Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, despite those talking points, after eight years, it now costs $1.7 million for someone to retire, according to a Bank of Montreal study. One now has to be a millionaire to be able to retire in this country. After eight years of this Prime Minister's inflationary deficits and taxes, and after eight years of doubling the cost of home heating with his carbon tax, increasing food prices by burdening our farmers and increasing the cost of everything through a half-trillion dollars of inflationary deficits, why does the Prime Minister not personally take responsibility for what he broke so that we can fix it?

Mr. Speaker, what the Prime Minister has done is double the rent to $2,200 a month as an average in the 10 biggest cities. He has doubled the home heating bills right across the country, and he has doubled the average mortgage payment to well over $3,000 a month. No wonder nine out of 10 young people who do not own a home believe they never will. This is after eight years of inflationary policies that have driven up the cost of housing and driven up interest rates to pay for it. Why will the Prime Minister not admit that these things are broken after eight years of his leadership so that we can fix them?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister said he was drawing the line to ban anyone from pointing out that things are broken after eight years of his leadership. His own Parliamentary Budget Officer has crossed the line, saying, “there is a system that is broken” and “anybody who has recently applied for a passport, Employment Insurance, Old Age Security and the list goes on” probably realizes very well that the “level of service Canadians are getting is not what one would expect from a world-class public service.” There is “room for enhanced leadership”. Will the Prime Minister call to the carpet this rogue parliamentary officer for saying that things are broken?

