Parliamentary Speeches

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister claims that affordability is the best it has been in decades, but he should say that to the faces of the 1.5 million jobless Canadians, the 60% of people who are anxious about their finances and the 15,000 people who now use GoFundMe to pay for basics. Liberal taxes and inflationary spending hike the cost of living. Antidevelopment laws drive out jobs, innovation and $1 trillion in investment, like in the last five quarters. Canada is the only G20 country in a recession. When will the self-identified European PM reverse his costly recession policies so that Canadians here at home can afford to thrive, not just survive?

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that more Canadians than ever before need food banks and have to choose between eating, heating and driving. In a year, the PM spent $1 million on inflight cushy caviar catering for him and his cronies. That is enough to feed a family of four for 55 years. On one trip, he spent 175,000 tax dollars, which is 92% more than most people make in a year, if they have jobs at all. While he makes families spend over 120% of their income on rent and food alone, when will the PM cut inflationary spending and his luxury, high-flying lifestyle so that Canadians can afford to live and young Canadians can hope for their futures?

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present the official opposition's dissenting report for the Special Joint Committee on the Exercise of Powers Under the Building Canada Act, Bill C-5. The committee heard that a minimum of 275 projects were submitted to the Major Projects Office in the last year. The federal government has made 22 related announcements, yet not one has a national interest designation, with not a single new project that was not already at end review stages or was not already being built. Conservatives highlight potential conflicts of interest around seconded private sector and bank employees with salary top-ups; national security reviews, including Beijing's state-owned enterprise involvement in major projects; the role of the sovereign debt fund; and the federal government's refusal to confirm whether the Prime Minister considers a Pacific pipeline in Canada's national interest. Conservatives put forward common-sense amendments to improve and pass Bill C-5, to define the national interest, to entrench promised two-year reviews in law, and on the federal Crown's duty to consult to get to “yes” in a good way with indigenous people on major projects. The Liberals defeated them. Conservatives still call on the Liberals urgently to repeal or reform the 12 laws and seven regulations in Bill C-5 that Liberals admit block building. Conservatives will demand accountability, transparency and real deliverable action from the Liberals, not just photo ops, to ensure private sector projects can get built in Canada by Canadians for Canadians for self-reliance, affordability, national and economic unity, and to be stronger at home for unbreakable leverage abroad.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has made Canada the only G7 country in a recession. Even though the other countries face the same global challenges and tariffs, Canada's economy shrunk 75% of his term, with the lowest investment per worker in the G7. That is less opportunity and more stress for Canadians who cannot afford it. A year in, almost 46,000 more Canadians are jobless, household savings are at their lowest and millions of Canadians, especially kids, visit food banks just to get by. These are predictable results with deficits double Trudeau's, higher carbon taxes and a decade of top-down “Ottawa knows best” chaos and division. So much for the elbows-up man with a plan for Canada. Canadians get photo ops, discussion papers and a self-identified European PM who just said he wants to make America great again. Conservatives will cut taxes and inflationary spending, slash big bureaucrat bonuses and corporate cronyism and axe antidevelopment laws and red tape that block building to unleash Canada's economy so Canadians can hope to thrive, not just survive.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his excellent speech. I think more Canadians than ever before are ready to hear it. They want the government to change the fundamentals, to get rid of its anti-energy laws, so that Canada can be affordable, self-reliant, strong and free. In partial response to what a Liberal member asked my colleague earlier, I would just point out that, indeed, when former Prime Minister Trudeau, advised by the current Prime Minister, vetoed the northern gateway pipeline, he did not consult any of the various indigenous communities that had worked for years to establish agreements and had hopes and plans for the revenue that would derive from that pipeline. The former prime minister could have chosen the option to get the court right. He did not. Then he screwed up TMX, and he called a mulligan on it later. Those are the facts. What is also interesting about this tanker ban, and my colleague is exactly right, is that it is actually about stopping the shipping of energy exports for the benefit of Canada and global security, because it only stops the onloading and off-loading of crude and persistent oils. I wonder if my colleague would talk about the negative signal that maintaining the tanker ban sends and how it does not actually line up with the Prime Minister's great rhetoric of Canada becoming an energy superpower, which every single one of us knows could happen if—

Mr. Speaker, Canada's new job numbers are out. They are devastating: 47,000 full-time jobs gone and unemployment at 7%. It is 4% in the U.S. For young Canadians, it is double the overall rate. The Liberals' trillion-dollar debt means higher costs of everything, lower standards of living and fewer opportunities for Canadians who want to start families, plan a future and put aside savings, but they cannot afford it since the government takes and takes. Canada is rich in natural and human resources. No one should struggle to find work. How much longer will the Prime Minister force Canadians to pay the price for his costly credit card budgets?

Mr. Speaker, these guys are so out of touch, they just do not give a rip about what Canadians are actually going through. Last fall, the Prime Minister told young Canadians they would have to “make sacrifices”. Well, he sure did mean it, did he not? New numbers show youth unemployment is at 14.3%. Young Canadians now face the toughest job market on record and struggle to afford rent, groceries and textbooks. No wonder young men and women lose hope. How can they ever get ahead? Young Canadians pay the highest price for Liberal debt, deficits and costly credit card budgets that mortgage their futures. Over a year in, how much more will the PM force young Canadians to sacrifice and suffer?

Madam Speaker, the Liberals' costly credit card budget plans a deficit of over $65 billion. That is more debt, more costs, more spending and more of the same. I would say that the Prime Minister is just like the last one, but he is twice as bad. He doubled Trudeau's deficit. The debt costs each Canadian $33,000 a year. Who can afford it? Debt interest charges alone are over $55 billion, more than transfers for health care to all the provinces combined. While young Canadians face a jobs crisis and food bank use skyrockets, how can the PM tell Canadians they should foot his costly credit card bill?

Madam Speaker, here is the Liberal record: spending up, food inflation up, debt up and photo ops way up, but investments down, no trade deal with the U.S., and zero Major Projects Office approvals. The Liberals landlocked Canada with costly red tape and shifting rules. That is why Canada now has the most unaffordable housing and the lowest investment in the G7. Canada is rich in natural and human resources. No business should be driven out. No family on fixed income should choose between heating and eating. Why will the PM double Trudeau's deficit, double down on costly credit card budgets and force Canadians to pay more for gas, groceries and homes?

