Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, I asked the Prime Minister some very specific questions today about whether he was informed of allegations that Beijing interfered in any of our elections, and he refused to answer, so I will give him a sixth try. The question is not whether he knows of the candidate who received money. It is not whether there is a committee somewhere that said the election turned out as it should. The question is, was he, at any time prior to the recent media reports, informed by his officials of interference by Beijing in our elections, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP wrote a letter to a parliamentary committee confirming that it is investigating foreign interference. It said in particular that this interference includes in “democratic processes”. The Constitution defines democratic rights as voting, which is about elections. The RCMP put that in writing. CSIS officials testified that there was foreign interference that included in “elections and ridings”. Would CSIS and the RCMP have made these comments publicly without informing the Prime Minister first?

Mr. Speaker, that was exactly not the question. The question was not whether a committee confirmed the validity of the overall election result. The question was not whether the Prime Minister was aware of an individual candidate getting money from another country. The question was whether he was briefed by police, intelligence or public servants on any interference by Beijing in any of our elections. Would the Prime Minister please stand up and speak for himself and say yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has the tools he needs to stand up and answer the question. He would know if his officials, the police or intelligence bodies briefed him on any foreign interference in elections. That is the specific question I have now asked seven times. At first, the Prime Minister refused to give a proper answer, and now he is refusing to even take to his feet and face the question. I will ask one last time. Was he ever briefed on interference by foreign actors in our elections, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Governor of the Bank of Canada indicated that this government's inflationary deficits have added to the inflation we are seeing today. The Prime Minister blames these exorbitant deficits on COVID‑19, but 40% of these deficits had nothing to do with COVID‑19. According to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, inflation now costs each and every one of us $3,500. Will the government reverse its inflationary deficit policies so Canadians can pay their bills?

Mr. Speaker, even the Governor of the Bank of Canada has said that the government's deficit spending is driving inflation and that inflation is costing the average Canadian $3,500. Furthermore, we are facing a heating crisis over the winter. The Liberals say they are going to buy everyone a heat pump, but according to MacLeod Lorway insurance group, many insurance companies will not accept heat pumps as a main source of heat. That is because they cannot be counted on to keep the pipes from freezing. Instead of distracting with promises that will not work, why will the Liberals not cancel their plan to triple the carbon tax and raise home heating prices?

Mr. Speaker, the question was about home heating. The New Democrats have voted to raise home heating prices. They voted against our motion to take the carbon tax off home heating, and did it right before a winter when analysts expect that home heating prices will double. Now the Liberals are saying they will buy everyone a heat pump, which insurance companies say will not be insured because people need a backup heat supply in order to keep the pipes from freezing. Instead of coming up with new schemes, why do the Liberals not just cancel the tax so Canadians can stay warm this winter?

Mr. Speaker, I say to my constituents that we want them to have lower, not higher, heating bills. As for his claim, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that, when we take into account both the financial and economic cost of the government's carbon tax, 60% of people paying it will pay more than they get back in any rebate. That is published information, and it is only going to get worse as the Liberals triple the tax with the help of the NDP. We are heading into a cold winter. Canadians need to heat their homes; it is not a luxury. Will the Liberals cancel their plan to triple the tax?

Mr. Speaker, in the recently published government strategy on the Indo-Pacific, it says, “In areas of profound disagreement, we will challenge China, including when it engages in coercive behaviour [or] ignores human rights obligations”. There is a wave of protests across China right now, and there are now reports of government crackdowns against those protests. If the government is serious about what it put in its strategy, then will it indicate to Beijing that the peaceful protests should be allowed to go ahead and that any crackdown should be resisted?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's top Newfoundland and Labrador minister said that he is “sick and tired” of people complaining about heating their homes in the cold weather. It is no wonder that they are complaining. According to the CBC, the Prime Minister's favourite media outlet, the “federal carbon tax could leave seniors out in the cold”. One seniors advocate said that her members are feeling “extreme difficulty” with the cost of living. Instead of telling Atlantic Canadians to pay up and shut up, why does this government not reverse its costly carbon tax on home heat?

Mr. Speaker, well, if the Prime Minister says I should take a look at the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, I think I just might. I have it right here: “A Distributional Analysis of Federal Carbon Pricing under a Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy”. I will go to page 13. The net cost to Albertans is $2,282. In Saskatchewan, it is $1,464. In Manitoba, it is $1,145, and in Ontario, it is $1,461. This is the excessive cost above and beyond the rebates that people will get. That is what the Parliamentary Budget Officer says. The Prime Minister will not believe it. Would the Speaker send over a page so they can deliver this report so the Prime Minister can believe his own eyes?

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that some consider a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer to be a prop. I consider it to be firm evidence that the size of these rebates is smaller than the cost that people pay in higher taxes. This is definitive proof, and it shows that Canadians will pay more the higher the tax gets, all for a policy that has failed to deliver a single, solitary climate change target. It has failed. It costs too much. Will the government cancel it?