moved: That, given that, (i) the Bank of Canada governor has admitted that the carbon tax contributes to inflation, (ii) the Parliamentary Budget Officer says that households will pay more in carbon tax costs than they get back, (iii) the government plans to triple the carbon tax, which will increase the price of gas, groceries, and home heating, the House call on the government to immediately cancel the carbon tax. Mr. Speaker, after eight years in government, the Prime Minister is out of touch and Canadians are out of money. Nowhere is that more evident than in the words of the Prime Minister's own top minister from Newfoundland and Labrador, who said he is “sick and tired of people talking about the cold winter”. He is sick and tired of hearing the stories of seniors in his riding calling to complain that his tax is making it impossible for them to heat their homes. If he is sick and tired of hearing about the pain and suffering that his Liberal government is causing after eight years, why do they not stop causing that pain and suffering? If he is still sick and tired, why does he not get out of the way and let another government step in and stand up for the people who are trying to heat their homes? Maybe this out-of-touch Liberal minister needs to hear more, not less, of the stories of his own constituents. I have an article from the government's own propaganda arm, the CBC, entitled “Diesel, home heating fuels see significant price spike in unscheduled adjustment”. It reads, “Diesel and two types of home heating oils saw massive price increases Friday”, which was the Friday that just passed, “in an unscheduled adjustment by the Public Utilities Board.” What is the solution the Liberal minister from Newfoundland and Labrador has to these skyrocketing prices? It is not to produce more affordable energy here in our country, even though his province has access to immense offshore reserves that the Prime Minister has discouraged. His solution instead is to triple the carbon tax on his own residents. If he is tired of hearing about the cost of home heating now, just wait until he imposes that tax increase. This tax is particularly painful for those people who are already living in economically depressed parts of this country and who are forced to heat with oil and propane, the cost of which is already higher than it is in other places. As we see across northern Ontario, Canadians will be paying drastically increased home heating bills, with the support of the NDP in its coalition with the Liberals. We have, for example, the member for Timmins—James Bay voting to raise home heating bills on his constituents. An NDP member who was elected to serve his constituents is now serving and bowing before the Liberal Prime Minister by raising taxes on his own constituents. It is not just in oil-heated communities; it is also in places like Hamilton. The suffering is now spreading. A headline from The Hamilton Spectator reads, “‘What am I going to do, go cold?’: Natural gas bill sticker shock triggers anger for inflation-weary Ontario residents”. What is the solution from the NDP member for Hamilton Centre? He wants to triple the carbon tax on hard-working blue collar folks in Hamilton. Thankfully, even though they are temporarily stuck with an NDP coalition member as their MP, the Conservatives are fighting for the hard-working people of Hamilton and opposing this carbon tax increase. Let me quote further from the same article: When a nearly $250 natural gas bill arrived for November, Lily Francisci called her parents with questions. Her dad's response: “Get used to it,” the north-end Hamilton resident said, or keep your house at 20 C. Then December’s bill arrived: $353.08. Imagine what January's bill will look like, as it was even colder than December. The bills keep rising and the temperature keeps dropping. Therefore, I announce on the floor of the House of Commons today that the Conservative Party has launched a nationwide campaign to get the NDP-Liberal costly coalition to wake up. This coalition is taxing our people and we have had enough, so we are launching a campaign to keep the heat on and take the tax off. We will keep the heat on this costly coalition to take the tax off so that not just heat becomes more affordable but food does too. Remember, the carbon tax is actually a tax on the food we eat. Why? It is because when we tax our farmers who produce the food and tax the truckers who deliver the food, we tax the food itself. Let me note the data provided to me by a major mushroom farm just south of here, about half an hour south of Parliament Hill, called the Carleton Mushroom Farms. It is an unbelievably successful farm that employs about 100 people. It supplies the nation's capital with the mushrooms we eat. Its natural gas carbon tax bill was $9,000 for the month of July. The bill expected for January is $14,275. That is for one month. Do members think that does not get passed on to consumers? Ultimately, at the end of the day the farmer has to pay the bill somehow. Ultimately, Carleton Mushroom Farms will take a hit. It will suffer, and probably produce fewer mushrooms than it otherwise would, which of course means that we will import more mushrooms from foreign, polluting jurisdictions, driving jobs out and pollution up. The consumer