Parliamentary Speeches

Madam Speaker, the member did not use my name. He simply mentioned the official name of the currency that I am going to create in the future. If the Bloc Québécois opposes that currency, then I will be able to say that it was a Bloc member who suggested that the Conservatives create a currency bearing my last name. It would be a currency that maintains its value, that workers would appreciate and that would enable them to buy more. That is the best idea I have ever heard here in the House.

Madam Speaker, I have a finance question. Two great economic historians from Harvard University, Reinhart and Rogoff, have listed five precursors to a debt crisis: asset price inflation, particularly housing price inflation; long-term current account deficits, that is to say buying from the world more than we sell to the world; a drop in output, as we experienced last year with the $100-billion drop in GDP; rising household leverage, and we have the highest household-debt-to-income ratio in the G7; and an increase in overall indebtedness. We now have $8.6 trillion of household, corporate and governmental debt combined, which is four dollars of debt for every one dollar of GDP. If interest rates rise before these incredible debt ratios decline, does the member believe we could face a debt crisis in Canada of which I have warned in the past and am warning in the present? Does he share that concern, and what would he do to avoid it?

Madam Speaker, here we are in the magic million job month. June was supposed to be the month in which all of the pre-COVID jobs would be recovered: a million of them in chart 35. It is right there in the minister's budget that all of the jobs would be restored this month, yet we have lost a quarter of a million jobs in the last two months and have the second-highest unemployment in the G7. Will this month be as miraculous as the government claims? Will we have all of those million jobs back when the numbers come out next month?

Madam Speaker, the hon. member did not answer the question. It was supposed to be this month that all those million Canadians would have their jobs back. He claims that there will be an “expeditious” recovery, another one of these subjective words that has no timeline, but his chart is very clear. It was supposed to be a million jobs by June 2021, yet we are actually losing jobs. We are down a quarter of a million in two months. We have the second-highest unemployment in the G7. Yes or no: Will the million Canadians have their jobs back?

Madam Speaker, the hon. member need not worry. I do not believe him, because the chart in his government's budget says there will be a million jobs back by this month. Now, suddenly, he is running away from that commitment. He is saying, “Don't worry. We've got really expensive debt-financed government programs.” The Liberals are putting it all on the credit card, but he is running away from the central commitment to restore paycheques. Only paycheques will secure our future. I will give him a third chance. Will he restate the government's commitment in chart 35 of its budget, that a million Canadians who lost their jobs during COVID will have them back this month?

Mr. Speaker, I will continue the question of privilege that I began earlier. As I have demonstrated, the government's decision to use printed money to pay its bills has driven up the cost of living for Canadians and increased inflation of key essentials, effectively creating the exact same conditions as a tax would on the population. Before we hear responses from the government, claiming that this money printing is for some purpose other than generating government funds for spending, let me quickly address the false pretext that the Bank of Canada and the government have ostensibly used to justify this money-printing bonanza. First, the Bank of Canada told the finance committee in the spring of 2020 that the program of purchasing government debt was designed to restore order in credit and capital markets. In fairness to the bank, there was disorder in the markets at that narrow period of time, in March 2020, as the world was responding to the sudden shock of the COVID closures. The bank officials noted at the time that there was a large bid-ask spread in bond markets, which effectively means that sellers of bonds were asking significantly more than buyers were willing to pay and as a result these markets were seizing up, threatening the ability of governments to raise cash and for markets to function. That was the case in late March 2020, but it only lasted about 10 days. That bid-ask spread vanished by early April, at which point bond prices not only began trading freely on public markets but also began increasing at an extraordinary pace. The bond prices began to inflate as central banks in general, but our central bank in particular, began buying them at an unprecedented pace. Furthermore, capital markets, while they did take a sudden drop in late March of that same year, had more than recovered by summer. In fact, today, our capital markets are higher than they have ever been. In fact, the Standard & Poor's TSX, which is the largest index of Canadian stocks, rose in market value above the size of our entire GDP for the first time in Canadian history and now stands somewhere around 125% of GDP, reaching record heights. Furthermore, as I have demonstrated, mortgage issuances have reached records and they rose faster than ever before in our history. The amount of cash in people's and businesses' bank accounts has increased by $200 billion. In other words, the absence of liquidity or the seizing up of capital and credit markets can no longer be used as a justification to continue printing money and pumping it into the financial system. Now we have more cash circulating in markets, both credit and capital, than ever before and more liquidity in the hands of businesses and households than ever before. Therefore, the claim that money printing is just designed in order to protect the liquidity of capital and credit markets is demonstrably false. Further evidence that it is false is the fact that the central bank has since changed its explanation for why it needed to continue printing money. It claimed then that it wanted to avoid disinflation or deflation. Apparently, they told us, this was the great risk that would result from COVID. However, as the evidence I have already presented demonstrates, there is no disinflation or deflation anywhere except perhaps in movie theatre and airplane tickets because people are effectively banned from buying either of them. Therefore, aside from those areas of the economy in which purchases are actually banned by local authorities for public health purposes, everything is actually increasing in price—

Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Canada and the government have then claimed that the reason it must continue to expand the money supply, print cash and provide it to the government is to avoid deflation or disinflation, which they have identified as a great threat from COVID. However, as I was saying, there is no evidence that either of these threats have manifested themselves. Outside of sectors for which consumers are banned from spending their money, like airlines and movie theatres, effectively, there is inflation everywhere. In fact, as I said, inflation has now exceeded not only the 2% target of the Bank of Canada, but the 1% to 3% acceptable range for inflation. We are well out of the woods of any concern that we are going to plunge this year or anytime in the immediate future into a deflationary spiral. Therefore, that cannot be the justification. Finally, the Bank of Canada has claimed that it is continuing to print money because unemployment remains high. It is true that unemployment is high, we are the second-highest unemployment region in the G7, but there is absolutely no evidence, historical or present, that printing money will do anything about that at all. Money printing has never created jobs and in fact, if the Bank of Canada were to look upon its own history in the 1970s when it began a similar program of money creation, the result was higher unemployment, unemployment that reached 12% and inflation that also reached 12% and then later interest rates to quell that inflation reaching 20%. That was the stagnation crisis of the early 1980s that, I might add, left us with not just the worst economic situation since the Depression, but also the highest suicide rate among Canadians. In other words, fighting unemployment cannot be the justification for printing money. Quite the contrary, it makes no sense. Therefore, that leaves one explanation for the ongoing money printing, and that is that it is intended to fund government operations. It is standard and customary for a member making a claim of a breach of privilege of this type to rely on expert witness evidence, that is to say, to rely on the scientists and others who know the facts, the way that they would testify as expert witnesses in a court of law. I will bring to your attention the views on this specific matter of the inflation tax of the most renowned economic scientists in the history of the world. I will start with a 1978 lecture from Nobel laureate economic scientist—