Mr. Speaker, those rebates would not be enough to pay for two hours in the Prime Minister's favourite London hotel, where he pays $6,000 a night. Let me look at the costs of this tax. It is $2,282 for the average Albertan, when fully implemented; $1,464 for the average Saskatchewanian; and similar costs for people right across the country. These are net costs, above and beyond the tiny rebates he has offered. Now that he has the evidence, now that it is right here in a report from an officer he appointed, will he believe the facts and cancel the tax?

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister continues to ignore the crisis that Canadian households are about to face with the skyrocketing home heating bills. They are expected to double in many communities. Some households will be stuck paying $5,000 to $6,000 a year, yet he wants to not just maintain but triple his carbon tax on Canadians. He might play a game of delaying the implementation in a few provinces, but why would he not take decisive action to reverse the damage he has caused to all Canadians and all of their homes, by reversing the carbon tax on home heating altogether?

Mr. Speaker, our information comes from the man he appointed as the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That same official calculated that 60% of Canadians will pay more in carbon tax costs than they get back in any rebates. That is even higher in provinces where the federally imposed, but provincially administered, tax does not come with any rebate at all. The Prime Minister wants to go further in increasing the cost to Canadians to drive, to eat and to heat themselves throughout the very cold winter that is just ahead. Will he show some common sense and stop attacking the people on the ground like his minister and reverse the tax?

Mr. Speaker, this government told Canadians that interest rates would stay low for a long time. As a result, one-third of the mortgages currently taken out by Canadians are variable rate. This means that when interest rates rise, Canadians either pay more or the term of their mortgage increases. According to the Bank of Canada, this is going to cause financial hardship for many families. The government is driving up interest rates with its inflationary deficits. When will the government reverse its inflationary policies, which risk bankrupting families who cannot pay their bills?

Mr. Speaker, “Happy Canada Day. Gas bills, heating bills and grocery bills have just gone up,” is the message from Liberals to three Atlantic Canadian provinces that will be hit with a carbon tax increase on July 1. These same Atlantic Canadian provinces have 40% of their citizens already living in energy poverty, yet the Liberals want to triple the carbon tax as we are going into a winter in which heating bills are already expected to double. Will the government give relief to Atlantic Canadians and all Canadians, on Canada Day and every day, by cancelling the carbon tax?

Mr. Speaker, first, the carbon tax has not worked. The Liberals have not hit a single, solitary emissions reduction target in the seven provinces in which the tax is already imposed. Now they want to impose it on three more provinces. Second, Canada ranks 58th out of 63 countries for climate action performance. Third, these so-called “rebates” do not pay for the full cost of the carbon tax, and 60% of Canadians who pay this tax pay more than they get back in rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Instead of stating and restating these falsehoods, why will they not give Canadians a break on their heating, eating and housing bills so that Canadians can afford to live?