will also have to pay a higher price for those mushrooms. Why do we not take the tax off Carleton Mushroom Farms so that it can lower the cost of its produce and increase the amount of food it produces in this country? We should be more self-reliant. We have the fifth-biggest supply of farmland per capita on planet earth. It is unacceptable that we cannot feed ourselves. We should be a nation that stands on its own feet, kneels before no nation and feeds itself. That is what will happen. The pain and suffering is spreading across the land. For example, the other day, I was in an east end Ottawa grocery store and a cook walked up to me. He said that he had to delay his retirement because, after eight years of the Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high and he cannot afford to retire on schedule. The thing that really broke him up was that he could no longer buy the ingredients to cook at home that he uses at work. He held up a frozen pizza and said that he was stuck eating that frozen pizza rather than making his own food. It was probably a foreign-made pizza that was produced in some faraway land that is generating a lot more pollution, with processed ingredients that are not as nutritious. This gentleman, who has worked all his life feeding other people, is not able to feed himself better than that. That is because of the inflationary deficits and taxes that the government has imposed. These are the inflationary deficits and taxes that the hon. member for Calgary Forest Lawn, as my finance critic, has been fighting against. That is why I am so proud to be splitting my time with him. His story epitomizes the Canadian dream. His parents came here with modest means as immigrants. He grew up in a tough but proud neighbourhood. He went on to study finance, got a finance degree and then went off and opened his own business. He built homes to house our people and paid paycheques to other Canadians. Do members know what I am so proud of? It has been the tradition that we have big shot Bay Streeters as ministers of finance. Our shadow minister of finance has created real jobs, worked with his hands, built businesses and helped troubled youth. He has the practical hands-on experience to know what this country should be: a country where everybody who works hard gets a fair shot at life. When we get rid of the carbon tax, when we cancel the inflationary deficits and when we reform our tax and benefits system so that people bring home more of each dollar they earn, it is not just about mathematics. It about restoring Canada's promise: a country where hard work pays off and where everybody who gets out of bed in the morning and contributes to their country can make it better for themselves and their families. That is the country we are going to restore. Let us keep the heat on and take the tax off. Let us bring it home.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for acknowledging the 150-day mark of my leadership. I am just disappointed he did not get me a nice present to honour the occasion. Maybe that question was the present. He often lobs me these softballs across the way. The member wants some ideas. Here are some ideas: Why do we not use technology instead of taxes to fight climate change? Why do we not support our energy sector in pumping the carbon back into the ground through carbon capture and storage? Why do we not speed up nuclear power so that we can have more emissions-free electricity on our grid? Why do we not get out of the way of the people of Quebec and speed up the approval of future hydroelectric dams so they can produce even more prodigious emissions-free electricity? There are some ideas that would actually protect our environment and our customers.

Madam Speaker, first, the member is wrong. She says that we have not come up with any proposals to abolish unjustifiable corporate profits. In fact, yesterday, we moved a motion in the House of Commons to take away McKinsey's unjustifiable profits. We said no to the big contracts the Liberal government awards to major corporations and the contracts worth $1,500 a day, or even an hour. We are the ones going after the subsidies to Liberal businesses that profit from Liberal gifts. What is more, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of these gifts. We want to lower taxes that are weighing heavy on ordinary Canadians, but we do not want to lower them for Liberal businesses.

Madam Speaker, what I am hearing is that the NDP-Liberal plan to triple, triple, triple the carbon tax will do nothing to fight climate change. The NDP has nothing to say about workers. It has abandoned workers. The NDP members believe that the greedy government, of which they are a part, should have more of workers' paycheques. There was a time, way back in the day, when the NDP actually fought for working people. Now they fight for big government and special interests in Ottawa. They have abandoned and are now attacking the working people by raising their home heating bills, raising their gas bills, raising their grocery bills and raising their taxes so the government, the bureaucracy, the special interests in Ottawa, the McKinseys of the world who get these juicy contracts, for which the NDP voted, get more and the working people get less. We believe exactly the opposite.