Mr. Speaker, like many Canadians, I remember a time when hard work paid off in Canada, when people could start a business or a family with hope for a bright and prosperous future, and when government did not stand in the way of businesses, pick winners and losers in industry and society, or tax Canadians, businesses and entrepreneurs at every turn. That was just over a decade ago, under the last Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper. Canada had a balanced budget and a $1‑billion surplus. Canada had the strongest economy in the G7, with the largest and most prosperous middle class in the world. That is the Canada the Liberals inherited. Since then, they have imposed punitive laws that landlock and roadblock Canadians, entrepreneurs, investors and inventors with costly red tape, mixed messages and constantly shifting policies and regulations. Today, the Prime Minister sits in the same chair he advised for the last half-decade, where he pushed policies that strangled the Canadian economy and drove $1 trillion of investment out of Canada and into the United States, which probably explains why he moved Brookfield south of the border. The results speak for themselves. After 11 years of this same Liberal government and a year of this Prime Minister with all the same key players, Canada now has the highest household debt, the most unaffordable housing, the lowest investment per worker, the second-worst productivity and the second-highest unemployment in the G7. The Prime Minister cannot blame global factors. Other countries face the same pressures and have responded with real action and secure trade deals, while the Liberals have responded with delay and confusion. Canadians are in this position because Liberal policies punish work and drive out investment for anti-development ideology and government control. How do the Liberals respond? Well, they set up another half-baked scheme. This week, the Prime Minister announced a so-called sovereign wealth fund or, as he calls it, “a people's fund”. I wonder if that name came from his visit to Beijing. In this long, drawn-out, rhetorical photo op, he said that this fund would finance major projects in Canada, because nothing says free enterprise like a government fund that looks like top-down state control, does it? However, he did point out Norway and Singapore as examples. Let us look at his claims and how they compare to his plan for Canada. Norway, of course, is a unitary state, with a single centralized government. It runs consistent budget surpluses, because it develops its abundant resources, especially oil and gas, which drives its economy, creates jobs and funds strong public services without crushing taxpayers. In fact, Norway's budget surplus is one of the largest in the world and far exceeds the OECD average. The Norwegian government then puts that extra wealth into their sovereign wealth fund. Singapore, which the Prime Minister also mentioned, is a small city-state that built a highly attractive business environment with low taxes and minimal red tape that draws investment, jobs and businesses. Singapore has low corporate tax rates, big tax exemptions, no capital gains tax, and a highly efficient, transparent and independent legal system for permitting and contract enforcement. It competes for investment; it does not chase it away. Oh, and it has a big budget surplus, too. The Singaporean government puts that wealth into their sovereign wealth fund. Now, let us look at Canada. The Prime Minister said that he would saddle Canada with a budget deficit of $66.9 billion, which is double Trudeau's. If it requires further clarity, that is the opposite of a surplus. The Prime Minister also revealed that debt interest charges alone will be $59 billion annually, and that will rise by 50%, up to $80 billion, in 2030. Of course, it does not stop there. The Liberals' $264‑million Major Projects Office has approved zero projects. There is no start date, deadline, start point, end point or really any clear material progress on the Prime Minister's promised pipeline to the Pacific, and Liberal red tape still drives business out of Canada. Just this week, business leaders said that Liberal anti-development laws are worse for Canada than Trump's tariffs. François Poirier, CEO of TC Energy, said, “Capital goes where it is welcome. And for too long, it hasn’t felt welcome here”. David Pierce, from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said, “I've heard of resource projects that require hundreds of permits, due to federal, provincial and municipal requirements”. He tells the truth. Enbridge, North America's top pipeline company, said, “changes in policy and regulatory environment need to happen”, not only for a new pipeline but “for producers to have confidence to increase production”. Not really an attractive business climate, is it? Under these Liberals, Canada does not have a budget surplus; caused a historic capital flight, especially to the U.S., which started in 2015 and has gotten worse every year since; and does not develop or export the full potential of Canada's resources, either for Canadians here at home or for allies abroad. In fact, this government blocks projects, landlocks production, bans exports and then wonders why investment leaves. There really was no point at all to compare Canada's alleged sovereign wealth fund, which is clearly a sovereign debt fund, to Norway or to Singapore, other than to make it seem like the Liberals have a good plan, but it is just an illusion. What wealth is actually going into this so-called wealth fund? It seems like the Prime Minister had an idea. One could say it is the Liberals' old reliable. They will, of course, take Canadians' money, just like they always do, because, when in doubt, they will just tax Canadians out: out of their homes, out of their businesses and, in the very end, all the way out of Canada. He said that if Canadians had a bit of extra money, they could give it to him, just a few bucks here or there, because he needs more of their money. He thinks he has not taken enough of it. For the Liberals, it is always “spend first, tax everyone and everything later”. Why does he want our money? What is the point of this sovereign debt fund in the first place? It seems to be so the Prime Minister will have the power to bankroll hand-picked projects while claiming it is independent. He will be able to pick winners of a few and make losers of the rest in Canada's economy. He will make sure, once and for all, that the lucky few who tow Liberal talking points and parrot his globalist, European, neo-Marxist agenda get to rake it in, so they can hire the top consultants, line their pockets and add just a few more zeros to their big fat bonuses. As for the rest, they get shut out and drowned in anti-development laws, regulations and taxes. They get told to go wait at the back of the line, while the Prime Minister holds the door open for his big banker elite buddies, his cronies, all the guys who helped get him to where he is today. As Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said, “every other unwashed business owner [is] stuck in the old, unworkable system.” Meanwhile, food banks get 2.2 million visits per month, double from seven years ago. Canadians are forced to sacrifice basics and put food back on the shelves. More young Canadians lose hope as to whether they will ever be able to get a home, start a family or get ahead, no matter how hard they work. Another bureaucracy is not the solution to $1 trillion in lost investment. Another bureaucracy is not the solution to lost opportunities across Canada after a decade of the Liberals, but to them it appears to be. They have created the Canada Infrastructure Bank, the Growth Fund, the Major Projects Office, the defence bank and the green slush fund, but Canada still has the worst investment record in the G7. Those have not worked so far. Why do the Liberals expect that another one will? We know the definition of insanity. This is more bureaucracy, another fund with no delivered results for Canadians, but words that sound good. What they have delivered are more offices funded by taxpayers and more executives who get six-figure salaries while everyone else suffers. Instead of pouring more money into a broken system, the Liberals should fix their own laws and regulations that broke it in the first place, but why would they? As long as the Liberals are in total control, with their laws, policies, taxes and red tape, they can extort private businesses and provinces to get their way and to implement their agenda so the Prime Minister can make sure that his agenda to creep more into Canadians' lives, into provincial, territorial and municipal jurisdiction, and into Canada's private sector will be put into place. It sounds like a certain Communist regime to me. After all, he seems much more comfortable now cozying up to Beijing, as he lets their EVs on Canadian streets, even though they spy on Canadians and interfere in Canadian elections, academia, social media, law enforcement, defence and natural resources. The whole point of a private sector, of a free economy, is supposed to be freedom from government interference, the freedom for businesses to prosper and to create jobs without being taxed to high heavens, since lower taxes actually always result in more government revenue, so that Canadians can build good lives without the need to survive on government programs. That is necessary, also, to ensure that supports for vulnerable Canadians who really need a safety net can be sustainable. That is why Conservatives will fight every day for affordable and abundant Canadian energy and exports, low inflation and low taxes by cutting the cost of government, free market competition, and a self-reliant, sovereign and secure Canada. Life does not have to be this way. In a country as rich in natural and human resources as Canada, no business should be driven out and no family should have to choose between heating their home and feeding their kids. The beauty of Canada, its resilience, is the diversity of regions, resources and people who work, live and co-operate free of government micromanagement, who build a nation on hard work and share in opportunity and prosperity to pass on something stronger and better to the next generation, not controlled by Ottawa, not held back by red tape, but driven by hard work, innovation and pride in what Canadians can build ourselves and in who we are. That is what Conservatives will fight for every day.