Mr. Speaker, I then address the third and final characteristic of a tax, which is that it is compulsory. This inflation tax is obviously compulsory. If people do not pay the inflation tax, they cannot buy food, which has gone up in price. They cannot buy housing, which has gone up in price. They cannot buy clothing, which has gone up in price. They cannot buy any of the essentials. The only way to avoid paying this inflation tax is to freeze, starve and go without the fuel to power one's life. In other words, other than to die, they have to pay the costs that are applied. The only alternative to that would be to violate a federal statute in the Criminal Code that bans people from stealing because that is, again, the only way to get around paying the inflated prices the government has imposed upon people. This inflation has all the three of the defining characteristics of a tax as provided in the Oxford English Dictionary: one, it raises money and is a levy for the government; two, it is paid by the people; and three, it is compulsory. It is all three of those things. The tradition of requiring every tax increase that is imposed on the population to come before Parliament is one that dates back 800 years to the Magna Carta. It is probably the reason we have Parliament. The number one point of tension between the commoner and the king has always been the king's insatiable appetite for tax revenue and the commoners' desire to resist that appetite and protect the fruits of their labour. If you were to rule that governments are allowed to do indirectly what they cannot do directly, that is to, for example, print money to fund their spending and pass on that cost through higher inflation to the population, you would effectively be setting a staggering precedent whereby governments can violate the principle of no taxation without representation by simply going around the parliamentary legislation process and raising taxes through the creation of cash. I finally point out that the reason for this rule is not just to stop the government from taking too much, but to stop it from taking from the wrong places. This is a tax we would never approve because it falls heaviest on those with the least, and in a roundabout way by inflating their assets, improves the fortunes of those with the most. In conclusion, if you were to put before the House a proposition to raise taxes on the poorest people in the land in order to increase the wealth of the most affluent people in the land and provide government with unlimited ability to spend, that would be voted down nearly unanimously because there is not a person in this chamber who would have the guts to go back to their constituents and defend such a voting decision. That is precisely why we have this precedent. It is why we have the privilege and the duty to vote on every single tax increase. I ask you to uphold these ancient English liberties that make Parliament relevant and that make this country a place of the commoners, not of the Crown.

Madam Speaker, the member asked if we have ever seen a horse. We have seen part of one, but my point of order is different from that. Government members are now filibustering this private member's bill and have done so for half an hour now, which is pushing back debate on the budget. We were anxious to get working on the budget. Had Liberal members not been filibustering this particular bill, would that have allowed us to get through the time-allocated portion of the debate on the budget? That is my question.

Madam Speaker, if people are tired of working hard and getting nowhere, while watching others who contribute next to nothing get fabulously wealthy, then they should stop whatever they are doing. I am about to tell them five easy tricks that will allow them to get fabulously rich in today's Liberal economy, while contributing less than everyone else. I know people are skeptical. In today's modern, progressive, altruistic, state-controlled era there is no such thing as greed and profit anymore. Let me quote Liberal luminary Mark Carney, who recently said: The state embodies collective ideals such as equality of opportunity, liberty, fairness, solidarity and sustainability. In this collective state, of course, there is no greed and, of course, no one wants to get rich and no one can, except for using these five tricks, so tune in and listen carefully. Quick trick number one: Apply for a grant claiming it will be used to pay workers, when in fact it will be used to fund CEO bonuses, dividends and share buybacks. Air Canada, for example, used this trick to pay $10 million to its executives. I can quote The Globe and Mail about the wage subsidy. Remember how the wage subsidy was supposed to be for companies that were so poor they could not pay their workers' wages? Here is what The Globe and Mail said about that: In some cases, companies have yet to lay off workers, increase shareholder dividends and distribute bonuses despite collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in government money. In the wealth management industry, The Globe found that at least 80 asset managers, including some of the top performing hedge funds of 2020, received the grant. The rich are always very good at getting money. In fact, remember all of those cash payments that were supposed to be for families in need? The top fifth of households got, on average, $6,700. The poorest households got $4,000, so the rich got almost two-thirds more than the poor, even though the poor are the ones who lost their jobs. People should be rich and apply for government money, then use their connections, consultants and accountants to maximize their take. That is trick number one. Trick number two: Offer the Prime Minister's cabinet and family fees, expenses and luxurious trips. For example, the Kielburger brothers gave vacations, expenses and fees to the Prime Minister's team worth about half a million dollars. For that they got a half-a-billion-dollar grant. Then the Aga Khan gave the Prime Minister a quarter-of-a-million-dollar vacation, and he got a $15-million grant. These kinds of returns on investment would make Warren Buffett blush. A pro tip: People must have connections in the RCMP because, of course, much of this is illegal and even criminal, and they might get charged without having friends in law enforcement. Get-rich-quick trick number three: When central banks are throwing money out the window, stand next to the window. That is what the financial institutions have been doing. The Bank of Canada has created $3 billion and has used it to buy government debt. This is debt that the government sells to the banks on a Monday, and the Bank of Canada buys it back on a Tuesday, only at a higher price and at a profit to the financial institution. The trick here is also to own a mansion, gold, land, stocks or bonds, all of which will be inflated in value, increasing people's net worth. This trick worked for Canada's 20 wealthiest Canadians who, in the first six months of this money-printing scheme saw their net worth rise by a staggering 32%, while our waitresses, airline stewardesses and small businesses got clobbered and $100 billion vanished from our economy. Somehow, the very rich with all of their assets managed to get richer still. The lesson is the next time the government is printing money, start off by being rich, because then people can be richer still. When the Bank of Canada is printing money and throwing it out the window, stand next to the window. Get-rich-quick trick number four: Get into one of the fastest-growing industries in Canada. Yes, the economy is collapsing, but there are two industries that are on fire. The first is to become a consultant for the government. Since this Prime Minister took office, the federal government consulting budget has grown from $8 billion to $16 billion. For those Liberals over there who are missing their calculators, that is a 100% increase. People can get in on some of that cash. These are the kinds of jobs people can do these days, working from their living room, in their pyjamas, on Zoom: consulting; writing, for example, presentations that nobody ever sees; making up buzzwords that nobody even understands; doing PowerPoint presentations that no one will ever look at. It is 100% growth, and they can get in on some of that $16 billion too. Get-rich-quick trick number five is the fastest-growing industry in Canada, in fact, faster than the consultants. This industry is lobbying. Under the previous Harper government, there were 9,300 lobbying interactions in 2015. Last year, there were 28,000, a 200% increase in paid lobbying interactions. What is a lobbyist? People have heard of stockbrokers, real estate brokers and insurance brokers. A lobbyist is a power broker. For the most part, it is someone whom people can hire. They can pay them and turn their money into power and that power into even more money. If people want a loan, a grant, a handout, a regulatory protection or some other political favour to get rich, they hire a lobbyist. This industry is on fire for a very specific reason. Why? Because it is a product of government. The bigger a government gets, the more lobbyists it needs. Therefore, as government has almost doubled in size over the last five years, so too has the lobbying industry grown. Why? Because businesses want a return on investment. If there is money in software, they invest in technology; money in copper, they invest in mining; money in government, they invest in lobbying. The correlation between lobbying and government spending is almost a perfect match, not just here but also in the United States. As the government in Washington grosses a share of the GDP, so too does the amount corporations spend on lobbying that government. They go where the money is, and you should too, Madam Speaker. That is why I am letting you in on these five secret tricks. I am not asking for anything in return, except from time to time you might let me speak a bit more than otherwise would be allowed. That is a small price to pay for the kind of big money you are going to be making with these five easy tricks that I am sharing here and now. How does any of this make sense? We were told by Mark Carney that greed would be gone. We just needed to replace that nasty free market economy, which is motivated only by self-interest, with the altruistic power of the state. What, in fact, is the state? The state is just legalized force. It is the only entity that can apply force. Would they not think that someone who is greedy and self-interested would be less greedy and self-interested if they were acting through a creature that operates by power and force? It means that socialists have been trying to teach us for all these years that if we expand the power of the state, all of a sudden we will bring out altruism, that the weak and the poor will be advantaged. In what relationship of force have the weak and poor ever been advantaged? Of course, the weak and poor are disadvantaged and the powerful and strong get ahead when force is applied. We know that the same base instincts will exist when the state gets big. As Macaulay wrote: Where'er ye shed the honey, the buzzing flies will crowd; Where'er ye fling the carrion, the raven's croak is loud; Where'er down Tiber garbage floats, the greedy pike ye see; And wheresoe'er such lord is found, such client still will be. I notice how he used flies and honey, not bees and honey. Why? Because flies do not make honey. They consume it without producing it. They are the same parasitical creatures that those who get rich off the state are. They do not produce anything. They do not contribute anything. They take without making. If they were bees, they would be contributing. A free market economy is sort of like bees. They cross-pollinate, an aspect of trade and exchange that we see between a customer and a small business, between a worker and an employer, between an investor and an entrepreneur. That voluntary exchange is coming back, and that is why my five tricks are a limited-time offer. Soon, this state-run economy will be eliminated and replaced with a free enterprise system where everyone will go back to getting ahead by helping others and by improving their country by engaging the voluntary exchange of work for wages, product for payment and investment for interest, a system that makes everybody better off; a system where people have to be truly empathetic because, as entrepreneurs, they cannot improve their own lot unless they sell something to somebody that they want to buy, in other words, unless they make someone else's life better off. That is the way people will get rich in the future, but for the time being, they have my five quick tricks for getting rich.