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, health care in Canada is broken. He has accomplished the impossible. He managed to double our national debt, adding more inflationary debt than all prior prime ministers combined, without improving health care. In fact, it is worse than ever. Today, the Prime Minister admitted that the system does not meet our expectations. Will he finally take responsibility so that we can fix what he broke?

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, health care in Canada is broken. He has accomplished the impossible: He managed to double our national debt, adding more debt than all prior prime ministers combined, without improving health care. In fact, by his own admission, it is worse. Now will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for the problems in health care he has caused so that we can fix what he broke?

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister, inflation is at a 40-year high. Former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau said that the Prime Minister spent too much. Another former Liberal finance minister, John Manley, said that this spending caused inflation. The current Governor of the Bank of Canada says that government spending is causing inflation and Mark Carney, the future Liberal leader, agrees. Will the Prime Minister take responsibility for the inflation he caused so we can fix what he has broken?

Mr. Speaker, his investments in pharmaceuticals? He gave $170 million to a pharmaceutical operation that is shutting down; that is a prime example. After eight years of the Prime Minister wasting our money, inflation is at a 40-year high. Now home heating bills have doubled. Seniors wonder how they are going to keep the heat on because this tax is going to be tripled, tripled and tripled under the NDP-Liberal coalition. Will the Prime Minister finally take responsibility for the misery he has put on household heating bills, and will he accept that we are going to keep the heat on to take the tax off?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians know that this government does not have their back; the government has its hands in their back pockets. That is what is happening. There is $170 million dollars here for this wasted investment, $54 million for the ArriveCAN scam and, of course, $2 billion invested in a company that does not actually exist. Who is paying for it? Well, people are now seeing the bills on their home heating, which has doubled with higher gas prices and, of course, when our farmers and truckers are taxed with a carbon tax, they have to raise the price of the food that comes to our grocery stores. Will the Liberals finally back down from this crazy carbon tax scheme? We are going to keep the heat on until they take the tax off.

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Calgary Midnapore. After eight years, we have had an opportunity to assess the results of the latest grand experiment. We know the experiment we are always told we need to conduct. The experiment is that socialist parties come along and tell voters that life is not fair, that there is too much greed and that the solution to greed is for government to get big and powerful, take the people's money and spread it around in a way that is fair so that everybody gets their rightful due. The question is who actually gets to carve up the spoils and decide who gets what. The answer, of course, is government itself, and government makes its decision based on politics. Of course, politics is based on, unfortunately, influence and those with influence tend to be those with money. As a result, those with money can convert that money into political power, and that power back into yet more money, and that money back into more political power, and the cycle goes and goes and goes. The promise was that the government would get grand and powerful and take from the rich to give to the middle class and those working hard to join it. Do members remember those people? We do not hear about them very much anymore, after eight years. In fact, in practice, the game is played very differently. Let us talk about the very simple question of public finance: from whom to whom. From whom has the money come, and to whom is it going? Let us start with “From whom?” The money is coming from the working-class people of this country, who are under a siege not seen in at least 40 years. Inflation has reached a 40-year high, as the cost of government has bid up the cost of living. Half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits have increased the cost of the goods we buy and the interest we pay. The real human impact of this highly predictable economic phenomenon is that 67% of Canadians now agree that everything feels broken in Canada. We have nine out of 10 young people who do not own homes say that they never will. We have students, according to media reports, living in homeless shelters while they study. We have 1.5 million people eating out of food banks in a single year, some of them asking food bank presidents for help with suicide, with medical assistance in dying, not because they are sick, but because the poverty they experience after eight years of the Prime Minister is so insufferable that they would rather end their misery altogether. The average mortgage payment has doubled from $1,500 to over $3,200. The average rent payment in our 10 biggest metropolitan centres has doubled as well. By the way, food prices are up 12%, and energy prices have, off and on, experienced inflation at times 100% year over year, and these are the commodities that make up a much larger part of the budgets of the low-income and working-class people. The answer to the question “From whom?” is, of course, Canada's working-class people, the people who get out of bed every day and do the nation's labour. They are the ones who are paying the bills for this experiment. The second part of the question is “To whom?” Who is getting all this benefit? When we look around our communities, we do not see a lot of people putting up their hand and saying, “Boy, I sure have received a windfall.” I do not know how many constituents of the members in this chamber here today are getting $1,500-an-hour contracts from this government: zero. We are talking about a very small group of people who are getting benefits. Who are they? Well, let us start chronologically. Let us go back and start with SNC-Lavalin. This is a perfect example of the experiment of which I speak. They went to a socialist country called Libya. The word “socialist” is actually in the republic's name, so one would think it would want nothing to do with a multinational. Of course, that multinational bought influence and stole over $100 million from the poorest people in Africa. Now the Prime Minister was not going to let a company like that face criminal charges, so he actually fired his attorney general because she refused to have those charges dropped. We saw the Prime Minister protecting a corporation that had stolen from Africa's poorest people, a corporation of amongst the most privileged people on Planet Earth. After that we saw the Prime Minister give multi-million dollar grants to Loblaws to pay for fridges and to highly profitable credit card companies to provide them with corporate subsidies. Recently, his finance minister was confronted about the plan in the budget to fund $2 billion to a company that does not exist. The finance minister, when she heard that allegation, said that was absolutely false, it was not $2 billion, it was $15 billion. We can imagine who is going to benefit from that. Now, we have McKinsey. The Prime Minister gave a glowing speech about his non-friend friend, the non-friend who likes to hug, Dominic Barton. The Prime Minister said he had hired Mr. Barton for $1 a year. Somehow $1 became $50 million, then it became $100 million and then it was $120 million. As the price tag kept rising I actually asked the Prime Minister, close to a dozen times in the House of Commons, what the total dollar value was of all the contracts paid to this company after eight years. He still cannot answer the question. We know that the company is making a lot of money. According to the government departments that hired it, in many cases it did no work of any value. The public servants who could have done the job themselves say the company came in with a bunch of fancy charts and graphs, and the latest MBA-isms, and made off with millions, and no one can actually figure out what they did for the money. That is to whom the money is going. In fact, the government has increased the budget for high-priced consultants by nearly 100% to over $15 billion. For context, we have 15 million families in Canada. That means each family is spending $1,000 in federal taxes for high-priced consultants. That is to whom their money is going. For those sitting at home wondering why their paycheques evaporates in federal taxes and asking where it all goes, that is one answer to the question. Should we be surprised that these are the people who are getting all the money? This is the circle the government travels in. These are the friends that it hangs out with at Davos. None of my members went to Davos. We are not going to Davos. We stayed in our communities while the meeting in Davos was happening recently. We worked for our people, on the ground, the common people. This is the House of Commons, and the common people deserve to have a voice in the House of Commons. We learned the lesson here, that just because the state takes over the economy does not mean it transforms human nature. It does not mean that it abolishes greed. It just redirects greed. As Macaulay might say, if I might paraphrase him: Wherever you throw the carrion, the raven's croak is loud; Wherever you fling the honey, the buzzing flies will crowd; Wherever down river garbage floats, the greedy pike you see; And wheresoever such lord is found, such clients soon will be. Macaulay referred to the flies chasing the honey. Flies do not make honey; they take honey. Bees make honey. That is the kind of difference we have. When the government runs the economy, people get rich by taking. When there is a free market economy, people get better off by making. Bees make honey, through voluntary exchange, through pollination with plants. A voluntary exchange of work for wages, product for payment, investment for interest. Millions of these voluntary exchanges are what make people better off. Instead of a state-controlled crony capitalist economy, we want a free market economy with small government and big citizens that empower individuals to do what they want with their money. That is how we put an end to this kind of crony capitalism, and put people back in charge of their money and their lives.