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton for introducing Bill C‑228, which seeks to protect our workers' and our seniors' pensions. I would like to begin by describing the current situation. Right now, companies offer pension plans with specific eligibility criteria and benefits. However, when such a company goes bankrupt, the pension plans may not contain enough money to cover the cost of all the promises the company made to its employees. That has happened a number of times in this country's history. One example is Nortel, once the largest employer in the national capital in Ottawa. When that tech giant went bankrupt, the pension funds were insufficient. There was not enough money to pay the pensions promised to the company's retirees. Many employees have asked me why the company was not required to use the proceeds of the sale of its assets to make up that shortfall. Under the legislation that was in place at the time and is still in force today, in the event of bankruptcy or insolvency, a company must sell all its assets and pay back anyone who has loaned it money and all the individuals or entities to whom it owes money. Obviously, when a company goes bankrupt, it does not have enough money to pay all its creditors, and this means that some people will lose out. Those who lose out may be the banks that have loaned money to the business or the suppliers to the business that have not been paid. In some cases, it could be the pensioners, because there is not enough money in the pension fund to pay the promised pensions. There is no good solution, and inevitably, some people will lose out. In most cases, it is good people who lose out when there are bankruptcies. Also, when a bankruptcy occurs, pensions are in a difficult situation, because big companies typically go bankrupt when the economy is in bad shape or when stock markets are falling. It is possible that both situations may happen at the same time, depriving the pension funds of the money needed to pay out the pensions. Businesses should obviously set aside sufficient funds to guarantee that, in the event of bankruptcy or falling stock markets, it will have enough money to fund these pensions. However, right now, businesses do not have to pay these pension liabilities before paying other creditors. That is legal and the courts decide who gets what. Some are opposed to the idea of giving priority to pension funds as the bill proposes. They believe that this will make it more difficult for a business to raise money from investors and get loans from banks. Bankers will not want to lend them money because, in the event of bankruptcy, the money will go to the pension fund. It is true that it will be more difficult to repay other creditors if the pension fund does not have enough money, but this bill would incentivize CEOs to properly fund their pension fund so that investors will be confident that, in the event of a bankruptcy, the money will be there. Personally, I think this bill is not only compassionate towards people who have worked and expected to receive this money, but also a way to force the market to consider whether the pension fund is adequate today, not 20 years from now, when the company declares bankruptcy. This will force CEOs to invest enough money today to secure the future and the retirement of their workers. If they want to get loans, they will have to prove themselves to the market. People who work their entire lives and are promised a pension should receive it, and that is why the official opposition will support this bill and we will work to bring it into force. I would like to thank the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton, who represents working-class people in her constituency. We know of the grand refineries that do so much of the necessary energy refining for Ontario and that turn our raw materials into final end-use products. These are the hard-working people who should be able to count on their pensions. That is why our colleague, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, has brought this initiative forward. As a quick background, right now, when a company goes bankrupt, all the creditors are roughly on equal footing unless they have secured credit and unless they have collateralized their loan against a particular asset within a company. This means the money can run out as the liquidation happens before a pension shortfall is corrected. This happened to Nortel when it went bankrupt in Ottawa: The largest private sector employer at the time went bankrupt and the pension fund was down. Often, bankruptcies happen when the economy crashes, and that is just when the stock market crashes, which means the funds invested in the pension fund drop dramatically. That awful convergence of factors means that pensioners could be down 30%, 40% or 50%. This bill would put pensioners at the top of the list and give them superpriority in the event of bankruptcy so that when assets are sold, the pension fund gets made whole before other creditors get paid. Some will say this will make it harder for businesses to raise money. That is only the case if their pension is not properly funded. If it is funded properly, the investor will not have to worry about being knocked back behind the pensioners in the event of bankruptcy. The pension fund will already have sufficient dollars with a significant buffer that will protect the viability of the pensioners, and all the other creditors will be in the same position they were without this bill. What the bill would do is incentivize CEOs to make the investments today to make sure their pension funds are in good shape down the road. What happened during the 2008 financial crisis was similar to when Warren Buffet said: When the tide goes out, we find out who was not wearing a bathing suit. That is the case with pension funds. When the tide goes out and the economy crashes, we find out which companies were not investing enough in the viability of their plans. They are then in trouble and are looking for a bailout from everyone else, including the workers who have to take a shortfall. I would like to think that CEOs today would put aside the money for that ugly day down the road when there is a recession so that if God forbid they go bankrupt or God forbid the markets crash, their pension fund is secured. This bill would incentivize them to do that. If they do not, lenders will be worried about lending to them. A lender would go to them and say, “Listen, I would like to buy your bonds or give you a directed loan, but I'm concerned that your pension fund isn't fully solid and that I would fall behind that fund in the event of a bankruptcy.” That would put real-time, immediate pressure on the management of every country to solidify its pension funds in the here and now while times are good in order to raise debt and raise capital for the future. It is for that reason, and for the reason that we must be compassionate to those who have worked hard all their lives, who are counting on those pensions to pay for their golden years and who have earned them, that we have made a promise and that the promise will be kept. That is why the Conservatives are proud to be supporting the bill by our fellow colleague, the member for Sarnia—Lambton, to secure and protect the pensions of our hard-working Canadians.

Mr. Speaker, Canada ranked 58th out of 63 countries in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Liberals have missed every target for reducing emissions, yet they are moving forward with the same strategy. In fact, they want to triple down on the strategy by tripling the carbon tax, even though Canadians are struggling to pay their heating bills. When will they realize that turning down the heat in our homes is not the goal of fighting climate change?

Mr. Speaker, if they had the most comprehensive plan in the world, why are they ranked 58th out of 63 in terms of performance on that plan? What they have, actually, is a tax, a tax to drive up the cost of home heating, gas, groceries and everything else. They want to triple that tax. We are now going into the winter, and families are facing a doubling of their home heating bills right across the country. Forty percent of Atlantic Canadians already live in energy poverty. They cannot afford to pay any more. Instead of spending more inflationary money to try to solve the problem they caused, why do the Liberals not just get rid of the problem itself, by getting rid of the tax?

Mr. Speaker, by using technology and not taxes, the Conservative government presided over the only government that reduced greenhouse gases in Canadian history, while the economy grew. Now we have a government that has missed every single greenhouse gas reduction target it has set, even as its carbon tax has gone up, and now it wants to hit people with a tax, just as home heating bills are expected to double. Its consolation prize is that some time down the road, one might be able to get a heat pump when the winter is over, if one is lucky. Why does the government not get rid of the real problem, which is the tax?

He clearly does not, Mr. Speaker, by virtue of the results. The results are higher emissions. The Liberals have missed their targets every single year. Now with 40% of Atlantic Canadians living in energy poverty, rural Canadians facing a doubling of their home heating bills, and some families who will be paying $5,000 and up just to keep the heat on, the Liberals want to go ahead and triple the tax. Why will the Liberals not get rid of the tax so Canadians can keep the heat on and pay their bills?

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' taxes have failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is not an environmental plan; it is a tax plan. Now, having driven up the cost of home heating, the Liberals say that if Canadians wait until the end of winter, they might be able to get a rebate for a heat pump if they are among the tiny minority people in this country who will qualify for the program. The tax the government imposed caused the problems, and now it says it has a government program to solve the problem. Why not just get rid of the problem and get rid of the tax?

Mr. Speaker, 10 months ago, our security and intelligence services informed the Prime Minister of allegations that a foreign government had interfered in our elections through illegal donations. The Prime Minister should have informed the Commissioner of Canada Elections so that the matter could be investigated. Did the Prime Minister inform the commissioner of Canada Elections to instigate an investigation after he became aware, almost 10 months ago, of allegations of illegal foreign funding?