Madam Speaker, I did not accuse the RCMP of criminal activity; I accused the Prime Minister of criminal activity. It is a criminal offence to accept a gift or benefit from any person with whom one is doing government business. It is right there in the Criminal Code. In fact, we complained to the RCMP about this, and the RCMP did not say that the Prime Minister was innocent of the crime; it said that it could not “productively pursue” the investigation. We still do not know what that means, but at some point perhaps the commissioner of the RCMP will explain why it is that she could not “productively pursue” an investigation into the Prime Minister for taking a quarter-million-dollar vacation from someone who was seeking and was given a federal government grant.

Madam Speaker, of course we support small business. We have fought for small business from the very beginning of this crisis, and we will continue to fight for small business, but I would add that the solution is to accelerate the safe reopening of our economy so that those businesses can get their customers back. What they want is customer sales, not permanent dependence on government. They know the government cannot pay the bills forever. What they need is their customers back, and for that to happen, we need to safely reopen the economy as quickly as possible.

Madam Speaker, this is a great question. First of all, MMT, as they call modern monetary theory, can also stand for “more money today” or “magic money tree”. It is this new theory where governments will simply print cash. The central bank creates the cash, sends it over in a Brink's truck every day to the Prime Minister's Office, and he just starts throwing the money around. What we have now is a bit different. To start with, we do not have a direct sale of debt to the bank. It first gets funnelled through the financial sector in Canada so that it can take a cut and get even richer before that newly printed cash trickles down to the people at the bottom. However, the bottom line is that what we have today is very similar to MMT. It is printing mass sums of cash, which inflates the assets of the rich and raises the consumer prices of the poor. It is a massive new inflation tax that will only help big government, big business and the super-rich at the expense of the working class. That is why we are speaking out against it. As for Mr. Carney, the member is right. He is part of the World Economic Forum, which the finance minister joins, which says that in 2030, only nine years from now, we will own nothing and we will love it. That is the agenda of these people. Maybe that is why, over the last year, they have done everything in their power to make housing completely unaffordable so that nobody can afford it except them, a small group of landed aristocrats, while the common people are out in the field doing the work. We on this side want to democratize property ownership and make it available to everybody.

Mr. Speaker, today it is clear that we have an inflationary bubble. The government is just trying to pump even more hot air into that bubble. It has created a trillion-dollar debt, which means too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. Now, in addition to not having paycheques, Canadians who do work are seeing their paycheques nibbled up by this growing level of inflation. Will the government reverse its inflationary policy, stop spending what it does not have, restore fiscal responsibility and allow Canadians to afford their cost of living?

Mr. Speaker, so she just wants us to help her give more and more inflationary spending into the economy, driving up the cost of living, particularly on the working poor, and devaluing the wages of the Canadian people. We have the second-highest unemployment in the G7, higher than the OECD, higher than the U.K., the U.S., Japan and Germany. Now those same unemployed Canadians are facing higher prices for shelter, fuel and food. Instead of ramming through another inflationary budget that drives up the cost of living, why will she not actually reverse course and protect the value of the dollars Canadians earn?