Yes, Madam Speaker. Is that clear? Let us be clear about something. The member believes in capitalism; he just believes that capital should be controlled by bureaucrats and politicians. He believes that if we take the same human being who is a CEO and move him over to make him a top bureaucrat or top politician, suddenly he will become an angel. He believes in allocating capital. He just wants it to be done by force of the state rather than the free enterprise and voluntary exchange of customers, workers and entrepreneurs. He believes in the ultimate control, crony capitalism, which is controlled by the state and directed by people with power. That is what he believes.

Madam Speaker, it was the former. It was a desire to look into the issue, but we also know how to set priorities and we need to. When we are examining Liberal wrongdoing and corruption, it is like drinking from a firehose. The question we always have is, where do we start? We started with McKinsey because that is where most of the smoke is and that is where we are likely to find the first flame. However, we are prepared to examine all of the $15 billion-plus in massive high-priced contracting out that the government does. I can say that we will cut that waste when I am Prime Minister.

Madam Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, everything feels broken. After eight years, we have half of Canadians cutting back on groceries and 20% of them skipping meals because the Prime Minister's carbon tax, with the help of the NDP, has made food prices unaffordable. After eight years, Bloomberg says we have the fifth-worst housing bubble on planet earth as a nation, and Toronto, according to UBS, is the most overpriced housing market in the world. After eight years of the Prime Minister, rent for the average apartment has gone from $1,000 to $2,000, and the average mortgage payment, from $1,500 to well over $3,000. People's finances feel broken after eight years. What else is broken? It is our laws, literally broken. Our violent crime laws have been broken 32% more than when the Prime Minister took office eight years ago. There are major parts of our cities that have turned into crime zones after eight years of the Prime Minister. We see this not just in the staggering anecdotes of people being hit in the face with ice picks on transit stations or doused in flammable liquids and lit aflame. We see it in the random attacks on strangers on the streets of Vancouver and Toronto. We see it in the half-dozen police officers murdered, in some cases by multiple offenders who were out on early bail, because after eight years of the Prime Minister bail has become easier and more automatic to get for the violent offenders who do the most crime. When we speak up against this broken bail system that the Liberals have created, they respond with their typical divide-and-distract. They attempt to convince people to be afraid of the solution rather than solving the problem. They claim that Conservatives want to bring in some kind of Dickensian system of criminal justice, which is actually false. Our approach has not only been tough on the repeat violent offenders, but it has been smart, and now we can all say, having looked at the data, it has been proven right. Let us look at the data. Actually, before we look at the data, I want to talk about the general principle that guides our approach to criminal justice. Contrary to the false rhetoric of the Liberals and the NDP, and the dishonest reporting from the CBC and other Liberal outlets, our approach narrowly targets the most violent, dangerous offenders. We agree that long criminal sentences are not helpful for a young person who makes a small mistake and wants to start over and rebuild their life. We believe that a young person making such a mistake should get rehabilitation and support. Also contrary to the false and dishonest reporting of the Liberal media, we do not believe that someone who is suffering from a drug addiction should go to prison; we believe they should go to treatment, something that is not happening today. We believe those who prey upon drug addicts should pay the real penalties and not the addicts themselves. Finally, we believe that the government, instead of flooding our communities with dangerous and lethal drugs, should put our resources into recovery and treatment, as the Alberta government has done with great success in bringing down the overdose deaths that have afflicted people right across this country. We see the alternative in British Columbia, where there has been a 300% increase in drug overdose deaths since the Prime Minister took office eight years ago. His and the NDP's approach in that province has been a disaster. It has created a living hell in certain communities throughout Vancouver, where addicts lie face down on the pavement, live permanently in encampments, and six people die every single day from overdoses. That is the empirical evidence about the approach the Liberal government has taken. It is time to rescue our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbours, to help them: yes, with the medications that reduce the symptoms of withdrawal, and yes, with the medications that reverse overdoses, but also with recovery and treatment and not by flooding our communities with drugs. That has not worked and that is not the way to go. Now, on to violent offences, there were two different approaches. Conservatives believe that the most violent repeat offenders should serve longer sentences. This is the approach we took when we were in government, which led to both a reduction in crime and, interestingly, a reduction in incarceration numbers. Let us look at the data on the first point. When the Conservative government left office, there were 382,000 violent crimes, obviously too many, and that was in the year 2015, but that has risen now, after eight years of the Prime Minister, to over 500,000 violent crimes, an increase of 32%. Now, one might assume, listening to the rhetoric from the far-left media, that this is because everyone went to jail. Well, that is false, actually. During the previous Conservative government, the number of people behind bars actually dropped from 238,000 to 201,000, a reduction of roughly 37,000. That is 37,000 fewer people who were behind bars. How is it possible, then, that we call it “tough on crime”? The answer is that we targeted the worst offenders, the repeat offenders, the frequent flyers, those who come back to commit one crime after another, and we see this phenomenon now reversed as this government has allowed those frequent-flyer criminals to go back out on the street again and again. Let me turn members' attention to a letter from the B.C. union of mayors, where they highlight the problem we are trying to address today by fixing the broken Liberal bail system. In the letter, they say that the same 40 offenders had 6,000 negative interactions with police in one year. That is 150 interactions per year per offender: on average, about one every two days. Across British Columbia, the same 204 offenders had 11,648 interactions with the police. Most of these, by the way, are arrests. So, again, these same 204 offenders in all of British Columbia had about 50 interactions with police per year per person. This is what is happening. The same repeat offenders are committing, in many cases, dozens and dozens of offences, and then when police arrest them, they are released on bail the same day, because of the Prime Minister's catch-and-release policies. They then go out and reoffend the same day and police officers have to arrest them again. Ironically, this does not reduce the incarceration rate. What it means is that the same people are incarcerated, but their incarceration is punctuated by a short-term release during which time they can go out and smash someone's face in, if I can be blunt about it, because that is what is happening with these random attacks. What we, as Conservatives, propose is that those offenders who have a track record of multiple reoffences, but then are charged again, should be kept behind bars to await trial until such time as they are either acquitted or they complete their sentences. Why? It is because the evidence has shown that they are a danger to public safety, and that is why we want them behind bars. It is not because we hate the offender, but because we love the victims, and we want to protect them from future harm. As my deputy leader, the member for Thornhill, will say, as I am splitting my time with her, our purpose in this is to protect public safety, to follow the evidence and the data, and to listen to the true experts, which is to say, the police officers, the prison guards and those who work in rehabilitating and helping those who have been in crime, the real experts who do the real work. Let us listen to them. Let us protect our people. Let us fix what is broken and let us bring safety and security home to our people.

Madam Speaker, we know the member's approach. Her approach, along with her coalition partner, the Prime Minister, has been an absolute disaster everywhere it has been tried. In Vancouver today, we have a more than 300% increase in the number of people who have died of drug overdoses. We have a 32% increase in violent crime right across the country. That member should take personal responsibility for her involvement in the Prime Minister's agenda that has led to that disastrous outcome. We will take no lessons from the member or her disastrous radical NDP approach, which floods our communities with dangerous drugs and puts the most violent offenders out on our streets.