Mr. Speaker, as the world's wealthy gather for the COP conference, burning massive amounts of jet fuel to get there, what is becoming clear is that the government does not have a climate plan; it has a tax plan. Its plan has failed to reach a single solidarity greenhouse gas emissions target and Canada now ranks 58th out of 64 countries on climate performance. This is after it has hit Canadians with high taxes. It plans to triple the tax, tripling down on failure. Will the Liberals cancel the carbon tax and come up with a real environmental plan?

Mr. Speaker, these are our allies and these are our customers, and all of them have better climate change performance than the government has in Canada. What it has done in Canada is raise taxes on people's energy use, energy that they must use. People do need to heat their homes if they live in rural Newfoundland, and they need to use oil to do it because that is all there is. The cost is already up 77% year over year and likely to go up further. Some families will pay as much as $6,000 to heat their homes. Is the government really going to tell them that they have to pay more for the government's failures on the environment?

Revenue-neutral, Mr. Speaker? It is not neutral for taxpayers who will pay thousands of dollars more in the tax than they get back in any rebates, according to the government's own Parliamentary Budget Officer. If the government really wanted to fight greenhouse gas emissions, it would approve projects that do that. For example, there were 15 LNG projects proposed when the government took office. Not a single one has been built. The only one that is under construction was approved by the previous Conservative government and it required subsequent governments to exempt it from the carbon tax in order for it to be economical and to speed up its approval by ignoring Bill C-69. Will the government get out of the way and let our projects go ahead to protect the earth?

Mr. Speaker, it is true that they have to meet environmental standards. We had real environmental standards under the previous Conservative government. In fact, the only way that the LNG Canada project in western Canada went ahead was by exempting it from the new anti-development, Bill C-69. She is right also that first nations have to be consulted. One person is an indigenous grandmother from the Haisla first nation who told me that LNG Canada and projects like it meant that her autistic grandchild would have the resources for treatment. That means help for first nations, paycheques for people and clean energy for the world. Why will the Liberals not get out of the way and let it happen?