Mr. Speaker, let me give the member some advice right off the top. I think she should actually engage in the policy discussion here instead of impugning the motives of duly and equally elected people who represent hundreds of thousands of Canadians and care about our country exactly as much as, and maybe more than, every single other person, which is why we are fighting so hard to save it. I think that as a Liberal government member, she should stand up here and explain all the details about the fund: exactly how it would work, who would run it and what it would do for Canadians who cannot afford to pay rent or their mortgage, or to feed themselves, people who have to ration their basics and live in sacrifice because that is what the government has made them do. It is the member's job to stand up to answer those questions.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for all his advocacy for energy development and for making life more affordable for every single Canadian in every part of the country. Of course he is exactly right. The Major Projects Office is just the latest example of big promises and great rhetoric of the government's trying to pretend it is new compared to the exact same one that it was, which had driven out investment. In fact, the member raises a major point. In 2015, and I wonder what happened then, it the first time in Canadian history that capital from Canada started to flow into the U.S., rather than the other way around, and it has gotten worse every year since. Here we are, a year out, and the Major Projects Office has not designated a single project in the national interest. Most of the projects it is announcing have already been built, and most have already gone through regulators or their provincial jurisdiction. There are a bunch of others for which nobody has any idea what is going to happen. There are a hundred people who are making a lot of money, and the Liberals have not delivered on a single thing in terms of their promises for getting major projects built or for cutting red tape and interprovincial trade barriers. That is the problem. They—

Mr. Speaker, we entirely agree. The Liberals have created constant chaos, uncertainty and confusion with fund after fund that is not delivering any positive results in any way whatsoever. Life just keeps getting more and more expensive for everyday Canadians. I think all opposition parties need to unite in pushing the Liberals to tell them exactly what they are going to do. I think they are going to pick winners and losers in every part of this country, this society and the economy according to their own total-control agenda, which they are showing is what they want to do here in the House of Commons. In addition, related to another comment, do members know that there are 71 proponents in front of three Canadian regulators right now, and that they are all stuck, waiting around and not getting fast-tracked in any way whatsoever, no matter what the—

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised to spend less, but a year in, he spent $90 billion more. Who thought Trudeau could be outspent? Well, his former adviser, the PM, said “watch me” and doubled his deficit. Deficits drive inflation and higher credit card, grocery and mortgage bills here at home. Deficits, taxes and red tape cause the worst food inflation in the G7. With high housing costs, high food bank use and a jobs crisis for young Canadians, when will the self-identified European PM stop his high-spending, high-flying lifestyle that everyone else pays for so Canadians can have a high quality of life?

Mr. Speaker, the government has made it so Canadians cannot afford essentials, and experts say Liberal red tape is worse for Canada than Trump's tariffs. Businesses say Liberals must cut their own red tape for investor confidence so proponents can build. The PM says Canada is in a crisis but will not match U.S. emergency timelines, put two-year reviews in the law or even define Canada's national interest. Here at home, it takes over two years to approve a domestic natural gas line expansion and 20 years to do a mine, and the Liberals say we are not grateful enough. If the PM says Canada is in a crisis, when will he scrap his costly credit card budgets so Canadians can compete?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians must cut back at home, while the Prime Minister has doubled Trudeau's deficit, spending $90 billion more. Debt interest charges alone are over $55 billion. That is more than federal transfers for health care to all provinces combined. The Prime Minister spends drunkenly on lavish food and flights while he travels the world, but families pay over $3,300 a year for his interest charges. The Liberals force Canadians to sacrifice essentials every day. Food bank usage is up because food costs have skyrocketed. When will the Liberals get spending under control so Canadians can afford to live again?

Mr. Speaker, as always, Liberals love to spend other people's money and blame everyone and everything else for their own record. The Bank of Canada confirms that high deficits drive high interest rates. Since 2015, the Liberals' crazy deficits have skyrocketed. That means higher mortgage payments, higher car payments and higher credit card bills. High Liberal spending drives high inflation, and Canadians pay the price. Every buck the PM spends comes from Canadians. Will Liberals agree with Conservatives to cut consultants, foreign aid and health care for fake refugees; bring down costs at grocery stores and at pumps and for homes; and make Canada affordable for all?

Mr. Speaker, Canada's food inflation is the highest in the G7 for the fourth straight month, but the PM wrongly claimed affordability is the best it has been in over a decade. Well, gas was a buck a litre in 2015. It is up 62%. Diesel is up 93%. A trillion dollars in brains, businesses and jobs has fled Liberal red tape and roadblocks. Most Canadians cannot afford to eat, house themselves, drive and put savings aside anymore. Young Canadians are losing hope. The middle class is almost gone. The rich, like the PM, keep getting richer. How can the PM ignore Canadians' struggles and lecture them about just how good they have it?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians should be able to afford essentials themselves. That is the job of the government. The PM says he is like Canadian war hero Sir Isaac Brock. Well, people ration food in wartime, but the Liberals make Canadians ration it in peacetime, do they not? Since 2015, the cost of beef is up 69%, baby formula is up 84%, eggs are up 44%, and the PM has cut only one-third of Liberal fuel taxes for one-third of the year yet keeps his federal industrial carbon tax, fuel standard and other red tape that hikes costs for growers, shippers and Canadians at the grocery store. We are a year in. When will the PM drop photo ops and one-third measures, and cut taxes on food and fuel so Canadians can afford to thrive, not just survive?

Mr. Speaker, the energy minister said, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. It takes 20 years to get a mine built in Canada, while the U.S. approves mines on federal lands in 28 days under emergency crisis rules. Canada sends rare earths to Beijing, which controls 90% of world refining and processing, while Bill C-69 blocks the Ring of Fire with endless regional assessments. It sounds like a waste of a crisis to me. When will the Prime Minister approve the Ring of Fire permits so the private sector can build mines here at home?

Mr. Speaker, four years after the Liberals' fake critical minerals strategy, not one inch of road exists to the Ring of Fire. There is nothing on the two first nations-led roads to get it done. Liberals let both foes and allies into Canada's backyard while they drag timelines the rest of the world rejects. The Ring of Fire would connect globally strategic minerals to first nations, manufacturers, Canadians and our allies. It has always been true, but with new global conflicts, the world needs Canada's minerals. For the love of God, when will the Liberals unlock the Ring of Fire for affordability, sovereignty, security and self-reliance before it is too late?