Madam Speaker, the proposal that we make today in this motion is constitutional, so I would not have to choose between the charter and the common-sense proposal. We can actually have both. If it were challenged, then we would go to court and present the evidence. What is the evidence? The evidence is that the broken Liberal bail system has led to the violation of rights of victims. I point to the data again from the B.C. union of mayors showing the same 200 people being arrested 11,000 times in a single year, 55 arrests per offender British Columbia-wide. In Vancouver, it is much worse, with 40 people being arrested over 6,000 times. Imagine if we had a pinpoint approach to target those 40 people, how many other people would be spared victimhood? The 6,000 victims would have been spared just by targeting the worst offenders. That is common sense, and it will stand up in court.

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. He said that this is a very emotional subject, and I agree. Of course, when someone's life is destroyed by a criminal act, it is bound to be emotional. However, my speech was not emotionally charged. I presented the facts, and the facts are very clear. The Conservative approach reduced the number of criminals and the number of violent crimes. Ironically, we did it while reducing the number of people in prison. Why? It is because we very carefully targeted the most violent repeat offenders. That is what we are proposing today.

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of this Prime Minister's inflationary policies driving up home prices and now interest rates, the cost of a monthly mortgage, on average, has gone up from about $1,500 to over $3,000. No wonder nine in 10 young people who do not own a home believe they never will. Home price inflation is a homegrown problem. Instead of blaming the rest of the world for the problems he has caused, will the Prime Minister take responsibility for pricing our working-class youth out of a home?

Mr. Speaker, we voted against every single one of the inflationary programs that have doubled the cost of housing in this country for our young people. After eight years, all the Liberals can do is brag about the hundreds of billions of dollars of other people's money they spent. What is the result? Home prices doubled to make Canada the fifth most inflated housing market in the world, with Toronto being the worst city as housing markets go. The average mortgage payment has doubled from $1,500 to $3,300 and rent in Toronto, our biggest city, is up nearly 100%. Will they finally take responsibility for pricing our young people out of homes?

Mr. Speaker, no, none of those Canadians created inflation. The Prime Minister created inflation. He doubled our national debt, adding $500 billion of inflationary debt, more debt than all other prime ministers combined. What did that do? That inflated the price of everything, especially real estate, and delivered the single worst housing bubble anywhere in the world right in Toronto. Toronto is more overpriced than Singapore, Manhattan and London, England. Now the cost of a mortgage has doubled across the country, and the cost of rent has doubled in our biggest markets as well. This is a homegrown problem. Will the Liberals finally take responsibility for causing it?

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of growing poverty and desperation, more and more Canadians are suffering with depression. Some of them are going to food banks, asking for help ending their lives, not because they are sick but because life has become so miserable and they want to end their lives altogether. The government has suggested veterans should end their lives instead of getting the help they need. Now the Liberals have announced that, a year from today, they will introduce measures to end the lives of people who are depressed. Will the Liberals recognize that we need to treat depression and give people hope for better lives rather than ending their lives?

Mr. Speaker, I do not know why the Prime Minister needs a review. Can he not just ask how much his own government spent on contracts to this company? I mean, we are talking at least $120 million. I asked him this question five times the last time he was in the House, and he was unable to answer. Perhaps the number is too high to count, but this is a company that is engulfed in scandals in France, that helped kill people in the United States and possibly in Canada through the opioid crisis, and helped foreign governments suppress their own people. Surely the Prime Minister would know how much he paid this company after eight years. How much?

Mr. Speaker, he says that the public servants recruited McKinsey and its managing director, Dominic Barton. That is not what he said before, and I quote, “I met the leaders of major corporations from around the world, and one thing they all had in common? They all knew Dominic. I came to appreciate, maybe even envy, Dominic's contact list, so we recruited him.” That is far from having public servants do it. In fact, public servants say they have no idea what McKinsey actually did for all this money. Given that he recruited this company, how much did he pay it?

Mr. Speaker, he always blames everybody else for his actions. After eight years in government, he never takes responsibility, so now he is blaming the public servants for paying over $120 million to his friends at McKinsey. Here is what the public servants told the media, “We had a few presentations on very generic, completely vapid stuff. They arrived with nice colours, nice presentations and said they would revolutionize everything. In the end, we don't have any idea what they did.” What they did is get over $120 million. We still do not know exactly how much. What was the total?

Mr. Speaker, well, after eight years in power, rents have doubled from $1,000 to $2,000. Monthly mortgage payments have doubled from $1,500 to well over $3,000. One in five Canadians is skipping meals, and half of Canadians are cutting groceries because of the food price inflation that his carbon tax has caused. Where is the money going? There was $15 billion for high-priced consultants like McKinsey. When he hired McKinsey, he announced that it was for one dollar a year, up to at least $120 million a year. How do you explain that? It is just inflation?