Mr. Speaker, when I take a walk through this country, I cannot help feeling like everything is broken. Inflation is at a 40-year high. In a single month, 1.5 million Canadians visited a food bank. In the GTA, the greater Toronto area, that number was 180,000, in one general metropolitan area. One in five Canadians is skipping meals, because they cannot afford their groceries. About half of Canadians are $200 or less away from insolvency. The number of insolvencies is up by a fifth compared to a year ago, the biggest increase in 13 years. One in six businesses is considering closing their doors. Households now face the prospect of 15% of their income going to debt servicing alone, a recent record. Mortgage interest costs for the average family are up 11%. Year over year that is the biggest increase since 1991. If someone renewed their mortgage today, after having secured it five years ago, they would be paying about $7,000 more per year for the very same house they lived in last year. If people think home ownership is expensive, they should be careful about renting. That now costs $2,000 a month in the average Canadian city. Vancouver has the world's third most inflated housing market. Toronto has the 10th. In fact, Vancouver is more expensive than New York, Singapore, London, England, and countless others of the world's most famous cities where they have more people, more money and less land. If we took a walk out of our homes onto the street, we would find ourselves 32% more in danger of being attacked. That is the increase in the violent crime rate since the Prime Minister took office. In fact, there were 124,000 more crimes committed this year than in 2015, when the Prime Minister came to office. There were 788 homicides in Canada last year. That is up from 611 back in 2015, which is another 29% increase. There has been a 92% increase in gang-related homicide and a 61% increase in the reports of sexual assaults since 2015. Police have reported hate crimes are up 72% over the last two years alone. After the government tells us it is investing so much of its rhetoric and its money in fighting racism, we see hatred and hate-based violence has increased by three-quarters. Some 31,000 Canadians have lost their lives to overdoses. If we take a walk down streets like East Hastings in Vancouver, we will see tent cities where adults are lying face-first on the pavement, having just completed their most recent dose, not sure whether they will actually awaken. Police and social workers literally have to scour the streets 24-7 to check pulses of people lying on the pavement, not as extraordinary circumstances or one-time emergencies, but as daily events. In fact, there were 71,069 Canadians who died of overdoses in 2021. Twenty-one people are dying of overdoses every single day. That is up from 11 per day. More than six million Canadians do not have access to a family doctor. The most simple expectations that we have for our health, like going into a pharmacy and getting painkillers for our children have now become out of reach. Canadians are now forced to drive south of the border to get the same medications that are not available on this side of the border. In fact, according to an association of pharmaceutical wholesalers that represents businesses in 19 countries, only Canada is suffering from these shortages. Meanwhile, speaking of the rest of the world, there are still people who want to come here, and we hope they do, but 2.6 million of them are waiting in immigration queues. Over a million have been waiting longer than the acceptable wait time. When they arrive, they would arrive at Pearson, one of the worst-ranked airports on planet Earth. Montreal is not far behind when it comes to records for delays. The port of Vancouver is now ranked 376th out of 380 ports around the world. Speaking of getting people into the country, 10,000 Canadians were sent wrongly into quarantine by a $54-million app that we did not need, that did not work and that could have been procured for $250,000. Speaking of building stuff, whether it is apps or anything else, our country is now ranked the second slowest for the time it takes to get a building permit. The average building permit takes over 250 days in Canada, but only 28 days in South Korea. It is no wonder we cannot build the factories, the pipelines and, most important of all, the houses that give people homes. We import 130,000 barrels of overseas oil every day even though we have the third-biggest supply on planet Earth. All of these things are broken. What is most interesting about them is that they all happened under the Prime Minister's watch, while he refuses to take responsibility for any of them. Any one of these things in isolation would be considered a catastrophic embarrassment, but together they show the story of a country that cannot get anything done and that has accepted dramatic reductions in its quality of life and its expectation for what a person can receive living in this country of ours. The Prime Minister, who is in charge of the central government, ought to take some responsibility, but he takes none. He says that a 40-year high in inflation has something to do with the war between Russia and Ukraine, even though inflation was already two and a half times the target before the war even began and less than 0.3% of our trade is with Russia and Ukraine combined. As for the stuff they produce, the stuff we already have here, he is not responsible for the massive increases in cost. The Prime Minister is not responsible, he says, for the doubling of house prices or the fact that rental costs are out of reach. He is not responsible for the skyrocketing crime rates in our streets, even though his government oversees the Criminal Code and the national police force and border security. He is not responsible for the overdose deaths of so many Canadians. He is not responsible for the fact that so many people are going to food banks. He is not responsible for the fact that our children cannot get medication. He says he is not responsible and he is right: He is not responsible. He is not responsible, even though he has the power to affect all of these things and, in many cases, he is the one who caused them in the first place. I have never seen a prime minister who is so desperate to have more power with less responsibility. He wants to take over what we see and say on the Internet. He wants to control a greater share of the money that Canadians earn by constantly increasing spending faster than the economy grows. He wants to have more power over dental and pharmaceutical and child care, rather than allowing Canadians to control those things for themselves. He wants to have more control over health care by dictating terms to our provinces on how they should run their hospitals, even while he does not want to be responsible for any of the health outcomes that we see in our emergency rooms across the country. He wants more power, but he does not want more responsibility. When we ask him about these failures, his constant refrain is that he is spending more money, and on that count he is right. There is no question that the government is the all-time heavyweight champion of spending. It has increased spending by 30% over pre-COVID levels even though COVID programs have now ended, but the results, as I have just listed, speak for themselves. It is not a consolation prize that we are spending more to achieve these failures. The only thing worse than failing is failing expensively, and that is what the Prime Minister is doing. Only in government, by the way, would politicians think that it is acceptable to measure their success by how expensive they can be. For example, this week, the Auditor General came out and said that the Liberals have spent an extra $1 billion-plus specifically on homelessness. Well, that sounds good, but they cannot keep track of how many homeless people there are in Canada. They have no idea what the results are. They have an overall housing program of $40 billion, which is supposed to make housing more affordable, but all the while house prices have doubled. The more they spend, the more things cost and the worse the results. In the real world, people judge things by the outcome. For example, if I go to the grocery store, come back home, pull out a receipt and say to my wife, “I spent $700 on groceries” while I am holding two bags of groceries, she is going to say, “Where did all the money go?” I would say she has to give me a high-five because they were really expensive and that whatever I have in those bags must be terrific because it cost more than when she goes grocery shopping. The reality is that nobody in the real world judges their success that way. We do not have restaurants that say, “Come dine with us. It is $500 a night to be in our dining room. We will not tell you anything about the service, the ambience or what ends up on the plate. What is most important is that our meals are the most expensive and therefore must be the best.” Only in politics do people think it is appropriate to judge success by how expensive government can be. What if instead of judging our success by how much we spend, we judged it by how much we delivered and the results that we actually achieve? Everything feels broken in the lives of everyday Canadians, but the good news is that we can fix it. We live in the greatest country in the world. Our country has overcome these difficulties before and has rebuilt and given new hope where before there was hurt. There is a very clear path to achieving that result, and that is to start with the issue of money. Instead of spending more, let us achieve more. How do we do that? Why do we not cap government spending and cut waste, and bring in a dollar-for-dollar law that requires the government to find a dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending measures? That would force politicians to make the same either-or trade-offs when they spend our money that everyday Canadians make in their lives. When a local mechanic decides he is going to spend a little more on advertising, he has to spend a little more somewhere else in order to free up that money. When a family decides they are going to build a new porch, they might decide not to go on vacation or might try to find a bargain on both. They might get a deal on a vacation and go to the local construction yard to get some discarded lumber in order to build a porch more affordably. Politicians and bureaucrats do not make those kinds of calculations because they do not have to. There is always more in the pot. They can tax