Mr. Speaker, I speak of this illegal inflation tax, in which the government is funding its spending with newly created currency that increases consumer prices through the levy of inflation. Before I go any further, let me clarify the difference between inflation and the inflation tax. It is not a tax when, independent and separate from government, consumer prices rise due to supply and demand dynamics. However, when they rise because the government and central bank coordinate to expand the money supply, thus raising consumer prices above what they would otherwise be and force consumers to pay what they would otherwise pay, that is a tax. I do not raise this question of privilege lightly, but after careful consideration of the nature of the government's actions and their real-world effects on Canadians, both of which I have described. As well, I rely heavily on the jurisprudence from the Chair and the clear legal definitions of a tax. To prove this breach, I would have to show three parts. First, that there is a privilege for members of Parliament at stake, and that the privilege is governments cannot tax what the House does not expressly approve through votes by each member in the chamber. Second, I would need to prove the policy in fact imposes a tax. Finally, I would need to provide proof the House did not approve this tax. Together, these points prove the government committed a prima facie case of breach of my parliamentary privilege by denying me the opportunity to vote on this tax increase before it took effect. Let me start with the first part. Is there a privilege for each member to vote on any new taxes introduced or imposed on Canadians? The answer is yes. In fact, this privilege on Canadian soil originated with the British North America Act, section 53 of the Constitution, which reads: Bills for appropriating any Part of the Public Revenue, or for imposing any Tax or Impost, shall originate in the House of Commons. This constitutional principle is further enshrined in Standing Order 80(1), which states: All aids and supplies granted to the Sovereign by the Parliament of Canada are the sole gift of the House of Commons, and all bills for granting such aids and supplies ought to begin with the House, as it is the undoubted right of the House to direct, limit, and appoint in all such bills, the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, limitations and qualifications of such grants, which are not alterable by the Senate. The failure of this House to “direct, limit, and appoint” revenue-raising measures is accordingly not only a violation of the Constitution but also of the privileges of members of the House set out in the Standing Orders. In the Eurig Estate case, the courts considered the constitutional implications of a tax raised through such improper and indirect means. Justice Jack Major, writing for the majority, wrote that section 53 of the Constitution “...codifies the principle of no taxation without representation, by requiring any bill that imposes a tax to originate with the legislature.” Justice Major goes on to say “My interpretation of s. 53...prohibits not only the Senate, but also any other body other than the directly elected legislature, from imposing a tax on its own accord.” Any other body—

Mr. Speaker, you have notice from me of a question of privilege. I am rising today because of the government's imposition of a new tax without needed approval of the House of Commons. It has breached the privileges of all members and has done so in contravention of Standing Orders 79(1), 80 and 83.1, as well as principles laid out on pages 827, 828, 829, 831, 833, 835, 841, 893 and 906 through 908 of Bosc and Gagnon's House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, 2017. There are also numerous rulings by the Chair and, most important of all, section 53 of the Constitution Act, 1867. In essence, I am rising today to ask that you find a prima facie case of breach of privilege because of the government's imposition of a secretive and insidious tax designed to raise funds for it to spend at the expense of the Canadian people without holding appropriate votes in the House of Commons and possibly in direct contravention of other laws that have been passed by this House. The new tax of which I speak is designed to raise more money for the government to spend. In fact, it raised more money for the government to spend in the last fiscal year than all other sources of revenue combined. This tax should be called the inflation tax, which is—

Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, Justice Major made clear that it is his interpretation that no body, other than the House of Commons, can initiate a tax increase. I would submit that “no body” includes the Bank of Canada itself, in collaboration with the government. When the court said “there should be no taxation without representation”, it got to the heart of my point here today. It stated: ...the Lieutenant Governor in Council cannot impose a new tax ab initio without the authorization of the legislature.... “The Governor in Council has no power, proprio vigore, to impose taxes unless under authority specifically delegated to it by Statute. The power of taxation is exclusively in Parliament.” The court went on to say that section 53 “ensures parliamentary control over, and accountability for, taxation” and quoted the distinguished legal scholar Elmer Driedger, as follows: Through the centuries, the principle was maintained that taxation required representation and consent. The only body in Canada that meets this test is the Commons. The elected representatives of the people sit in the Commons...and, consistently with history and tradition, they may well insist that they alone have the right to decide to the last cent what money is to be granted and what taxes are to be imposed. Elsewhere, the court similarly held in the Westbank First Nation case: ...the Canadian Constitution (through the operation of s. 53 of the Constitution Act, 1867) demands that there should be no taxation without representation. In other words, individuals being taxed in a democracy have the right to have their elected representatives debate whether their money should be appropriated, and determine how it should be spent.

Mr. Speaker, just because the member does not understand the fact, that does not erase that it is indeed a fact. I thank the member for Timmins—James Bay for his help along the way. Peter Hogg, who, until his death last year, was Canada's leading constitutional scholar, underscored the point that I am making now in a 2002 article: It must be remembered that the taxing power is the one upon which the rest of governance depends. As the King and Parliament both recognized in the 17th century, nothing important can be done without resources, and it is control of the taxing power that provides the resources. Moreover, no other power has as direct and immediate an effect on citizens as the taxing power, and (for that reason) nothing government does is as unpopular as the imposition and collection of taxes. There is a huge incentive for governments to offload this power to a delegate, who can raise taxes quietly without any irritating fuss in the Parliament or Legislature, and who can shoulder the blame when the media do get wind of the action. As Professor Hogg noted, this is not a new problem. In fact, it is one of the oldest and most important matters in the system of parliamentary democracy. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that taxation is the reason we are all here today. The Crown's power to tax and the need to obtain the consent of those paying the taxes is why Parliament exists in the first place. We could look at 800 years of history, going back to the Magna Carta, to find that the principal disagreement between Crown and commoner has been on the subject of taxation. It is essential to the privileges of every member of this House that every single levy or tax come before us to be voted on before it is enacted. I think I have clearly proven that it is the privilege of every member to vote on a tax increase before it is imposed. What is the tax of which I speak? The answer is, it is the inflation tax. Is excessive inflation, which results from excessive money creation, in fact a tax? We can look to the definition of “tax” found in Oxford Languages, a 150-year-old dictionary, which defines taxes as follows: A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits, or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions. I will break down that definition. First, it is state revenue, “levied by the government”. Second, it is “added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.” Third, it is a “compulsory contribution”. First, is the inflation tax designed to generate state revenue, levied by the government? I will give the data to prove that in fact it is. In February 2020, the Bank of Canada owned $106 billion of government debt. As of the end of last month, that number had reached $412 billion. That is an increase of almost $300 billion in one year. It is also an increase of 300%. Last year, the amount that the Bank of Canada produced for the government by purchasing government debt was over $300 billion. It was the single biggest source of revenue for the government, bigger than income tax, consumption tax, tariffs and private loans combined. Never before has the Bank of Canada been the single biggest provider of funds for the government's operation. It does this through a process whereby the government sells debt onto the market and the bank buys it back at a higher price. This has the effect of flooding government coffers with cheap credit that it could spend liberally, as it did last year and continues to do right now. The result is a massive increase in the money supply. When the Bank of Canada uses its balance sheet to buy government debt, it increases the number of dollars in circulation. In the period since late winter and early spring of 2020, the money supply has increased by over $300 billion. In fact, from February 2020 to February 2021, the money supply grew by $354 billion. The deficit for the last fiscal year was $354 billion. In other words, the same amount the government needed to borrow was the amount that the Bank of Canada created. This led to a 20% year-over-year increase in the number of dollars in coins, bills and bank deposits. That is the biggest increase since 1974, which was the last time the government went on a money-printing binge, which led to major inflation crises thereafter. For context, the increase in the money supply is so large that it could fund our Canadian Armed Forces for 10 years. To use another measure, fully one in six dollars in the entire M2 money supply has been created in the last year alone. In the fiscal year 2021, the Bank of Canada was the single largest source of funds for the Government of Canada. All revenue from other sources was $294 billion, and net new borrowing was $41 billion, but revenue from the bank was $303 billion. That $303 billion is an extraordinary and unprecedented sum. The bank did not do this on its own. Let me now speak about the direct coordination between the government and the bank that led to this massive increase in the money supply. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance actually said that there was coordination between the bank and the government. The coincidence that we see in the amount of money printed and the amount of money spent demonstrates this coordination as well. For example—

Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out before the interruption, according to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, the government had been coordinating with the central bank to produce these funds and these funds had been used to spend. The massive dollar figures involved that I mentioned earlier are not only staggering and unprecedented, but may also be illegal. In fact, I stumbled on a section of the Bank of Canada Act, section 18(j), only hours before I was originally planning to make this question of privilege. Having read that section and looked at the numbers, I came to the conclusion that there very well might be a breach of law involved in what the bank and the government have colluded to do. Allow me to read the section in question, section 18, which states that the bank may: (j) make loans to the Government of Canada or the government of any province, but such loans outstanding at any one time shall not, in the case of the Government of Canada, exceed one-third of the estimated revenue of the Government of Canada for its fiscal year... I turn your attention, Mr. Speaker, to table A1.4, “Summary Statement of Transactions”, budget 2021, projected revenues $355.1 billion. To respect section 18(j) of the Bank of Canada Act, which limits the bank's ability to lend money to the government to no more than one-third of projected budgetary revenues, the bank would be effectively capped in its loans to the government at $118 billion, $118 billion being one-third of the $355 billion of projected revenues. In fact, the Bank of Canada balance sheet shows that it now holds $415 billion, almost $300 billion more than the legal cap provided in the act. When I discovered this apparent breach, I immediately delayed my introduction of this question of privilege to spend the time to verify and re-verify my calculations. I had never seen a government body quite so flagrantly violate limits that Parliament has placed upon it in statutory law, so I thought there must be some mistake. However, as I crunched the numbers, I realized that no, in fact, the one-third limit was breached. I then reached out to the Library of Parliament to conduct a full review of all the legislation passed to approve emergency COVID spending since the spring of 2020 to find out if maybe the section was temporarily suspended or a special exemption to it was created to allow this kind of dollar figure to be lent from the bank to the government. Sure enough, the Library of Parliament said that there was no such exemption or suspension of the section; it is still in place. In other words, this research shows, and I ask that you, Mr. Speaker, and your trusted advisers and the officials at the Library of Parliament to verify my claim here, that the Bank of Canada has breached limits that Parliament has imposed on its ability to lend money to the government. These limits do not exist without reason. There is a reason Parliament chose deliberately to write a section into the Bank of Canada Act limiting the amount of debt the bank could buy. The reason is this: Parliament foresaw that future governments might try to use the printing presses over at the bank to pay for spending that it could not raise through the more normal process of taxation. With the limits Parliament placed on the Bank of Canada's purchase of government debt, Parliament effectively banned the government from raising taxes by inflationary money creation instead of by legal and legitimate taxation. That the government and the bank have circumvented that ban and broken a law of Parliament breaches the privileges of every member of the House to vote on laws that are made and repealed. In the process, the government has breached the principle of the independence of the central bank. This breach is not the result of the independent action of the bank. The parliamentary secretary to the finance minister, during the appearance of the Governor of the Bank of Canada before the finance committee on June 16, 2020, said, “There's been an enormous coordination between OSFI, the bank and the federal government.” I have given the fiscal and mathematical evidence to show that this coordination has occurred. In fact, not only did it occur last year when the bank bought effectively 85% of the government's deficit, and wherein the bank increased the money supply by exactly the same amount that the government borrowed in the previous fiscal year, but that “enormous coordination” has continued into this fiscal year. On April 19, the Minister of Finance introduced a budget in the House projecting a $154 billion deficit, or borrowing effectively $3 billion a week. Two days later, the Governor of the Bank of Canada held a press conference, announcing that his bank would be buying $3 billion a week of government debt. In other words, the government is borrowing $3 billion a week and the central bank is buying $3 billion a week. The government is running roughly a $155 billion deficit and the bank is lending roughly $155 billion throughout the year. In other words, this coordination is not just in words—

Mr. Speaker, as I said, the second characteristic of a tax is that it adds to the cost of some goods, services and transactions. Just today, Statistics Canada released fresh data showing what consumers have known for months; that inflation has rocketed up to 3.6%, well above the Bank of Canada's 2% target. This data was essential to my argument today, thus one of the reasons why I waited for its publication before presenting this. As of this morning, three of four measures of the Bank of Canada for inflation show that inflation has breached the 2% target. Several product groups were well above that. Gasoline is up 43.4%; home ownership replacement costs, 11.3%; and durable goods, which includes things like cars, appliances and furniture, is up 5%. That is just to name a few. This is demonstrated proof that people are, in fact, paying the cost of the inflation tax. Food prices are also on sharp rise. According to the latest Canada Food Price Report, food costs increased 2.3% last year, with an expected 4.5% to 6.5% increase in meat, 3.5% to 5.5% increase in bakery and 4.5% to 6.5% increase in vegetables this year. Housing prices have ballooned 30% from March 2020 to March 2021. This is where the cause and effect is most evident. COVID should have reduced housing prices. The wages with which people buy houses dropped. People lost their jobs, making it harder to place offers on homes. To escape lockdowns, more people moved to the countryside, where prices per square foot are lower. Immigration came to a halt, reducing the number of buyers in the market. All these factors would have driven demand and therefore prices down. In fact, the country's top housing regulator, CMHC, predicted prices would drop as much as 14% for those reasons, and they did begin to drop in March and April of last year. Then, suddenly, as the Bank of Canada's increase in the money supply began flooding into the market, prices began to reverse. The government pumped $356 billion of brand new, newly created cash into the system, and that was exactly the size of the deficit and the size of the money supply growth—

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, housing prices were dropping until the bank began printing its money. The increase in the money supply flooded into the mortgage system. From the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021, mortgage lending grew by 41% and, as a result, from April 2020 to April 2021, housing prices went up about 42%. In other words, there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the increase in the money supply and the increase in prices. This is supported by years of research by academia. For example, Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”, and John Maynard Keynes—

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the finance minister decided to delay her own budget by punting debate on that budget in order to ram through Bill C-10, this at a time when our unemployment is higher than the U.K., the U.S., Japan, Germany, the G7 and OECD, and there are half a million missing jobs. That same budget said that all the pre-COVID jobs would be recovered by this month. Will the finance minister keep her word and guarantee that every single pre-COVID job will be recovered by this month when the numbers come out early next month?