Mr. Speaker, after eight years under the Prime Minister, mortgage payments have more than doubled, going from $1,500 a month to over $3,000 a month. After eight years under the Prime Minister, rent has more than doubled, going from about $950 to over $2,000. After eight years under the Prime Minister, a fifth of Canadians are skipping meals or cutting groceries because they cannot afford the inflationary carbon tax he has imposed on our farmers. After eight years, 30,000 people have died of the hopelessness of drug addiction. Egged on by McKinsey, which promoted the opioid crisis in this country, why does the Prime Minister keep governing for the super rich instead of the ordinary Canadian?

Mr. Speaker, a strong economy? It is like the Prime Minister is telling Canadians that they have never had it so good. Why does he not talk to the 1.5 million Canadians going to food banks in a given month? Some of them are asking food bank presidents for help committing suicide, not because they are sick but because they are too hungry. It is as though he has not spoken to the nine in 10 young people who do not own homes and believe they never will because mortgage payments have doubled under his watch. It is as though he has not spoken to the 30,000 families who have lost loved ones because of the record overdoses that have happened under his watch. Why will the Prime Minister not take responsibility for this disaster?

Mr. Speaker, it is the middle class that is left paying the bill. He has doubled our national debt by adding more debt than all other prime ministers combined, causing the inflation rate to spike to the highest levels in 40 years. The more he spends, the more Canadians pay. It is “justinflation”, and Canadians are paying the bill. What do we get? We get more people visiting food banks, more people living in poverty, and more money for his friends at McKinsey. How much did McKinsey get?

Mr. Speaker, it is not me who says that the Prime Minister overspent; it is Bill Morneau. Do members remember him? My old friend Bill Morneau is the one who said the Prime Minister spends too much. The future Liberal leader, Mark Carney, is the one who, along with the current Governor of the Bank of Canada, says that this overspending is contributing to inflation. Forty per cent of the spending had nothing to do with COVID. In fact, much of it went to Liberal cronies and Liberal friends, nearly doubling the amount of money that goes to high-priced consultants like McKinsey. If he has nothing to hide, then he has one more chance to tell us: How much did he pay McKinsey?

Mr. Speaker, in eight years, this Prime Minister has doubled our national debt, adding $500 billion in inflationary deficit spending. What did we get for that money? We got monthly payments for mortgages, and rents that doubled in eight years. Seniors are struggling to pay their grocery bills because of this government's inflationary policies over the past eight years. The crime rate has increased 32% after eight years of this Prime Minister. Who has benefited? The consultants over at McKinsey, who received more than $100 million. Yesterday, I asked the question five times: How much did this firm receive in total?

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals say they are going to be there for the people most in need, like the $1,000-an-hour consultants over at McKinsey, a company that received over $100 million for work that public servants say was of little or no value. The total amount the government is spending on high-priced consultants is $15 billion. That is $1,000 for every single family in Canada. It is no wonder Canadians are eating increasingly at food banks after eight years of the government. It is no wonder seniors cannot keep the heat on. Why will they not give us an answer? How much did McKinsey get in total?

Mr. Speaker, there go the Liberals telling Canadians to stop all their complaining because they have never had it so good. The 1.5 million people eating from a food bank should stop their complaining because they have never had it so good. They tell those people going to a food bank and seeking help with suicide, which is becoming increasingly common, that they have never had it so good. They tell the 35-year-olds living in their parents' basement because the government's policies have doubled rent and mortgage payments that they have never had it so good. Why? It is because they are spending all their time with McKinsey consultants. How much did those consultants get from taxpayers?

Mr. Speaker, now we have the Liberals' second tactic. First they tell Canadians they have never had it so good. Now they admit that it is miserable but it is everyone else's fault. The rest of the world did not raise the rent in Canada. Rental rates are set here. We do not import our apartment buildings from Russia; we build them here in Canada. We do not set mortgage rates in Russia; we set them here in Canada. After half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits bidding up goods, and constant red tape preventing the construction of the homes we need, our young people are stuck in their parents' basements. Why do the Liberals not stop blaming everyone else and finally take responsibility for the misery they have caused in eight years?

Mr. Speaker, now it is the Liberals' third tactic. First they say everything is great; then they say it is terrible, but it is everyone else's fault; then they say we should stop talking about how miserable people's lives are. The member seems to suggest that people are anxious because I am telling them that they cannot afford food. No, their stomachs are telling them they cannot afford food. The Liberals seem to think that if I stop talking about the fact that seniors in northern Ontario cannot heat their homes because of the carbon tax, seniors will not notice that they are cold. They seem to think that if I do not talk about the 35-year-old living in his parents' basement, he will not realize that he is living there. Why do the Liberals not fix the problems instead of telling people to shut up about them?