more, borrow more or print more. That scarcity gets passed on to the taxpayer. Every creature in the universe has to live with scarcity. The great economist Thomas Sowell once said that the first law of economics is scarcity. There is always more demand than there is supply. The first law of politics, however, is to ignore the first law of economics. That is what politicians do by simply putting scarcity onto other people by driving up their costs and externalizing the consequences of spending decisions. If instead we forced politicians by law to live with the same laws of scarcity as every other business, consumer or taxpayer, we would force better results. Politicians would need to go into their departments and ask themselves, “If I want to increase spending on this initiative, where can I find savings somewhere else?" They would be incentivized to go line by line, year after year, to find low-priority items in order to redirect the money to high-priority results for Canadians. Let us get the Bank of Canada back to its core mandate of 2% inflation rather than printing money to pay for political spending. Let us also get rid of the obvious examples of wasteful spending. We could cancel the ArriveCAN app and get rid of the multi-billion dollar Infrastructure Bank, which has achieved no projects but has guaranteed the profits of large multinationals and the bonuses of executives. Getting rid of this waste would allow us to save money and free up more resources for things that could achieve results for our people. Instead of creating more cash, why do we not create more of what cash buys in this country? Why do we not grow more food, build more houses and generate more Canadian energy? Speaking of energy, I had the privilege of visiting the single largest infrastructure project in Canadian history, LNG Canada, a $40-billion private sector investment approved by the previous Conservative government. It could only come to pass because the Government of British Columbia agreed to exempt the project from the carbon tax. Otherwise, it would not have been economical. What result will actually be achieved by this project? The answer is that it will cut 60 million tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere by replacing overseas coal-fired plants with clean Canadian natural gas. Is it not interesting that this project had to be exempt from both Bill C-69, the government's environmental law, and the carbon tax in order for it to go ahead and reduce emissions? In other words, for this environmentally friendly project to occur, the government's environmental policies had to be ignored. That proves how backwards they are. If the carbon tax had been in place, the project would not have been economical. If Bill C-69, the anti-energy law, had been in place, there is no way it would have been approved. What would have happened? About 60 million more tonnes of greenhouse gases would have gone into the global atmosphere because there would not have been clean Canadian natural gas to replace the dirty coal in Asia. We have an enormous advantage reaching Asia. B.C. is the shortest North American shipping distance to Asia. We also have the shortest North American shipping distance to Europe from the east coast of Canada. Speaking of the east coast, when the Prime Minister visited there, he was asked about approving natural gas projects in Canada's east coast. He said there might not be a business case. He was standing next to the German Chancellor when he said that. Ironically, the Germans just announced that they completed a new natural gas import terminal in 194 days. Do members know what they will not be importing there? It is Canadian natural gas. Why? It is because we do not export any natural gas overseas. We do not have any terminals completed. Despite 15 of them having been proposed when the Prime Minister took office, not one of them has been completed. Only one is under construction, the aforementioned LNG Canada. The rest are in limbo. We could be sending the Germans our natural gas to break European dependence on Putin and to transform dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people in this country. Why do we not do that? Let us think of the human benefit that would bring. When I was in northern British Columbia, I spoke to a Haisla Nation grandmother who broke down into tears when she said that her granddaughter had been diagnosed with autism. After decades of federal promises that these kinds of conditions would be met with services and treatment, there is no treatment in her region of rural, remote northern British Columbia. She said that if natural gas projects like LNG Canada were allowed to go ahead, and if her nation could sign agreements to share in the benefits of those programs, there would be local resources under the control of first nations communities to provide children like her granddaughter with autism treatment and countless other things. Why do we not empower first nations to do more things like that by allowing these projects to go ahead? We need to get the government out of the way so these opportunities can occur. We need, for example, to incentivize more home building by requiring our large municipalities with overpriced markets to approve fast and affordable building permits so that we could build the millions of new homes that are required for our existing population and for those who have yet to come to our country. We need to require that every federally funded transit station be pre-approved for high-density housing around it so that our young people do not even need to own a car to live in an affordable house. We also need to sell off 15% of the 37,000 underutilized federal buildings so they can be made into affordable housing for our young people. We need to get government out of the way so that our projects can get completed and our people can have homes and energy. Finally, we need to get government out of the way and off the backs of our farmers so they can produce more nutritious food in this country. Is it not an outrage that Canada has the sixth-biggest supply of farmland per capita on earth, but in one in five households, people are actually skipping meals because of the excessive cost of food? We should not only be able to feed our own families but be the breadbasket of the world by cancelling the carbon tax, not just on primary farming but on drying food and transporting it. We need to cancel the carbon tax on our truckers so they can bring that food affordably to our supermarkets. We also need to remove the ridiculous fertilizer tariffs and taxes the government is bringing in so we can produce more food on every acre of land in order to have greater output and reduce the amount of fuel that has to be burned to produce that prodigious output. Let us unleash the fierce power of our farmers to feed us again. Let us also make it possible for our people to walk safely in the streets once again, something we used to take for granted. The answer is clear: The vast majority of crime is committed by a tiny minority of criminals. A recent letter from the Union of B.C. Municipalities demonstrated the number of instances of crime and criminality that are generated by a tiny minority. For example, in Vancouver, 40 individuals were responsible for 6,000 negative interactions with the police, most of them arrests. Let us think about that. The same 40 people were arrested 6,000 times in a year. That is like 150 arrests per person per year. We all agree that if a young person makes a mistake, we should invest in rehabilitating them to get them back on the street once they are ready and into a job as productive members of society. However, when someone commits 60, 70, 80 or 100 violent offences and we consistently and automatically release them early on bail and even after they are convicted, that is contributing to the criminality that has grown by one-third since the Prime Minister took office. Let us target that small minority of criminals with serious consequences to get them off the streets and keep the streets safe. It is not out of hatred for the criminal that we take these actions. It is out of love for the victims, the people who desperately want to live safely in our neighbourhoods. Instead of investing money in going after the lawful, licensed, trained and tested hunters and sport shooters, we should put that money into bolstering our borders to keep the smuggled drugs and guns that are terrorizing our communities out of our country altogether. Finally, we need to come to the rescue of the people living in these all-too-common tent cities, whether they are in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal, or in smaller centres like Peterborough, where this phenomenon is growing out of control. We see people who could be our brothers, sisters or, God forbid, sons or daughters who have lost their homes, are living on the streets and are playing Russian roulette with their lives. Every single time they ingest these poisons, they risk stopping their hearts, and we can change that. We know that the government's current approach is to liberalize access to the most dangerous opioids and, in fact, use taxpayer funding and public resources for so-called safe supply to make them even more abundant. There is no such thing as safe poison; it is all deadly. We know what we can do to save these people's lives, because they are doing it in Alberta today. Alberta has redirected the resources away from a so-called “safe”, taxpayer-funded supply of drugs over to recovery and treatment, getting addicts off the street and into a recovery centre, where they are first given detox, which cleans the poison out of their system, and then given 60 to 90 days of treatment, in-patient care, building up the habits of a clean, drug-free life. They are then gently reintroduced into society in jobs and opportunities, during which time they have counselling that keeps them on the right track. What is the result of that approach? It has cut overdoses in half and they are saving lives, proving there is always hope. It is possible to save these people. Everything feels broken in this country, but it is our role in the House to turn all of that hurt into hope. It is our job to come forward with the practical, common-sense solutions that have made this the best country on earth. It is our job to take responsibility for the suffering that exists in this country today and replace it with opportunity, to give people back control of their lives here in Canada, the freest country on earth, where people can chart their own destinies and be masters of their own fate.