Mr. Speaker, if she likes her budget so much, it is so strange that yesterday she decided to delay it. Maybe it is for the better that she is delaying her own budget. So far what it has delivered is the second-highest unemployment in the G7; the highest inflation in a decade; the fastest increases in housing prices, preventing the poor working class and young from ever owning a home; and the prospect of a forthcoming debt crisis. All I am asking is whether she will keep her promise from chart 35 in that same budget. Will the government have reinstated all the pre-COVID jobs by this month, yes or no?

Mr. Speaker, 2(b) or not 2(b): That is the question. Section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is at stake. It reads: freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression...freedom of the press and other media of communication. Section 2(b) of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees us all the liberty to express ourselves without reserve and without coercion from the state. That is a core principle of our constitutional heritage. Although it was embedded in the charter in '82, it goes back hundreds of years through the English liberty this parliamentary system transmitted from one generation to the next. A great English author, Orwell, said, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” This bill seeks to take away that right and those freedoms. Do not take my word for it. I can quote directly from one of at least two former commissioners of the regulatory body that would be empowered under this bill to control Internet content. Peter Menzies described the bill as an assault on freedom of expression. Another former CRTC member explained that it would allow political appointees to determine what we see and say on the Internet. There is a lot we do not know about this bill, first because numerous of its amendments were voted before they were even made public at committee. In my 17 years here, I have never seen that happen before. Second, we do not know things about this bill because the minister cannot answer basic questions. For example, the bill supposedly protects Canadian content, but the minister cannot tell us what Canadian content is. He was questioned by our terrific critic about numerous things. She asked whether he understood whether they were Canadian content or not, and he could not answer. We do not know what will be promoted or demoted online under the rubric of Canadian content because no one in Parliament seems able to define it. I have a very simple definition. If it is made by a Canadian and it is posted online, it is Canadian content. Unfortunately, that definition does not work for the Liberal government. If it did, we would not need the bill. We would just let people continue to post the things they want and watch the things they want in freedom and peace. The Liberals want a series of bureaucrats, unnamed, unelected and unknown, to decide what Canadian content is heard and what is not. For example, when the CBC runs an effectively plagiarized news story one can get on CNN from Washington with a Washington-based reporter, that is exclusively about American politics and does not even say the word Canada, it will be considered Canadian content. Why is this? It is because it was paid for, tragically, by Canadian tax dollars. Other than that, there is literally nothing Canadian about it. Another example is a community association in a Canadian neighbourhood telling us about a local food drive. It is in a Canadian neighbourhood. It has a Canadian author of a Canadian story, is a Canadian initiative in a Canadian city and is read almost exclusively by Canadian readers, yet it would not be considered, presumably, Canadian content and therefore would be demoted. That is just the daily pedestrian content we get online. What about the more contentious stuff? The government is going to decide what kinds of political views are Canadian. Of course, endorsing the Prime Minister's leftist ideology will be a prerequisite of Canadiana. We can be sure of that. Liberal Party members have effectively been saying for generations that they and only they represent Canadian values, therefore only the values they espouse would be considered Canadian for the purpose of this act. Furthermore, not only can the Liberals not tell us what content would be acceptable and what would not, but they cannot tell us who would be subjected to the bill. Originally, they had an explicit exemption for users: the everyday Joe and Jane who post stuff online. It is called user-generated content. The justice department said, “Don't worry, the bill won't affect any of them, because there's a very specific exemption that excludes them.” However, the Liberals showed up at committee and, all of a sudden and just like that, the exemption was removed. Now everyday Joe and Jane who are posting online are regulated. In effect, the minister said, “No, we won't bother them. We'll only bother people who have large social media followings.” I think he said on television that it was something like 100,000 followers. Well, I have 100,000 subscribers on my YouTube page, so presumably I would be subject to this regulation. We would have some sort of bureaucrat over at the CRTC judging whether my political views were Canadian enough to be seen by Canadian eyes. Those things not considered Canadian enough would presumably be filtered, demoted or eliminated altogether from the Internet. The platforms on which we make our political statements would obviously be concerned about the penalties they could face if they end up on the wrong side of a bureaucrat or a politician; therefore, they would begin self-censorship and proactively and organically censor things they thought the government might not want people to see. Is it not interesting that the Liberals are in such a rush to get the bill passed before the election? Is there content they do not want Canadians to see before voting? That is the only explanation for the sudden rush. The Liberals have been in power for half a decade now, and this was never a priority before. All of a sudden, they need to ram it through by changing rules, voting on things we have not seen and curtailing committee hearings in a way that has never been done in parliamentary history, because it has to be a law and these bureaucrats must have these powers before the fall when the Prime Minister wants to call a snap election. What is most amazing of all is that at least 95% of artists are against the bill. If we look online at the artists I have referred to, the actual producers of artistic material and the ones who are competing in the open and free market, they are not in need of a subsidy, because people actually want to watch and consume what they produce. The lobbyists, on the other hand, who are often quoted by the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Liberals, are all in favour of the bill. They want to shut out the competition because they have had oligopolistic powers for years. The broadcasting corporation loves the bill because it would allow the restoration of its oligopolistic power. It is a great corporatist power grab, with big government and big corporations working together as they always do. This reminds of Frédéric Bastiat talking about the French economy. There were all these controls to protect every interest group from competition. He effectively said, “I think we should take this to the logical end and I want to ban windows, because that will double the business for the candlemakers. Without windows, there would be no light indoors during the day and one would need more candles to keep the place illuminated. Let us shut out the sun to ban competition with candles and create more jobs for the candlemakers.” Of course, he meant it in jest, but he was trying to demonstrate the absurdity of trying to bring about prosperity by banning competition. In fact, we have better prosperity and greater light of day when the windows are open so the light can come in and everybody can see and choose for themselves. What is the government so afraid of? Is it that people might say and see things online that the government does not want to be said and seen? Why not allow the free exchange of ideas to determine which ones rise to the top? Sure, there is a clash. Democracy is always messy. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”, as Churchill said. It is through that clash of ideas that the best ones emerge and we as a people move forward; however, only if we stand true to our constitutional heritage, 2(b), and uphold that freedom will we achieve that great success.