Mr. Speaker, I am here to support Bill C-243, Brian's bill, for my friend the Conservative MP for Edmonton Griesbach. He has been a tireless fighter, especially for how deeply this impacts Alberta families. In 2012, 35-year-old Brian Ilesic and three of his co-workers serviced an ATM machine at my alma mater, the U of A. They never made it home. Brian and two co-workers were killed, and the fourth person was seriously injured. All four men were ambushed, shot in the back of their head, point-blank, for cash. Brian's life was over. Dianne and Mike, Brian's folks, are here today. They say their son had an infectious smile, a warm heart and a giving nature. A day later, the coward who killed Brian was caught trying to flee the country. He pled guilty to first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. He was sentenced to 40 years without parole. That is good, but nine years into the sentence, the Supreme Court struck down a Conservative law that enabled judges to extend parole ineligibility for killers who murder multiple victims. The Conservative law was for a clear reason: to keep the worst criminals behind bars for as long as possible so everyone else can be safe. However, that ruling changed things, so Brian's killer could now apply for parole after just 12 years. That means the friends and family of the people he murdered must face the guy who killed their loved one, online or at parole hearings, and relive all over again the trauma that never really leaves them, to plead that brutal killers should not be let out, in order to keep themselves and, frankly, every other Canadian safe. However, it does not stop there. Currently, murderers can apply for parole every single year. That is wrong, and it is what the bill tries to fix. Bill C-243 would ensure that when a murderer is denied parole, they cannot apply again the very next year. They would have to wait at least five years. I personally do not think loved ones of victims of the worst kinds of murder should have to go through that even once, but our Conservative colleague brings a reasonable material change for the better. All MPs should support it. The bill would help the now always-vulnerable peace of mind of the living victims of these torturous crimes, everyone who loves the souls and lives taken too soon. The brave people who sacrifice themselves to protect, serve, help and save the rest of us, and the people who fight for victims all across Canada, support this common-sense fix. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, and police associations from Ottawa, Calgary and Toronto all support it. Victims' loved ones and advocates support it, such as the Edmonton's Victims of Homicide Support Society; Christina Trang, whose dad, Hung Trang, was murdered in Ottawa; and Oshawa's Lisa Freeman, who turned the pain of her dad's murder into selfless service for victims in the scary and complex maze of court, trial and parole systems where the deck often tilts against victims. I support the bill, for all victims, and it is personal. In 2011, my lifelong and best childhood friend, Dana Turner, was murdered. The killer got a sentence of obstruction of justice and second-degree murder. I have a warning: I will speak the truth. After previously stabbing her in the head with a paring knife an earlier time, her ex-boyfriend stabbed her in both eyes with a pencil, a theme for him in other crimes; strangled her with shoelaces; and ran over her head and body repeatedly with a car, because the farmer's field near Innisfail was somewhat soft, to make sure she was dead. In 2016, during debate on the life means life act from former Conservative MP Ron Liepert, I spoke about Dana; her sons; all her siblings; her extraordinary older sisters, who took on more than anyone could imagine; her mother, who will never be the same; her dad, one of my many volunteer dads; and the damage done to everyone who loved her. That bill would have made life sentences for murder truly mean life, but the Liberals defeated it. I have read Dana's sister Paula's victim impact statement here. To reflect the gravity of what MPs debate, I will share parts of it again. Paula said the following: Dana’s death has left me often depressed, anxious, suspicious, scared and angry. Dana’s murder required me doing things that I would never wish on anyone. I, along with the help of my parents and siblings had to go through Dana’s belongings item by item, box by box, sorting through her clothes, baby memorabilia, mail, and personal belongings all of which made me feel like I was stealing and violating her privacy. I had to decide what items to keep for her children when they got older, and sold the rest at a garage sale almost giving it away like everything she had worked for her whole life was suddenly garbage. I made phone calls to and met with Dana’s pastor and helped arrange her memorial. I had to print large photos of her to place on a table at the front of the church as there wasn’t a body to put in a casket as her “remains” stayed with the medical examiner as evidence. At that memorial, Paula asked me to read a poem Dana wrote about friendship, the greatest, gutting duty of my life. Dana's loved ones, like me, spent months putting up missing person posters and searching everywhere. We found out later he had killed her long before any of us had given up. Paula said: About a year later, when Dana’s remains were released to our family and we were able to have a funeral for my sister. I will always be haunted by the image of my father falling to the ground at her casket in a small room at the funeral home and there wasn’t anything I could do to comfort him. I wanted to hold Dana’s hand and say good-bye but when I felt in Dana’s casket for her hand I wasn’t able to find it in the vacuum sealed bag of bones that was placed under a satin sheet where an inflated pillow was where her head would have been. That is the reality families live with after murder. In 2018, Dana's killer dragged the family back to court for an appeal. He failed, but Dana's family had to go through the trauma and legal proceedings just to keep him in jail. By the way, Mark Lindsay, Dana's killer, is now Roxanne Lindsay or Demaris Lindsay, and tried to get into a hospital instead of prison a couple of years ago. An MP's top job is to ensure killers cannot repeatedly traumatize the people they already hurt. Another Alberta example of Canada's backward so-called justice system is RCMP Constable David Wynn. On the job in St. Albert, he found a stolen truck and a suspect shot and killed him. Constable Wynn died, as the RCMP say, to uphold the right. The killer was out on bail. He had 60 prior criminal convictions and 29 outstanding charges. A fellow RCMP officer, Roland Misik, was originally from Lakeland. My husband and I remain close to his brother. He shared what he saw that day on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. He wrote, “His head was wrapped in bandages and there were tubes coming out of everywhere imaginable with a breathing apparatus for someone on life support. He was an organ donor and time was of the essence to use his loss of life to save others. The memory of him fighting for his life will stick with me forever, and he fought, his body never gave up. The man who murdered Dave took his own life when surrounded by [cops] and knew he would have to face the consequences of his actions. The coward's way out.” Constable Wynn inspired Bill S-217 by a senator and the Conservative MP for St. Albert—Sturgeon River, who previously tried to pass it before 2019 to require courts to know an accused criminal's history at bail hearings, which is insanely optional right now, to make it harder for repeat offenders to walk free. If it had been law, David Wynn might still be alive, and Shelly Wynn, a tiny, bubbly, lovely, fierce warrior of a woman, might have her husband. Murderers should not get to force victims' families before them year after year as though the pain of the loss comes with an expiry date. It does not. No parent should have to prep statements each year about the worst day of their life, as if it ever gets better after that. No sister should have to recount how her sibling was killed just to keep him-her behind bars. No one should have to watch a loved one break down again since the system makes them relive their trauma. Brian's parents, Dana's children, David's family and everyone devastated by murder already carry a life sentence of grief. Nothing restores those lives or fills empty chairs at tables. Nothing stops the wish for phone calls or texts that never come. Nothing changes the past, but MPs can change the future. I urge all, for everyone forced to bury someone murdered by a monster, for every brave first responder and for every innocent Canadian, to support Bill C-243, because the least we can do for victims' loved ones is to pass this reasonable measure to give some time, just half a decade, to not have to bare their souls and beg, to not have to face the uncertainty and to not have to tear open those wounds over and over each year, for justice. I love the Turners.