Mr. Speaker, people should have the freedom to invest in whatever they want, as in the quote, as long as they follow the law and pay their taxes, just like everyone else. What is illegal in fiat currency should be illegal using digital or cryptographic or blockchain assets as well. If it is illegal to evade taxes using fiat currency, it should be illegal to evade taxes using any other type of asset. The rule should be simple, consistent and clear. However, one thing is also clear. Only the Canadian dollar will be legal tender in this country, regardless. I believe there is only one legal tender, and it is the Canadian dollar. The government has been ruining the purchasing power of that dollar by printing half a trillion dollars of it. It went from $1.8 trillion to $2.3 trillion in M2 money supply. That gave us the worst inflation in 40 years. It was entirely predictable. I predicted it: I warned the Liberals, and I wish they had listened.

Madam Speaker, first of all, it is important to recognize the Conservative Party's record. We increased health transfers by 6% per year when we were in government. This government has reduced the annual escalator for health transfers. Our party's policy is to continue to provide stable transfers that increase from year to year. My colleague criticized me for saying that the government was spending too much. He just mentioned the failures in the health care system. Has the $500 billion in additional spending that the federal government racked up over the last two years solved these problems? Obviously not. Just because we have a more costly government in Ottawa does not mean we will have better health care systems in our provinces.

Madam Speaker, I suspect corporations were just as greedy seven years ago as they are today, so why is it that inflation is three times as high? The reality is that we have a government that has facilitated the so-called “greedflation” we have. When governments print money and pump it into the financial system, those who first touch that money are the ones who profit from it. That is why, when we see these massive money-printing deficits anywhere in the world that it has been tried, it has not only caused inflation but caused a massive increase in the wealth gap. The richest people, who have stuff, benefit when that stuff goes up in price. The poorest people, who need stuff, suffer because they have less purchasing power with which to buy it. It is the money printers and the big government state capitalism of the Liberal government that are allowing this outrage and injustice to occur, and it is the member, by being part of this costly coalition, who is serving that government greed and corporate greed.

Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister is definitely responsible for it. We now know that every excuse the government has come up with does not hold water. For example, it says that COVID‑19 caused inflation. However, it has now been more than a year since we stopped shutting down large swaths of the economy because of COVID‑19, and yet the rate of inflation keeps going up. The government says that inflation is due to the war in Ukraine, but our inflation rate was already double the target before the war even began. The government also says that it is due to the high price of oil, but the price of oil was the same when the Harper government was in place, and we never had an inflation rate over 4%. Finally, there were wars in the Middle East, in Iraq, in Syria and in Afghanistan when the Harper government was in place, and we did not have inflation like we are seeing now. What we have today is $500 billion of inflationary deficit that is driving up the cost of everything we buy and all the interest we pay. It is just inflation, and the Prime Minister is indeed responsible for it.

