more than 100% of the average household budget. People at the lowest levels are the people getting deeper in debt. They cannot afford food. They cannot afford gasoline. They cannot afford housing. They are coping with it by exhausting any savings they might have and getting deeper into debt. Affordability is part of the crisis that we find ourselves in. With respect to housing, we call upon the government, in the motion, to acknowledge that we have the worst housing affordability in the G7. A first-time homebuyer, a young person or young family hoping to establish a new household and buy a home as part of a long-term financial plan or as a way to put down roots in a community, has not have a hope under the government. The Liberals have presided over the astonishing run-up in the cost of housing that has shut out a generation of young Canadians from home ownership and traps people in rents that they are increasingly unable to afford. Rent has more than doubled under the Liberal government. Even though rents have been coming down for the last 18 months, as it has pointed out, they are still more than double what they were when the government took office. We see housing as unaffordable. The Liberals have killed the dream of home ownership for a generation of Canadians. They have created a country in which one's ability to become a homeowner is really tied up in the question of whether or not their parents were homeowners and are able to share their equity with their children by refinancing their own home, lending them the money, co-signing, or all the different things. I was in the mortgage industry, and for the entire length of my career, a normal person with a normal, proper job who wanted to buy a home could save up the down payment over a period of a year or two and could come in, qualify for a mortgage and buy a home. That is simply impossible now in almost all of Canada's major cities. It is a real shame. We heard testimony to that effect at the finance committee. Our motion calls upon the government to present a plan to reverse the situation we are in. The Liberal government squandered the opportunity it had when it was first elected. Let us go back in time for a minute to 2015. In 2015, when the government was sworn in, it had a balanced budget and a conditionally approved pipeline to the west coast. Literally days after the government was sworn in, it cancelled the northern gateway pipeline. If that pipeline had been built, it would right now be pumping 525,000 barrels a day to world markets. Let us think of the economic activity just from that one project alone. At today's prices, that is nearly $50 million a day. Let us think of the tax revenue foregone by the government. Let us think of the paycheques that do not exist from all the jobs that would go into the production and transmission of 525,000 barrels a day at today's prices. The Liberal government blew it, and that was just one pipeline. There was also not yet an application, but there was an intent to build an east coast pipeline as well, and the government chased off that project when it started musing about changing, even before it put in Bill C-69, which really nailed the door shut and made sure no pipelines would ever get produced. What the Liberal government has done is it squandered the opportunity. There were years when there was a strong world economy in the early years of the Liberal government, and the Liberals blew it. They still ran up deficits. They spent the cupboard bare in times of relative prosperity globally. Ever since then, they have been less able to cope with crises and have left us where we are today, extraordinarily in debt with a $67-billion deficit that the government just tabled and fiscal anchors that have been just cut loose. They announce one and then they abandon it. The Liberals have presided over a productivity crisis that, two full years ago, the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada said was a break-glass emergency. Well, the Liberals did not break the glass and deal with the emergency. They have just fumbled along right up to this very day. The Prime Minister told everybody, about 15 months ago, that he was the man for a crisis and that he was the person who would have a deal with Trump's America by July 2025. The Prime Minister said that this was the time for prudent fiscal management and that as a banker he had the skills to manage the national budget. He said that he was a man for a crisis. It was all an illusion. Here we are now at a time when we are in a recession. We are the most indebted country in the G7. We have food bank usage that is off the chart. We have housing that is staggeringly unaffordable. We have the same global concerns as every other country, but we are the one that is in a recession. The responsibility for that lies on the Prime Minister, and the 10 and a half years of financial and economic mismanagement that has occurred under the Prime Minister and the government's watch.

Mr. Speaker, there we have it again: another Liberal saying that Canadians have never had it so good. I really wonder whom the member talks to. The member raised the issue of the net worth of Canadians. I wonder if he has bothered to determine just how that average number might work out. Is it that there is an extraordinarily small number of people who have seen their assets inflate in value while the typical Canadian household is deeply in debt, getting deeper in debt and exhausting its savings just to keep up with bills?

Mr. Speaker, if the member meant that we have called upon the federal government to eliminate all the federal taxes on fuel, he is correct that we have called upon it to do so. We are disappointed that the government has not done it. As for subsidies, we are the party of free enterprise, and if the government would simply eliminate all the regulations and laws it has passed since 2015 that prevent projects from being built, we would be much better off today. I spoke about a couple of specifics on that in my speech, but it is on the government and its red tape that is holding Canada and our industries back.