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals love to censor and control Canadians. Their Bill C-18 blocks Canadians from news on social media. Bill C-11 controls what Canadians see and say online. There is their extra “online harms bill,” yet the laws to combat these exist but are not enforced. Their energy censorship stops Canadian businesses from telling the truth about innovation and the environment. Who can forget the unconstitutional Emergencies Act? These same Liberals are at it again with Bill C-9, which would strip the long-held religious defence from Canada's hate speech laws and criminalize passages from sacred texts like the Bible, Torah and Quran, with Canadians already in danger as global conflicts plague our streets. The Liberals are clear: Religious texts and believers should be prosecuted. True to form, the Liberals shut down debate to censor MPs and ignored the countless Canadians who urged us to reject Bill C-9. Conservatives will always defend freedom of religion, assembly and expression because a free, democratic country does not police faith or prosecute scripture.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud and grateful to support and second Bill C-246, the ending sentence reductions for sexual predators act, brought forth by my very strong, principled Conservative colleague, mom of a sweet baby girl and a fellow Albertan, the MP for Lethbridge. I want to thank her for her advocacy on so many issues and for her leadership on this serious one. Sexual violence shatters lives. These cruel, pervasive crimes strip victims of dignity, security and trust with physical, psychological and spiritual harm, devastating consequences that for many survivors last a lifetime. Predatorial violence like rape, sexual exploitation and sexual assault leaves deep scars. Frankly, these crimes often impose life sentences of trauma on victims, yet today, the system that is supposed to prosecute criminals and protect victims hinges on a glaring, dangerous flaw. It is yet another reason so many people in Lakeland say it is not a justice system in Canada. Right now, sexual predators who commit multiple sexual offences can serve all of the sentences at the same time. That is concurrent sentencing. What that means in practice is simple. Sexual predators who commit multiple sexual offences can get discounts on their punishments. No matter how many lives they destroy or how many victims they traumatize, the time those criminals serve can remain almost the same. It seems to me this is a basic principle of justice. Multiple crimes with multiple victims should mean multiple punishments. Let me share a case that shows systemic injustice clearly. In Ontario, someone posed as a talent agent to lure young people into modelling. Two young women accepted the offer, but instead of offering opportunity, he inflicted repeated sexual assaults. He pleaded guilty and got one sentence of 18 months and another of 24 months, a total of 42 months, but due to concurrent sentencing, those two separate punishments were merged into one sentence of 24 months. That is two crimes, two victims, one sentence. That is wrong. Sexual predators who destroy lives must be held accountable to the full extent of the law. Their sentences should reflect the seriousness of every crime they commit and the sanctity and value of every victim they harm, yet today, too many offenders walk free far too soon. This is why people in Lakeland call it a catch-and-release or revolving-door criminal system, not a justice one. Too many victims struggle in a system that does not protect them. Too many families watch predators return to the streets or into their own homes while the trauma of the crime lasts a lifetime. The worst part is that it has not just happened this way. People elected to stand and pass laws in this very place, the Liberals, made it that way. Over the past decade, they have weakened penalties for serious crimes; let criminals, gangsters and terrorists run free; put law-abiding, innocent Canadians at risk; and retraumatized victims. The same Liberals passed Bill C-75, which introduced the concept of the principle of restraint, which outright directed judges to make it easier for repeat offenders to walk free on bail “at the earliest reasonable opportunity and on the least onerous conditions”. Let us be straight here. This so-called principle says Canadians should trust criminals to follow the rules, like the law, and their bail conditions. Yeah, that works well. The Liberals also passed Bill C-5, which allowed house arrest for serious crimes, like illegal drug trafficking and illegal drug importing, and major gun crimes, like drive-by shootings and illegal gun trafficking, while they target law-abiding firearms owners. Parliament deliberately put mandatory minimum sentences in place to deter such severe crimes, but the truth is that time and again, the Liberals directly legislated favour for criminals and punishment for victims and innocent Canadians. That has to change, so that is exactly what our Conservative Lethbridge MP's Bill C-246 aims to do. If passed, her bill would require courts to impose consecutive sentences for individuals convicted of multiple sexual offences, so each crime would carry its own penalty, each victim would be honoured and each predator would serve the full weight and time for their crimes. This law is needed now more than ever because while the Liberals like to talk about standing with victims, the reality is different. Since 2015, sexual assaults reported in Canada are up nearly 75%. Sexual offences against children, and this is almost unimaginable, are up by nearly 120%. Between 2015 and 2019, there were more than 27,000 sexual assault charges and over 33,000 sexual offence charges. These numbers are shocking alone, but all MPs must recognize the truth and never forget that each of those numbers is a victim, a person, a human being, violated. Each number is a young adult who no longer feels or is safe in their own home, a woman who checks her locks at night and still cannot sleep, a man who suffers in silence because stigma still stops many male victims from speaking out, and a survivor who carries invisible and, at times, literal physical trauma into every part of their life. The numbers do not lie, but they are not just statistics. They are Canadians whose dignity, security and sense of self-worth were stolen on top of horrific physical violation and the damage and harm of long-lasting fear. That is why they are called survivors, and that is why we here owe them our greatest duty. Criminals can serve sentences that do not reflect the severity of their crimes. When that happens, victims are erased, unseen, unheard and devalued, which is reprehensible. If we are all to stand here with straight faces and say that there is a justice system in Canada, then it should punish those who prey on the vulnerable and ensure effective corrections to prevent recidivism. However, today, the max penalty for sexual assault against an adult is 10 years. If we compare that to property crimes like robbery or breaking and entering, which are also out of control under the Liberals, the max penalty can be life in prison. If this was sexual violence, it would be like robbing three banks but only being jailed for one, or breaking into six homes and only being punished for two. How does that make any sense at all? No Canadian should accept that. The people of Lakeland certainly do not, but it is exactly what happens today with sexual offences. It sends a clear message to sexual violence victims that their sanctity and suffering does not count. It tells predators that their crimes may carry fewer consequences. How the heck are the ones who committed the crimes getting the better end of the deal around here? It also sends a clear message to the many indigenous people in Lakeland and across Canada, who are disproportionately harmed by sexual violence and other violent crimes. Culturally sensitive approaches are important, but Canadian law should show without a shadow of a doubt that every single victim's life matters and every single criminal will be held to account. In 2021, the ethics committee investigated the exploitation of victims of non-consensual or child sexual assault material of rape, sexual assault and human trafficking on platforms run by MindGeek. The survivors' words seared me, as did the clarity that the laws already exist to combat this but were not enforced. Just as it was then, it is true today that the laws exist for all of those crimes and predators can be held accountable, but that does not happen. A senior counsel at the justice department said, “I am not sure it's the problem of the law. The problem...is the application of the law”. Therefore, the tools exist, but the problem is that they are not being used. That is a fact, and this is the loophole for convicted sexual predators that can be closed, which is what the MP for Lethbridge wants to do. I say to all MPs to ask themselves and really reflect on this: What message does not enforcing laws and discounting sentences really send to women and girls and to men and boys across Canada who have been victims of sexual violence? What message does it send to those who are recently recovering, afraid to speak out, because they fear their abusers will be out of jail? MPs can get up here and make speeches on days like Red Dress Day, International Women's Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, but without action, it is just words on paper and hot air out of our mouths. Liberals have a chance to act by voting for this bill. Some victims will spend their lives trying to rebuild safety. Some will move. Some will never rebuild it. Some will struggle to trust again. Anxiety for some will be so great that they leave their jobs. Families and friends will watch loved ones change because of their trauma. Some will end their own lives. The truth is that just one person can change entire lives in horrible ways, but it does not have to be this way. Each person here has the power of just one vote, and we can change entire lives for the better. I urge MPs to protect survivors and support this bill. It is not partisan. It does not matter if a member wears blue, red, green or orange, every MP holds the same duty to defend survivors and real justice. Parliament together can send a message to both survivors and to predators that sexual violence is never okay and that those who perpetrate it will be punished, because every survivor matters and every crime must count.

Mr. Speaker, Canada cannot control global events or leaders, but Liberals control the policies that drive up costs here at home. The energy minister brags about pipelines to the U.S. but spins about Canadian pipelines. Here are the facts. Two export pipelines to Europe and Asia were killed by the Liberals. They bought the costly TMX, which mostly goes to the U.S., without a path for the company to build. There is no progress on their promised Pacific pipeline and nothing from the Major Projects Office. The federal industrial carbon tax, which the U.S. does not have, costs Canadian businesses. Why will the PM not repeal his anti-development laws and taxes so Canada can fuel allies abroad and bring affordability home?

Mr. Speaker, that is spin, spin, spin, because here is the deal. Last year, the Prime Minister promised a Pacific pipeline yet kept all the laws and regs that block building. The Liberals brought in Bill C-5 to work around their own red tape. Conservatives worked to improve and pass it, but there have been no results so far. The feds have not started their indigenous consultation. No private sector company will touch a pipeline alone under Liberal laws. Seventy-five per cent of Canadians want pipelines. The world wants Canadian energy, but Canada cannot ship it because of the Liberals. When will the PM get out of the way, scrap his anti-development agenda and give Canadians certainty and affordability here at home?

Mr. Speaker, a global surge in oil prices should be a good chance for Canada, home to the fourth-largest oil reserves on earth. However, despite the PM's rhetoric and photo ops, there is not one new cross-border export pipeline to anywhere. The costly Major Projects Office has not approved one yet, and the federal industrial carbon tax drives away Canada's producers like CNRL, which just paused an $8-billion project due to regulatory uncertainty. Canada can and should be the world's top energy choice. Why will the PM not get out of the way so Canada can fuel allies and power paycheques at home?

Mr. Speaker, none of those are new pipelines for exports. Usually, high prices mean a high dollar, but Canadians are paying the price. The Liberals promised a Pacific pipeline, to remind them, but they keep their unlawful, “never build anything anywhere” Bill C-69, their drilling and tanker bans, and their federal industrial carbon tax that drives away investments. The more these Liberals say they are different, the more things stay the same. Canadians want pipelines now more than ever, but wait for the Liberals to keep their word. When will the PM, who helped Trudeau kill billions of dollars in projects and thousands of jobs, get that Pacific pipeline done for Canadian unity, sovereignty and accountability?

Mr. Speaker, the member has been such a passionate advocate for nation-building projects that would tie Alberta to New Brunswick and everybody in between, economically, materially and through national unity. I know he knows the inextricable links between food security, energy security, economic security and therefore national security, which is imperative for Canada. I wonder if the member might want to make some comments about that.