Madam Speaker, with regard to the member's question, the Liberals have been making these promises now since 1993. That was the first Liberal red book. They promised there would be a national day care program. Every single child would have access to an affordable day care space, they said, way back then, and still they have not kept the promise. To this day there are wait-lists right across the country for affordable day care. We believe that if the government is going to promise these sorts of things, it should deliver. We also believe that the money should go directly into the pockets of parents, and that is why we originally created the child care benefit that exists today. It was to put the dollars right in the hands of parents, so they could make their own child care decisions. Trickle-down government, where Liberals make promise after promise but then fail to deliver results, is exactly the problem to which I was pointing in my original speech. Yes, it is easy for them to make big promises, and yes, it is easy for them to spend big dollars, but it is much harder to achieve results. When we are in government, we will achieve those results.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians were wondering why children in other countries were able to access pain medication easily, while there is a major shortage in Canada. Families are suffering, and some parents have to go to the United States to buy these medications. Yesterday, we learned the reason for that. The deputy minister of health said that this government knew about the shortage in April, seven months ago. However, it has done nothing since then. Why has this government made Canadian children suffer for seven months?

Mr. Speaker, if it was a priority, why did they not do anything for seven months? We just found out yesterday from the deputy minister of health that the government knew in April that there was a shortage of children's pain medication. As a result of the government doing nothing, we have parents who have had to drive to the States. Sometimes they have to meet in dark parking lots to buy a bottle of Aspirin or Tylenol for $200, and their children are up all night, screaming. On what date did members of the cabinet become aware that this shortage was in place and that our children were suffering?

Mr. Speaker, today we found out that the inflation rate is three times higher than the Bank of Canada's target. Canadians are paying up to 30% more for some foods, and the price is only going up. The price of gas is up 10% and the price of food in general is up 11%. The government's solution is to continue with inflationary deficits and taxes, tripling taxes on gas, heat and groceries. Will the Liberals cancel these inflationary taxes and spending so Canadians can afford to eat, heat and house themselves?

Mr. Speaker, she tells Canadians that they have never had it so good. She is out of touch, and Canadians are out of money. One of the reasons is the rising cost of fuel. Home heating bills are up 77% in Newfoundland and Labrador. There are similar increases across the Atlantic, and northern Ontario will get hit hard because of oil heating, yet the government wants to triple the carbon tax to punish people further. This is after the tax has failed to reduce emissions or hit targets to fight climate change. Instead of hitting Canadians with more punishing taxes, why do the Liberals not give Canadians relief so they can keep the heat on?

Mr. Speaker, that is the minister who advised Canadians that there would be deflation rather than inflation. Her government said inflation and interest rates would stay low for decades, so they should borrow up a storm. Her most recent advice is that Canadians should pay their $6,000 home heating bills by cancelling their $13 Disney+ subscription. That is the advice we are getting from the finance minister. It is no wonder we have 40-year highs in inflation. Why will the government not reverse its inflationary taxes so that Canadians can afford to live?

Mr. Speaker, rural communities across the country are now in crisis while families try to plan out how to pay their bills once the cost of heating goes up. Acadian communities on the east coast or Franco-Ontarians from northern Ontario have heating systems that use diesel, for which the carbon tax is going to triple according to the wishes of the costly NDP-Liberal coalition. Will the Liberals cancel this plan so that Canadians can keep their heat on?

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister came out about a week ago saying that she makes a profit off the carbon tax because she lives in an upscale downtown Toronto neighbourhood where she can take a subway or ride her bike anywhere she needs to go. Most Canadians do not have a chauffeur. A suburban family that needs to take its kids to hockey or school needs a minivan. A rural family needs a pickup truck to fight through the snow and carry heavy equipment. The Liberal-NDP coalition wants to triple the carbon tax. Will it cancel that plan so Canadians can afford to get where they are going?

Mr. Speaker, the minister should talk to the people who live in rural Canada today. Those people are faced with $3-a-litre diesel just to fill up their trucks. A similar fuel to heat homes in places such as northern Ontario and Atlantic Canada will cost families as much as $6,000 to get through the winter. The solution of the Liberal-NDP coalition is to triple the carbon tax that those families will pay. Canadians are worried about keeping the heat on. Will the government cancel the tax so they can do so?

Mr. Speaker, that is false, false, false, false and false. Let us look at what the reality is regarding this carbon tax. The finance minister said she is going to send out cheques that make families like hers profit from the carbon tax. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who the Prime Minister appointed, in Alberta the average family will pay $2,000 more in tax than they get back in cheques. In Ontario, it is $1,461, and it is similarly true elsewhere. In many provinces, there is no rebate at all, even though the federal government is imposing this new triple tax. Will it cancel this tax so Canadians can pay their bills?

Mr. Speaker, they have a majority with their costly coalition with the NDP. They can pass anything they want. If they were really going to make housing affordable, they would have done it a long time ago. It has been seven years. During that time house prices have doubled and now home heating prices are doubling, with costs expected to rise to as much as $6,000 for a single family to heat a home in oil-heated communities like northern Ontario and eastern Canada. The government's plan with the NDP is to triple the tax. Why does it not stop the tax hike so Canadians can heat their homes?