Mr. Speaker, who decides? That is the question. She says that the act will ensure there is a balance. All right, but who will decide what that balance is? There will be an official who says that a balance means 50% of one opinion and 50% of another, and that there is not enough room for a third opinion. Who will decide what is a different opinion? There are millions of opinions. It is not possible for a government agency to decide on an appropriate proportion of diverse opinions. It is the people who watch with their eyes, speak with their mouths and decide for themselves. I find it astounding that the Bloc wants to give a federal government in Ottawa the power to decide instead of giving that power to Quebeckers. We support the freedom of every Quebecker.

Mr. Speaker, why do the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals all support the bill? It is simple: They are all the same. They all believe in putting the state above the citizen. That is the core of their ideology. They believe in worshipping at the altar of the state, that big government should decide and the people should just follow. All of them bought into that notion. They have always believed it but they heard, in the words of the finance minister a “political opportunity” in COVID. It was a political opportunity that saw the Prime Minister attempt to give himself the power to raise any tax to any level without parliamentary approval for two years after the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The Liberals attempted to grab unprecedented spending powers and yes, they have now tried to grab people's freedom of expression. All the leftist authoritarian parties believe in that ideology and that is exactly why they support this bill. That is the easiest question I will ever answer in this place.

Mr. Speaker, it is the same as what he has been hearing. The member has been championing the rights of all Canadians. The Toronto Star went looking for support for this bill and talked to a group of Canadians of African origin who said that under the old CRTC rules they could not get their voices heard. Only with the freedom of the Internet have they been able to speak up. We want to preserve that freedom for people of all backgrounds, of all races, from all places. That is what freedom means.

Mr. Speaker, not only are millionaire corporate Liberals like Mark Carney refusing to source raw materials from the Xinjiang region of China, which powers its production of those materials with slave labour and coal-fired manufacturing, here the government is refusing to rule out partnering with companies like iFlyTek, which does AI research to help identify the voice of Chinese political dissidents and carry out that very same genocide. Will the government reverse course and stop partnering with technology companies that enable genocide?

Mr. Speaker, the member said he is concerned about the Uighur Muslim minority in China. He refused to condemn the genocide being committed against that very population and then he wags his fingers at us. The question was very specific. The federal government is funding research at universities that are now partnering with companies like iFlyTek, which is using voice recognition technology that helps the Chinese government intercept the phone calls of the Uighur population to identify what they are saying and help carry out the genocide. If he is as moral as he claims, why will he not rule out any of those types of partners?

Mr. Speaker, speaking of our international partners, the U.S. State Department has blacklisted iFlyTek because of its role in supporting the genocide in the Xinjiang region. The Australians have recognized the company likewise, and recently the Alberta government has called for a national policy that bans technological co-operation with companies like this one that aid in the commission of genocide. Will the government announce today that there will be no more funding of partnerships with technology companies that help commit genocide?

Mr. Speaker, Canada now has $4 of debt for every dollar that our economy brings in. That is a record ratio and is double the average over the past 60 years. The government is printing money and has created $354 billion through the Bank of Canada. This is driving up inflation, especially with respect to house prices. This inflation could drive interest rates up, which would affect the record levels of debt held by our families, businesses and governments. Does the member agree with me that we could end up with a crisis if interest rates rise before we reduce our debt?

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about debt. Canada has $4 of debt for $1 of GDP, a record ratio. There is $8.6 trillion of debt. The government is printing money to pay for all this debt, which is driving up inflation that will lead to higher interest rates and cause a debt crisis. Does the member worry that when the government's policy of printing money to drive up inflation and interest rates fully plays out, we will have a debt crisis?

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for South Surrey—White Rock. We have a decision to make as to whether we want to be a property-owning democracy or a landed aristocracy. That might seem stark, and it is, but it is also true. It is 100% true if we look at the facts. According to CMHC, for a house to be affordable it should not consume more than 30% of a family's income. Currently, in Canada, the average house would consume 50% of the average family's household income. In other words, the average house is two-thirds more expensive than the average family can presently afford. That is just the average. Across Canada, there are more extreme examples. For example, in Toronto it takes 68% of the average family's income to own the average house. In Vancouver it is 79%, and that is 79% of pre-tax income, which means that it is mathematically impossible, not just difficult, for the average Vancouverite to own the average home. Why is that? It is because people do not have 79% of their pre-tax income left when the government is done with them. Even if they spent 100% of their post-tax income, it would not be enough. Even if they ate no food, bought no clothes and had zero recreation they would not have enough money, as average Vancouverites, to own the average home. What is causing that? Why is it that Vancouver is the second-most expensive housing market in the world when we compare average income with average house price? Toronto is number five. Both of them are ahead of Manhattan, London, England, and San Francisco: places with more people, more money and much less land. Is it because we do not have enough land in Canada? We are the 10th-least population dense country in the world. There are more places where there is nobody than there are places where there is anybody in Canada. If we spread our population out equally across the land, there would be only one person standing on every three CFL-sized football fields. That is how much land we have in this country, yet somehow we have a housing shortage. Clearly, it is not because of a lack of land. Could it be there is a booming economy that is driving up housing prices? Of course not. The GDP went down $120 billion last year and has not recovered. What else is it? Is it COVID? COVID should have reduced housing prices. When CMHC testified at the finance committee at the beginning of COVID, it said that the pandemic would reduce housing prices by 14%. The Bank of Canada said it would be a disinflationary event, and it should have been. People were moving farther out into the country where per-square-foot costs are actually lower. Furthermore, their jobs were threatened so they would be less inclined to get approved for mortgages, and their earned wages were down, which means they would have less money with which to pay, which should have driven down housing prices. Instead, housing prices went up. They started going down in April 2020 before rocketing up 40% since that time. What is the real cause? The answer is that the government is restricting supply and ballooning demand. Let us start with supply. Here in Canada we have one of the slowest processes on Earth to get from buying land to building on it. In some jurisdictions this takes seven years. In Canada in general, it takes forever to get anything approved. In fact, out of 37 OECD nations, we are ranked number 36 for the time it takes to get a building permit for a warehouse, and it is not much different for housing. Toronto's per-unit-of-housing cost of government is 50% higher than the average in United States municipalities. The charges alone consume almost a quarter of a million dollars in costs for every new unit of housing built in Toronto. The global cost of government for a new unit of housing in Vancouver is $600,000. That is just to pay the cost of government. This, of course, keeps aristocratic, leafy neighbourhoods gentrified and keeps other people out. It makes the rich richer because they get to have an exclusive domain over these neighbourhoods, where no one else can build and get in. That is very good if someone already has a house as it increases their wealth, but those who are not yet in are shut out. It is as if there was a wall built around these neighbourhoods, where only the rich are allowed inside the wall and everyone else has to try to pay the gatekeeper to get in, but of course most cannot afford to do so. Therefore, the government restricts supply. What does the government do with demand? It has pumped $356 billion of brand new, created currency into the financial system. The Bank of Canada began printing money in March of 2020, and from February of that year to February of this year the money supply grew by $354 billion. What was the size of the federal deficit? It was $354 billion, exactly the same number, so the printed money was to pay for the government's overspending. What did that do to inflation? As we know, inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. As the supply of money goes up, prices rise with it, and this started with housing prices. In fact, from Q1 2020 to Q1 2021, the money that went into the financial system and the mortgage system increased new mortgage borrowing by 41%. Does anyone know what the price increase was for housing between April of last year and April of this year? It was 42%. The newly created money jacked up mortgage borrowing by 41% and housing prices by 42%. Is it coincidence? Of course not. These are the simple laws of supply and demand, and they are working very well for the very rich. For someone who owns a $10-million mansion, the increase in that person's home value, depending on which month to month is chosen, is somewhere between $3 million and $4 million. That is money that individual gets for doing absolutely nothing. For a working class person with the dream of buying a home, that dream just got more remote and more unlikely. Furthermore, landlords are about to raise people's rents because the cost of property has risen. He or she will use this, perhaps in some cases unavoidably so, to raise the rents of the people who live there. The wages of working-class people measured in the amount of real estate they can buy are down in value by 30% to 40% in just one year. Meanwhile, the wealth of the super rich is way up. Printing money raises the prices of the things that the poor must buy and that the rich already own. It is a colossal wealth transfer from the working wage earner to the wealthy asset owner. What do we do? Sometimes the answers are actually simple: not easy, but simple. We should open up the country to construction so we build more homes and increase supply, and we should stop printing money in order to avoid pumping helium into prices. In other words, we should start building and stop printing. It is more about what the government should stop doing than what it should start doing. It should allow people to keep the value of their dollar, to buy things that are of worth with that dollar and build things that will make their lives better. That is how we restore our property-owning democracy. It is how we go back from today's aristocracy to what Canada should be, which is a meritocracy.