Madam Speaker, it is not news to anybody, and it certainly will not be to this member, that the Prime Minister really loves to self-identify as a European. It seems that he came back for European countries, but not necessarily for ours. To that end, I think every farmer and expert would say that over the last 10 years, the same government that he advised has been implementing, when it comes to agriculture, policy-based evidence, not evidence-based policy. I wonder if the member might comment on some of those European policies around grain production, livestock transportation and all the other policies, taxes and bans that Liberals try to apply here and that just drive up costs for farmers, producers and the people who buy the food. It is almost like they do not know where their food comes from. Would the member comment on that?

moved: That, in the interest of restoring Canadian economic sovereignty, the House call on the government to immediately introduce a Canada Sovereignty Act that: (a) re-establishes Canada as a competitive resource-producing nation by repealing federal measures that block or penalize development, including, (i) the Impact Assessment Act (formerly Bill C-69), (ii) the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act (formerly Bill C-48), (iii) the federal industrial carbon tax, (iv) the oil and gas emissions cap, (v) the federal electric vehicle sales mandate, (vi) the federal plastics manufacturing prohibitions, (vii) federal regulatory restrictions that impede communication and advocacy by Canadian energy companies; (b) rewards provinces, businesses, and workers who build and invest in Canada by, (i) introducing a Canada First Reinvestment Tax Cut to spur domestic industrial activity, (ii) providing free trade bonuses to provincial governments that remove internal trade barriers and fully open their markets to fellow Canadians; and (c) protects Canadian innovation by requiring the Minister of Industry to present plans to Parliament to keep Canada's inventions, discoveries and innovations from being sold off to other countries. Mr. Speaker, as a first-generation Albertan and the daughter of a Newfoundlander, a very common story in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which is a place so near and dear to my fiery heart that glows strong and free like Alberta's wild roses, what an honour it is to split my time with a vibrant, kind, honest and happy woman warrior, the new Conservative MP for Long Range Mountains. It is fitting that two MPs from two provinces on opposite sides of the country start debate today. Both provinces are relatively new in Confederation compared to most of the others, and we have built each other's homes to the benefit of the whole country for two main reasons: the resilience, tenacity and adventurous risk-taking of our people, and our natural resources. Today, Canada is at a crossroad that has been visible and closing in for more than a decade. Canadians are vulnerable, struggling, worried about their futures and divided more now than ever before, because today, only press conferences and expansive rhetoric exist. There are no actual results for all the promises the Prime Minister made more than half a year ago about nation-building projects getting built at “speeds not seen in generations”. What of today? More than 60 major projects with real proponents in every natural resources sector are stuck in front of federal regulators with no end in sight. More investment flows out of Canada into the U.S. than the other way around, which is a historical anomaly that started in 2015. I wonder what happened then. It has gotten worse every single year since. There is no pipeline being built to anywhere now, because the private sector will not attempt it alone. The Liberals outright vetoed and approved one a decade ago, from Lakeland to the Pacific, for export to Asia to reduce dependence on the U.S. It was supported by the majority of indigenous communities, but the court said that consultation had to be redone, just as the Liberals would have to do on TMX. They did not; they killed it. My first speech here in 2015 was in support of a west-to-east pipeline for Canadian energy independence and security, to bring Western oil to eastern refineries and for export to Europe. I have to note that the Liberals killed that promise, too, by moving goalposts and death by delay. Those were the chances to make Canada united, self-reliant, affordable and sovereign, but when a company spent years and $1 billion trying to make it, the Liberals ignored its warning that regulatory uncertainty risked the pipeline, because that is what the Liberals wanted for politics in a province in the middle. After that happened, the company even dropped “Canada” from its name and built pipelines in the U.S. After that and endless caps, bans, taxes, mandates and regulations, hundreds of thousands of Canadians lost their livelihoods and legacies, and many took their own lives as major private sector plans were shelved: $670 billion in major natural resources projects and $176 billion in 16 major energy projects alone have all gone, while the costs for energy, essential in Canada, have skyrocketed due to bad policies and uncompetitive taxes. The Prime Minister claims to be different from the one he advised for more than the last half decade, but lots of rhetoric with no actual results is exactly the same. While the Liberals did all this to Canada, the U.S., under Obama, by the way, and it just ramped up afterward, started crude oil exports outside of North America for the first time in four decades and vetoed KXL from Canada at the same time. American and other money funded campaigns to stop Canadian energy projects. Our biggest trading partner, the world's most important economy and still Canada's biggest customer just said that because of Liberal Atlantic and Pacific pipeline killers, it will soon get up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil to compete directly with its Canadian heavy crude imports and put billions of Canadian dollars and thousands of jobs at risk. Meanwhile, our Prime Minister is clearly cozy with the regime he said was Canada's “biggest security threat”. That is also the position of the current President of the United States, but the Prime Minister has let them all in our backyard. Talk about letting all the foxes in the henhouse. The Liberals have the gall to spend millions of tax dollars on ads about Canada being an energy superpower. They hated that when Stephen Harper said it, but the Liberals now want support, help, accolades, co-operation and compliments from the Conservatives. I would say the Liberals should take a bow, if they can do that with their elbows up I guess, but they need only look in the mirror for who is to blame for why Canadians now find themselves vulnerable to bullies everywhere instead of being self-reliant, sovereign, united and thriving, not just surviving like they are, as this country could and should have been today, with all our blessings, our people and our natural resources. No matter the magical thinking one favours, here is the truth: Despite the Liberal decade of anti-resource and anti-private sector policies and taxes, in 2024, oil and gas still employed half a million Canadians. It is still Canada's largest private sector investor and top export, but almost all of it goes to the U.S. Natural resources are still, by far, the main driver to close the gap between the rich and poor, and the biggest employer of indigenous Canadians in the entire economy from coast to coast to coast, but the Liberals' words differ from their actions, which shows they still want to risk and break it all for their ideology. It is our duty to oppose the government when necessary and to propose solutions to create private sector jobs and bigger paycheques and cut costs for every Canadian. This is why, today, Conservatives bring forward a Canadian sovereignty act to legalize and turbocharge Canadian energy development and construction everywhere. The act points out seven anti-development laws that kill projects and jobs in Canada for repeal and reform. Bill C-69 is the unconstitutional, divisive law that makes it impossible to build and blocks major projects across Canada, which the Liberals admit to with a workaround in Bill C-5. Right now, the Liberals pick politically recommended projects behind closed doors and refuse to define the national interest or fix the actual laws for anyone else. Bill C-48, the shipping ban, blocks Canadian oil experts from the west coast, while foreign dictators' oil and U.S. oil tankers still pass through every other coast and canal. The federal industrial carbon tax hikes the cost of everything Canadians buy across the supply chain. The U.S., Canada's biggest competitor, does not have this federally. The ban on gas and diesel vehicles will hike prices by up to $20,000 for consumers, expose retailers to criminal charges and limit Canadians' freedom of choice. The U.S. does not impose this on itself. The plastics ban hurts responsibly producing Canadian manufacturers and hikes the costs of groceries everywhere. The U.S. does not have this. The Liberal energy censorship law stops Canadian businesses from talking about their environmental track record and innovation unless they match the government's talking points. It sounds a bit like that regime the Prime Minister waffles on about, does it not? The Liberals also say they intend to make changes, but still have not actually axed the oil and gas cap, which is the only one of its kind in the world. It will kill 54,000 Canadian jobs by 2032 and cut $21 billion from Canada's economy, and they know it. Who can afford this? Do not take my word for it. Last April, in an extremely unusual Canadian action, 38 energy CEOs told the Prime Minister to simplify regulation and scrap Bill C-69, Bill C-48 and the oil and gas cap to “Build Canada Now”, since the law impedes development, and existing processes are uncertain, as well as “complex, unpredictable, subjective, and excessively long”, as we and every single expert have been telling the Liberals for a decade. In September, 96 energy CEOs sent a follow-up. It is now almost February. I do not know what the Prime Minister considers generational speed, although the Liberals know a lot about generational theft. Thousands of major projects have been built faster than this in our country, and still nothing is actually being built. Right now, the U.S. Department of Energy's emergency permitting procedures can approve oil, gas, critical mineral and uranium projects on federal lands in as little as 28 days. The weird truth is that the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Defense can build projects faster than any private sector proponent in Canada can dream of. The Liberals want Canadians to believe that a $246-million major projects bureaucracy will solve the problem they created, but it is still being set up and the process is still uncertain, complex and opaque. Conservatives will give certainty to Canada, as we have always said we will. In addition to fixing the fundamentals, not ragging the puck with workarounds, we will create a Canada-first reinvestment tax cut to eliminate capital gains taxes on reinvestments in Canadian businesses and projects; create a free trade bonus that rewards provinces for removing interprovincial trade barriers; require the industry minister to table a comprehensive plan to prevent Canada's inventions, technologies, intellectual property and strategic assets from being sold to foreign state-owned or -influenced interests; and safeguard Canadian ownership and control of critical technologies to ensure Canadian economic sovereignty. After all of those promises, nearly a year into the Prime Minister's term and 11 years into the Liberal government, Canadians do not need more grand speeches or photo ops; they need results. Conservatives want big projects built in Canada by the private sector, efficiently, safely and affordably, with the top standards and Canadian materials for Canadians' public interests. If the Liberals are truly serious about making Canada an energy superpower, they have to show it now. The stakes for our country are much too high to dither, debate and delay any more.