Mr. Speaker, it is possible because there was a change of government in 2015, and the new government blew it. It really is that simple. I mentioned some of the other advantages, from a government point of view, that the Liberals inherited from the previous government, in fact from previous governments. There was a decades-long running consensus around fiscal discipline in the House, and the Liberals blew it. They inherited, yes, what The New York Times described as the world's most prosperous middle class. This was a country where people could get ahead if they just did the work. A normal person could go to school, get a job, save a bit of money, buy a house, put down roots and start a family in a nice, safe neighbourhood. That is the country the Liberals inherited, and they blew it.

Madam Speaker, the bill covers a lot of ground and has been debated for only about three hours. If the member thinks that is sufficient, does he believe that the House is a debating chamber where legislators debate relevant legislation with an aim to improve it, or does he believe that the chamber is merely an audience for people to clap and cheer for those things that are put before it by the current government?

Mr. Speaker, Canada is now the only G7 country in a recession. The Prime Minister spent the last year creating new bureaucracies, racking up debt and refusing to repeal job-killing regulations. Food insecurity is up. Job losses are up. Income insecurity is up. Insolvencies are up, and housing remains unaffordable. The rest of the world faces the same outside factors that this government is blaming for its failures. Why is Canada the only G7 country in a recession?

Mr. Speaker, we believe in Canadians. They can talk to CEOs. We are talking to Canadians. This Canada-only recession means that there are three unemployed Canadians for every vacant job. It means that taxes, food, housing and other essentials now account for more than 100% of an average family's income. Will this Liberal government admit today that its long-term, ongoing failure to build up Canada's economic resilience has driven Canada into the only G7 recession, apologize and implement the Conservative plan to unlock our resource wealth and make life affordable?

Mr. Speaker, I am a fifth-generation Albertan, and I believe in the future for a strong Alberta within a united Canada. I will vote for Alberta to remain a province of Canada. However, members of the House must understand that many Albertans are angry, and I am one of them. We are angry that, since 2015, this Liberal government has made decisions and introduced laws that harm Alberta right up to this very day. Now is the time for the Prime Minister to show leadership. It is time for him to acknowledge how much harm his government has done to the unity of this country. It is time for him to show humility. It is time for contrition. It is time for action that will prove to Albertans that their federal government cares enough about Alberta to admit to its mistakes. It is time to show Alberta that Confederation works and to convince Albertans that the best is yet to come for Alberta within this great country, Canada, that so many Albertans and I love so much.

Madam Chair, for clarity, I am speaking for five minutes and then sharing my time with the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk and the member for Calgary East, for five minutes each, after I have concluded. In 2015, the minister's government promised to run modest deficits that would fund unprecedented infrastructure spending and would allow the budget to balance itself, as they put it. Instead, they created a structural deficit for 10 years, and, 10 years later, they have broken the same promise that they made back in 2015 about infrastructure. Perhaps tonight will be the night when the minister will finally answer this question and tell me in what year the budget will be balanced.

Mr. Speaker, we now see the character of this new majority government. Liberals are going to use their numbers to stifle debate and prevent scrutiny of their bills. Since they tabled Bill C-30, there have been maybe three hours of debate. Does the minister think that is parliamentary accountability and a sufficient opportunity for members on all sides to question the minister on his horrific spring economic statement, with crippling debt service charges projected in the years ahead?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his kind words when he identified me under my former riding name. I am very pleased that the member has been able to move this legislation. It is important. The reason it is important is that we have actually seen a deterioration in the information available to parliamentarians over the last number of years. The Liberals disclose even less information than they once did when we make inquiries through questions on the Order Paper or through the access to information system. There is a real need for this legislation, and the problem is becoming more urgent, not less. Would the member like to comment on the reason we need this legislation?

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on adjournment business to seek a little more accountability from the government for its response to a question that I asked in question period a couple of weeks ago. I questioned the government about the deficit, which had not yet been tabled. I simply asked whether or not the government could give assurance to the House that it would not be higher than the projected deficit that Justin Trudeau submitted in the last financial update that was tabled in the House when he was prime minister. Some will recall the chaos around that. The finance minister resigned two days or so before it was to be tabled. For those of us who were here then, we did not even know if there was going to be a budget that day. It was chaotic. There were boxes. Nobody knew if we were even going to get a briefing in a lock-up over it. It was delayed. There was no speech. When we did receive the budget, there was no signature and no name. It was like an anonymous budget just dropped by a random Liberal minister who was called upon to do it. The finance minister resigned over that budget or had resigned already. The former prime minister resigned not long after that. The issue then was the deficit. The deficit was so big then that nobody was willing to take responsibility for it. The Liberals' own cabinet and caucus decided enough is enough and it was time to bring in somebody who could actually balance the budget or at least control spending and restore fiscal sanity. However, as it turned out, it actually got worse. The first budget the government tabled was more than twice the last budget, which was so bad it resulted in resignations. In response to that, this is what the member said. He would not give assurance that there would not be more than $30 billion in deficit. It turned out to be $67 billion. However, he said, “We are building big, we are building bold and we are building across this country.” What are Liberals even talking about? What are they building? They are not building anything. They talk about the need for energy infrastructure. They talk about the need for all kinds of infrastructure. They have been campaigning and talking about this since 2015 without doing anything. Here we are, over a year after the Prime Minister said they were going to build major projects at unimaginable speeds. The government gave itself extraordinary new powers to approve new major projects. None have been approved. None are being built. The Liberals are not building big across the country. They are just talking about it. Each time, it is as if they are having an out-of-body experience when they say, “Oh, if only we had a pipeline, we could be an energy superpower.” They had one on the table that was approved. The very first thing they did in 2015 was cancel the northern gateway pipeline. Then they chased out the proponent of the energy east pipeline. Then they chased out the private sector builder of the Trans Mountain pipeline. The government has no track record on building anything, and the budget that it brought in is twice as bad as Trudeau's final budget, the one that triggered his resignation.