Mr. Speaker, in eight years, this Prime Minister has doubled our national debt, adding $500 billion in inflationary deficit. What did we get for spending what Bill Morneau called too much money? More inflation, more poverty, more people having to rely on food banks. Where did the money go? Now we know: $15 billion worth of contracts were given to the Prime Minister's friends. How much of that money went to McKinsey?

Mr. Speaker, I asked the Prime Minister how much McKinsey got. He said that it was all for the middle class. He has always had difficulty defining what the middle class is, and now we know his definition. It is his friends who make $1,500 an hour as high-priced consultants for his government over at McKinsey, where his personal friend Dominic Barton was the boss. We now know that he spent $15 billion-plus per year on high-priced consultants while Canadians are eating at food banks and living in homeless shelters and while house prices have more than doubled. Again, how much did the Prime Minister's government give McKinsey?

Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister, mortgage payments have doubled, up to $7,000 per month for an average house in Toronto, and rent prices have doubled, up to $2,500 per month for an average place in Toronto. The number of people eating at food banks has gone up to 1.5 million, and crime is up 32%. We wonder where all this half a trillion dollars of inflationary debt actually went. Now we know: Liberal friends got the money. I am going to ask a third time about the well-connected insiders at McKinsey. How much did the Prime Minister give them?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister says that Canadians have never had it so good as they face 40-year highs in inflation, as food prices are up 12% year over year after he brought in a carbon tax on our farmers, as the cost of housing has more than doubled and as students are living in homeless shelters. We know why, though, he is so out of touch with these people after eight years. It is because the people he surrounds himself with, like the high-priced consultants at McKinsey, are doing better than ever. I would like to ask him this again. This company did work of little or no value according to his own public servants. How much did Canadians have to pay for that?

Mr. Speaker, we finally got the Prime Minister to admit that Canadians are suffering, and it is after eight years of the Prime Minister. After eight years of the Prime Minister, we have 40-year highs in inflation, we have a 32% increase in crime and we have the TTC transit system in downtown Toronto overtaken by crime. We have more people eating at food banks and living in homeless shelters after eight years of the Prime Minister, but not everybody is doing badly. His friends at McKinsey are rolling in cash. First, the Liberals said it was $50 million, and now the government says it is over $100 million. We want to know the real number. Will the Prime Minister finally answer the question? How much did he give McKinsey?

Mr. Speaker, what he has delivered is a 40-year-high inflation, the fastest-rising interest rates in Canadian history and one in five Canadians not being able to afford food. What for? According to the Auditor General, there is $28 billion of suspicious spending and another $4.6 billion of outright waste, money that is driving up the inflationary prices Canadians are paying right now. He gave cheques to dead people and prisoners. When will he recover the $4.6 billion of wasted money the Auditor General identified?

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by wishing everyone a merry Christmas and happy holidays. However, it will not be very happy for some people. Unfortunately, the cost of putting Christmas dinner on the table has gone up by 20% since 2021. In fact, one Mississauga food bank has reported that not only are people visiting the food bank for food, but some of its client have said they are contemplating medical assistance in dying because they cannot afford to pay their bills. How can the Prime Minister justify wasting so much money when people cannot even afford to eat?

Mr. Speaker, all his promises are not working. We wish everyone a merry Christmas, but it will not be merry for a lot of people. One in five Canadians are skipping meals. There is a 20% increase in the cost of a turkey dinner for the average family. One Ontario food bank CEO said, “clients...are telling us they're considering medically assisted death or suicide because they can't live in grinding poverty anymore.” This is after seven years of the Prime Minister. He can promise whatever he wants, but these are the results he has actually delivered. How does he justify the $4.6 billion of waste when people cannot afford to eat?

Mr. Speaker, this is where the money went, though, according to the Auditor General: 1,500 prisoners got the money, dead people got the money, $60 million dollars of the money is under criminal investigation and $4.6 billion was wasted altogether. The question was very simple. On what date will this Prime Minister and his government recover the $4.6 billion of waste identified by the Auditor General to date?

Mr. Speaker, this is from a Prime Minister who is deliberately driving up home heating bills this winter. Home heating bills are expected to double right across the country. Forty per cent of Atlantic Canadians live in energy poverty. Rural Canadians in northern Ontario who are forced to heat with oil will have to pay more as well. Now the Liberal-NDP plan is to raise prices further by tripling the carbon tax. Will the Prime Minister tell us exactly how much his carbon tax will cost the average Canadian family in higher home heating bills this winter?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister sent out his public safety minister today, we thought to back down on his hunting rifle ban. Instead, he gave a rambling endorsement of the same policy. He announced that his rural MPs from across the country, including rural Newfoundland, support the ban on hunting rifles. The Prime Minister has tried to deny that he is banning those rifles, even though first nations have said so, his experts have said so and his own caucus members have said so. Will he stand in the House today, really look us in the eye and tell us that there are no hunting rifles on his banned list?