Madam Speaker, the 11-year-old government is really desperate when it keeps talking about a dude who has not been prime minister for 15 years or something. To be clear, in case the Liberals have not googled it or listened to us over the last 10 years, four pipelines were constructed under Stephen Harper's government, including a Line 9B reversal, which fuels Ontario and Quebec with oil and gas. That is the actual record. As for the intergovernmental pipelines for export to diversify markets beyond the U.S., those proposals were made under the former Stephen Harper Conservative government, with our leader as a top minister, because the private sector had confidence it could build and invest in major nation-building projects to the benefit of every single Canadian. These guys killed every single one. That is the truth.

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for her kind words and her warm wishes. We have a bit of an unusual personal relationship. Her words mean more to me than people can probably imagine. I hope the people of Lakeland will continue to have confidence in me, despite the fact that I just said those words. I agree with her that we have to set the facts straight about Bill C-48. Actually, this is a lesson in how effective the Liberals were at eating the NDP opposition whole while the NDP did not do its job. This is because, in fact, Bill C-48 did not give any teeth to the voluntary exclusion zone that the member references. It did not do anything of the sort, if one believes that marine tanker traffic is an irreparable ecological harm to the marine environment, because what Bill C-48 actually did, and this is why we know it was only to block oil exports from Alberta, was ban the loading and off-loading of crude and persistent oils at ports in that region and ban tankers of a certain capacity, a certain volume and a certain weight. Those would be the supertankers that take the direct and safest deepwater route to Asia. This would have happened if the Liberals had redone indigenous consultation on the northern gateway, just as every single one of those indigenous communities that had mutual benefit agreements wanted them to. He never consulted them—

Madam Speaker, the member is a near and dear friend to Alberta and Albertans. The Liberals know exactly what to do to fix the problems they have created, because they listed the laws and regulations that block building in the back of Bill C-5. That is why Conservatives are saying to fix the fundamentals, fix the law for everybody, set the rules of the game, and make sure that we can compete with and beat the United States so that the private sector can create jobs with the highest standards in the world and develop our natural resources to benefit the whole country and our allies—

Mr. Speaker, the last lost Liberal decade killed hundreds of thousands of Canadian energy jobs. More are coming. In just six months of the Prime Minister, Canadians lost over 18,000 jobs, year over year, in forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying and oil and gas. So many young Canadians, especially young men, and indigenous and visible minorities, who work in natural resources at higher rates than any other sector, need hope and change more than ever before. The Prime Minister says that young Canadians must sacrifice more, but he is sacrificing their futures. This jobs crisis is due to the Liberal anti-development agenda and the Liberals' just transition Bill C-50, which will kill 170,000 jobs in oil and gas, 1.4 million trades jobs, 642,000 jobs in transportation, 292,000 jobs in agriculture and 193,000 jobs in manufacturing, is still law. If the Liberals are honest, they must scrap all of their anti-development laws to attract investment, bring home jobs and let Canada compete, or is this just another Liberal bait and switch.