Mr. Speaker, is he talking about maintaining their fiscal anchors? Is this parliamentary secretary serious? He was not here, I guess. Maybe he has not been here to see how many fiscal anchors have been declared and discarded since 2015, even the one he cited in his remarks. He possibly misspoke, but he said that they have a declining debt-to-GDP ratio. They do not. If we look at the budget, it is right there in the statement. They got rid of that fiscal anchor. That is not the current one. He talked about the Liberals congratulating themselves on their deficit being $11 billion lower than what they forecasted five months ago. That is like congratulating themselves for taking off the carbon tax after they put it on in the first place. I do not know what else to say. The standard of living is unchanged in 10 years with these guys.

Mr. Speaker, sexual misconduct in the armed forces is a known long-standing problem. It was known during the previous Conservative government. The previous Conservative government received the Deschamps report, which recommended changes, some of which required legislation, in March of 2015. The report was tabled and its recommendations were accepted just before the 2015 election. If Conservatives had been re-elected in 2015, the legislative changes necessary to address investigations and prosecutions into sexual misconduct would have been taken care of 10 years ago, but that is not how it turned out. The Liberals won the 2015 election. During the entire 42nd Parliament, the Liberals did absolutely nothing. They made literally zero effort to pass the necessary legislation between 2015 and 2019. We have to go through this to really figure out how we got here, when the Liberals are time allocating this bill today, in 2026. During the 42nd Parliament, the Liberals' main contribution to the issue of sexual misconduct was to cover it up. That is what it did when it touched the highest levels of the chain of command. Some will remember that former defence minister Harjit Sajjan helped cover up known sexual misconduct by the then chief of the defence staff, Jonathan Vance, along with some help from the Trudeau PMO. After the next election, in the 43rd Parliament, the Liberals still did absolutely nothing to implement the Deschamps report. They let new reports pile up, such as the Fish report and the Arbour report, while a succession of senior officers continued to be publicly accused of sexual harassment. Three elections in, the Liberals finally got around to tabling an earlier version of this bill in the spring of 2023. That was eight years after the Deschamps report, and then they made almost no effort to move the bill in the House. It sat there collecting dust on the Order Paper for a whole year before receiving, I believe, exactly one day of debate in the spring of 2024. Some will remember what the Liberals did in the fall of 2024. They sacrificed their entire legislative agenda in defiance of two orders of Parliament. They willingly did so rather than comply with rulings from the Speaker that found prima facie evidence of contempt of Parliament related to the corruption of the green slush fund and the lies told about the disgraced former minister Randy Boissonnault at committee and his conflicts of interest. That lost legislative session ended with the implosion of the Liberal cabinet, the resignation of the then prime minister and the prorogation of Parliament. It ended the Liberals' attempt, their first attempt, to legislate the changes recommended by Justice Deschamps. Conservatives have always supported, and continue to support, the recommendations contained in the Deschamps report. We agreed with the recommendations when we were in government. Conservatives have continued to agree with them while in opposition during the 42nd Parliament, the 43rd Parliament, the 44th Parliament and, now, the 45th Parliament. When the Liberals finally called this bill, Bill C-11, last December, on a Friday, Conservatives allowed it to pass at second reading without even one full day of debate. Now we have the amendments. The amendments we are debating are the result of the defence committee's work earlier this year. The defence committee heard brave, courageous testimony from victims of sexual assault, abuse and harassment within the armed forces. They heard about traumatic, harrowing experiences. The testimony that was heard at the defence committee was given serious consideration. The appropriate jurisdiction of investigations and prosecution is not a simple question. It is true that Justice Arbour recommended that all cases be referred to the civilian system, but it is also true that many victims expressed a variety of concerns about access to justice within the civilian system. That is why Conservatives and Bloc MPs, even the NDP, all recommended that the best way to give victims their best shot at receiving justice is to allow the victim to choose which system makes the most sense in their particular case. The simplicity of this recommendation speaks for itself. There have been other inquiries and studies done at the defence committee, and none of the inquiries, the studies or parliamentary reports disagreed that there are barriers to justice within a system where the victim and the accused are part of the same chain of command. Nobody is disputing this. However, as was pointed out by witnesses during the committee's study, the civilian system is also riddled with barriers to justice for victims. Official