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her very good question. Young people are the primary victims of this system because they do not own property, so the increase in value does not benefit them. It is now harder than ever for them to buy a house, and their salary has less real value for buying a home. Here is the solution. First, we must encourage the municipalities and the provinces to build more quickly at lower cost and with less red tape in order to increase the housing supply. Second, the Bank of Canada must stop printing money and start stabilizing our currency instead of devaluing it because it is issuing too much. Protecting our money and allowing homes to be built quickly are two suggestions that would best resolve the problem.

Madam Speaker, first, that member has been in government for five years. If he wanted to ban REITs, he could have done it in that time. He has not. REITs are still legal: They are still a tax advantage. He has not changed a thing in that regard. Second, there is no single person in all of Canada who is more responsible for the failings in housing than that member. Not only was he a city councillor in Toronto who prevented poor families from having homes by making it very difficult to get them built in the first place, but after that he came to the federal level to contribute to the same problem. With him basically being the lead housing personality, both in Toronto and nationally, we now see 10,000 people homeless in Toronto and a waiting list for affordable housing of 300,000. A carpenter actually had to go out and voluntarily build huts in the middle of a public park in Toronto to save people's lives. That is the abysmal legacy of that particular member and he should be apologizing to all people in Canada.

Madam Speaker, the thing that is making the REITs more wealthy is the fact that the government is printing money and driving up the asset values they hold. If the member actually wants to help workers instead of capital owners, she should stop supporting printing money, protect the value of a dollar and protect the meaning of a wage, rather than do what the government is doing, which is ballooning asset values to the advantage of the corporations of which she speaks.

Madam Speaker, the member across the way concedes that the practice the government is undertaking right now is not the way it has been done in the past. I thank him for making that concession at the outset of his remarks. However, he made a mistake moments later when he said that the rules do not specify the amount of time typically allotted for this practice. I will quote Standing Order 78(3), which contemplates a minister proposing a motion. It states: ...for the purpose of allotting a specified number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings...provided that the time allotted...is not...less than one sitting day.... The member is quite wrong to say that there is not an allotted period. I see he is getting very agitated with me quoting the facts—

Madam Speaker, it was not the issue of French and English, although that is a very important issue because we are a bilingual country. The issue was audibility. The member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan was in the middle of speaking when the member for Kingston and the Islands began to yell and scream about kings and monarchs and other matters that are unrelated to the debate, which rendered the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan inaudible to members of the House. Therefore, we are not able to judge whether or not your ruling, Madam Speaker, includes the comments that he has made in this debate. Now, I think that the views of the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan are particularly important to this particular matter, because, of course, Edmontonians have a profound history of defending their freedoms and their freedoms of expression that goes back many generations, which is why I think this member has raised the point. The role of the House of Commons is to raise issues on the floor of the chamber that reflect the values of their constituents, but if the member for Kingston and the Islands begins speaking with such volume that the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan cannot be heard, it is not the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan who is silenced, but the hundred thousand constituents who live in his riding whose voices do not resound in this august chamber. This leaves you, Madam Speaker, in a position where you are expected to render a ruling without having heard the arguments because of the obnoxious behaviour of one particular member on the other side. I note that we have here a number of Conservative, Bloc and NDP members who are contributing to the debate, but one member in the Liberal caucus is making more noise than all of us combined, and that is rendering the debate inaudible.

Madam Speaker, the discovery of a mass grave at a former residential school in Kamloops has shocked the entire nation, including my constituents in Carleton. The nation grieves the lost little ones and the families that lost them. Since the news, I have spoken with the former chief from Kamloops, Manny Jules, who rightly reminded us of the need to immediately implement Truth and Reconciliation Commission calls to action 70 through 78. For example, 74 calls upon the federal government “to work with the churches and Aboriginal...leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial...and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.” That is the very least we can do. It is only the start. Reconciliation is a long journey, and it requires action and action now, so we may move forward together.

Madam Speaker, the member blames these disastrous job numbers on provincial health restrictions, restrictions that the Prime Minister made necessary by his COVID response failure. He failed on vaccines, failed to close the borders to COVID hot spots. Now we have lost another 68,000 jobs, the second consecutive month of catastrophic job loss, while the Americans have added half a million new jobs. We now have the second-highest unemployment in the G7, even though all those other countries have COVID too. The difference is they have COVID, we have a Liberal government. That is why Canadians are losing their jobs.