languages is an issue if a member cannot get service in the official language of their choice in the provincial system of where they are stationed. Delay is another one. That is why the committee recommended choice. It would not be forcing anybody to have their case studied within the military system. It would be giving choice. During this committee study, no party had a majority. All the MPs worked together, regardless of their party affiliation. There were many amendments proposed, and there was very powerful and compelling testimony that drove these amendments. That is what Parliament is all about: hearing from the witnesses at committee and working together to recommend improvement to the legislation. That is good opposition politics. That is good government party politics. However, we know that now everything has changed. The Liberals have a majority, and they have already demonstrated the contempt they hold for opposition MPs and for ideas other than their own. In its arrogance and unbridled hubris, the Liberal government is ignoring the wisdom born of co-operation and collaboration. There were 14 amendments, which were all supported by multiple parties, and now the Liberals are intent on ramming the bill through, after spending almost 11 years failing to introduce and pass it. The member for Nunavut, in particular, contributed to the bill in a very meaningful, important way. This is what Canadians want. Her party did not even have a seat at the committee table, but she as an MP produced a good, sound, principled amendment that was debated and adopted at committee. Canadians say they want their elected representatives to be open-minded. They want them to work together and want them to respect and co-operate with each other. That is what the defence committee members did. They took seriously the amendments offered by an MP who did not even have a vote at the committee. However, between the clause-by-clause review at the committee and the present, today, when the Liberals now have a majority and have used time allocation to curtail debate on this, the member for Nunavut has crossed the floor and joined the Liberal caucus. She had a history of principled opposition to government. She was one of the few NDP members who remembered that her duty was to oppose the government and not to hold the opposition party to account. I hope the member for Nunavut will remember this and will not end up opposing her own contribution to the bill, because she proposed the amendment that would allow choice and flexibility in cases of sexual misconduct in the military. She was doing her job, so now that she sits on the Liberal benches, I hope she will actually follow through and support her own amendment. The member for Nunavut is not the only one. There are other members who have crossed the floor. We now see the Liberals and their true colours: power at all costs and control at all costs, with power concentrated entirely in the hands of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's contempt for Parliament as an institution is becoming obvious to all. I am actually concerned about his limited civic literacy, when he speaks in English and calls other MPs his deputies, and when he sets up photo op signings, pretending to sign bills into law. It is almost as if he needed to be told that it is actually the Governor General who signs laws, not him; that she does so only after they have been agreed to by a majority of members of Parliament, of both Houses of Parliament; and that none of those members in either chamber are his deputies. I am disappointed that the government took 11 years to deal with a well-known and long-standing problem and that it is proposing to gut this bill after such clear and powerful committee testimony. I supported the bill in principle and sending it to the defence committee. I support the conclusions of the defence committee, which made important amendments to fix the bill. I oppose the Liberals' attempts to undo the committee's work by gutting the amendments today.

Mr. Speaker, I think the member completely missed the point. I was not speaking of the Prime Minister's use of French or English. I was talking about his use of the English word “deputy” when clearly characterizing his MPs as his deputies. The Prime Minister thinks that the MPs of his party are his deputies, just there to do his work. However, they are elected by the people of Canada. All MPs are elected by the people of Canada. Nobody is the Prime Minister's deputy around here.

Mr. Speaker, I completely disagree with what the government is doing, and I thank the member for the way he put it. That is exactly what we have seen and what is happening today. The government is undoing the work of a parliamentary committee that did good work on behalf of Canadians. MPs from different parties co-operated with each other and produced sound, principled amendments to deal with a real problem, and now the Liberals are undoing that work because they can.

Mr. Speaker, I have no idea why. The member is asking why the Liberals are choosing to ignore all the testimony and the substance of all three reports. Nobody is saying that sexual assault and misconduct cases must stay within the military justice system. Nobody is recommending that. I have no idea why they are ignoring all the witness testimony they heard and why they spent 11 years not dealing with and solving the problem with legislation to deal with sexual misconduct in the armed forces.