Mr. Speaker, I will split my time with the new, great member for Terra Nova—The Peninsulas. In 2023, the Liberals imposed yet another step in their anti-Canadian energy agenda, an oil and gas emissions cap they touted as the first and only kind in the world, designed to limit Canadian oil and gas production, which will really cap and kill Canadian jobs, businesses, private sector clean tech, and revenue for all levels of government to provide programs and services Canadians value. Its true intent, to limit production of Canadian oil and gas specifically, is clearer in the words of the current Prime Minister, who was a senior economic and energy adviser to the then prime minister, Trudeau, when he announced it. The current Prime Minister, of course, said, “as much as half of [proven oil reserves] need to stay in the ground.” The Liberals, 20 months and three weeks ago, said the Canadian oil and gas cap was bold climate leadership. However, common-sense Conservatives saw it for what it was: an unprecedented, arbitrary production cap, the only one of its kind in the entire world, and self-harm to Canada by our own federal government. That is right, and let me be extra clear about it. No other country, and importantly, no major oil- or gas-producing country, has imposed an absolute cap federally on its own production: not the United States, Canada's biggest energy customer and competitor, which, because of the last anti-development Liberal decade that killed at least four Canadian pipelines and dozens of LNG projects, turned the world away from Canada and drove hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in major projects out of our country; not Norway; not Saudi Arabia; and not a single OPEC nation made up of hostile, anti-freedom regimes with lower and often non-existent environmental and human rights standards. Even though the current Prime Minister is another Liberal, he suddenly claims to want to make Canada an energy superpower and put shovels in the ground on major projects at unimaginable speeds not seen in generations. However, how can Canada be an energy superpower when the Liberal government blocks Canadian energy production and exports with its own laws and policies that are all still on the books? How can Canada lead when the Liberals decided to impose a policy that interferes in provincial jurisdiction and that experts, proponents and indigenous entrepreneurs all say will kill major projects and thousands of jobs? The layer of the Canadian oil and gas cap on top of other anti-energy laws and policies block the very projects that would create Canadian jobs, reduce emissions and get Canadian oil and gas out to allies and to global markets. The last, lost Liberal decade of domestic policy attacks on Canadian energy has put Canada in a vulnerable, dependent position that was totally preventable. Canada of course still sells up to 90% of our oil and gas to the United States at steep discounts because the Liberals killed two potential export pipelines outright: one to the west coast to access growing Asian markets in the most direct, affordable and safest route, and one west-to-east pipeline that would have ensured Canadian self-sufficiency with western oil for eastern refineries and more competition for customers with exports to Europe. At the same time, both Democrat and Republican administrations turbocharged the American production and exports of oil and LNG, turning the U.S. into the world's leading global supplier, while the Liberals, while watching all this happen, increased their stranglehold on Canadian oil and gas and workers at every single step. Various experts estimate the discounts cost Canadians big, about $25 billion every year. Just imagine what infrastructure, programs or services that revenue could provide right now and could have contributed during the last decade to benefit Canadians everywhere, if the Liberals had not spent the last decade killing active private sector pipeline proposals to ensure that no new ones would be proposed. The truth is that the Liberals announced the Canadian oil and gas cap publicly with little consultation and economic analysis in advance. The Prime Minister was even in another country when he imposed it. The Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition at the time did a short study on it at committee, but Conservatives had to dissent in order to properly highlight the cautions about the wide-ranging and catastrophic impacts of the Canadian oil and gas cap. Witnesses during the committee work did warn them. Dale Swampy of the National Coalition of Chiefs said the government “treat[s] the oil and gas sector like they're the enemy and a problem to be fixed” and that “a cap on emissions will be, in effect, a cap on production”, which kills economic reconciliation opportunities for indigenous communities and business owners who need it most. The Liberals were warned the cap would harm indigenous, rural and remote communities the worst, but they did not care, even though Canadian oil and gas developers spend about $14 billion through procurement from 585 indigenous-affiliated vendors across 110 municipalities and 45 indigenous communities. That is real money that makes a real difference for indigenous people, all threatened by the revenue-killing, job-killing Canadian oil and gas cap. Since then, the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported that the Liberals' oil and gas cap will kill 54,000 jobs by 2032. That is almost double the population of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border city of Lloydminster. There are hundreds more cities of that size across Canada. That number of jobs will be lost in six years because of the cap, a cut of $21 billion from Canada's GDP. The cap will shrink Alberta's GDP by 4.5%, and the rest of Canada's economy by 1%. It will cause $191 billion of lost activity in Alberta and $91 billion in the rest of Canada. Why should this matter to Canadians in every part of the country? This is why: The oil and gas sector contributes 7.7% of Canada's GDP. It is still Canada's top export despite the damage the Liberals have done. Over $208 billion every year is what it contributes to Canada's GDP, with $166 billion from direct activity and $42.8 billion from the supply chain. It supports over 446,000 direct and indirect jobs, including more than 10,800 indigenous jobs. Nearly 900,000 Canadians depend on the oil and gas sector through spinoff or induced job creation. These are also not easily replaceable minimum wage jobs, since the average compensation for an oil and gas worker is nearly twice the national average for goods-producing sectors. Alberta employs 54% of the supply chain workers, but B.C., Ontario and Quebec together account for over a third of those jobs. That means that the cap threatens jobs, paycheques and government revenue from Vancouver to Montreal, and everywhere that oil and gas is produced, from Fort St. John to St. John's and Saint John. The Conference Board of Canada warns that between 2030 and 2040, the cap could reduce Canada's GDP by up to $1 trillion, and strip $151 billion in federal revenues, money that could go to defence, to border security, to fighting crime and to federal programs, and could be shared with provinces to build hospitals, schools, roads and provide social services. Proponents across Canada agree the cap is bad policy and that it disadvantages Canadian businesses and jobs. Since growing Canadian oil and gas production and exports is the solution to ensuring Canadian energy security and to help lower emissions globally, the Liberals were warned “this could lead to greater global emissions as we see more coal being utilized than natural gas and sources of supply...coming from jurisdictions that don't have [Canada's] high standards.” World-class oil and gas operators across Canada point out their ongoing aggressive reductions in both absolute and emissions intensity, which, by the way, the Liberals' oil and gas censorship bill precludes them from talking about. The cap could also have the opposite impact from what its proponents claim, by driving more projects and investment out of Canada, and could “bring all action to a halt”. The truth remains today that the oil and gas sector, among all private sector developers, invests the most annually in clean tech and emissions reduction technology, more than all other sectors in Canada combined. Warnings that the cap will do exactly what the Prime Minister said he wanted it to do, which is to keep oil and gas in the ground and kill businesses, jobs and government revenue, and that it will also not even achieve the environmental outcomes its proponents claim, should be heeded. The Liberal oil and gas emissions cap is a production cap. The former environment minister also admitted that oil and gas production falls under provincial jurisdiction, so the cap also inflames already divided provincial governments and sparks legal challenges with more uncertainty that drives away investment. While Canada caps production, of course the world is passing Canada by, because the Liberals have let them. The EU has signed a $750-billion deal for American energy, and other countries have been forced to sign deals with hostile authoritarian regimes for LNG after the Liberals spent 10 years saying there is no business case. The Conservative motion today is very clear. We are the only party fighting to repeal the job-killing, economy-killing, emissions reduction-killing cap, full stop. Canadians cannot afford another lost Liberal decade. The motion is clear: Repeal the cap. Unleash Canadian energy to make a strong, united Canada self-reliant—

Mr. Speaker, it sure is an indictment of his own government and of his sitting here, at least in the last decade since I was elected, that he just admitted the federal government has not been working with provincial governments co-operatively over the last 10 years. Instead, today a consequence of the Liberal government is more division in provinces and people pitted against each other than ever before. What a shame that is. Of course the truth is that under the former Conservative government, four pipelines were built, and all the private sector proposals for both the LNG projects and the pipelines that the Liberals outright killed. The former prime minister vetoed the northern gateway pipeline, and the Liberals interfered in the regulatory process deliberately to put a pin in the west to east pipeline so Canada could not be energy self-sufficient and have more customers. The Liberals are the ones who have a track record of killing pipelines. That is who they truly are, and the Conservative Party is the only party that has been consistent on behalf of oil and gas workers in every corner of this country.

Mr. Speaker, I certainly could not begin to tell the member how Canadians are supposed to decipher the last decade of uncertainty and the current uncertainty that the Liberals are causing. He raises a great point for voters in every single part of the country who voted for the Liberals based on their concerns and their support of anti-energy and anti-development policies that the government has imposed over the last 10 years. The people in this place who have to answer for why they are baiting and switching and flipping and flopping, and who can stand here shamelessly and take positions that are diametrically opposed to the ones they defended for a decade, including just six months ago, are the people who have to answer to Canadians about what their views are and what they are going to achieve.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for being such a great representative and advocate for the people in her riding, which makes an outsized economic contribution to the entire country and directly helps contribute to programs and services that are delivered in every province across Canada. I could not begin to explain the thinking of the Liberals or the damage they have done to their own credibility, but what really dismays me after 10 years is all the lost opportunities, which they did deliberately and were warned about. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost by people right across Canada because of the anti-energy policy is unconscionable.

Mr. Speaker, as a first-generation Albertan with a mother from St. John's, Newfoundland, I want to say how happy I am to have the member joining us from that great province of Newfoundland and Labrador as an advocate for energy workers and resource development right across the country. Speaking of that, we both know that generations of young Atlantic Canadians have had to find work in other places and that there have been massive job losses since the Prime Minister came to office, specifically in natural resources. Year over year, there have been hundreds of thousands of job losses. In May, June and August, there were losses in forestry, mining, fishing, quarrying, and oil and gas. That is the reality of the Liberals' record and for the future. What does the member have to say to the people he represents and all Canadians about that?

Mr. Speaker, Canadians still pay the price for the lost, anti-development Liberal decade. Six months ago, to get elected, the Prime Minister promised to put shovels in the ground on big projects at unimaginable speeds, but what Canadians got was the same old Liberal bait and switch, photo ops and more bureaucracy, because the PM is just another Liberal. The Liberals say five projects have made their secret list so far, some already approved and some already being built, but there is not a single pipeline to create Canadian jobs with Canadian steel and pay for programs that all Canadians want. Conservatives worked to improve and pass Bill C-5, but it is not enough to get back the $60 billion that left Canada due to Liberal red tape. Bill C-5 admits that the Liberals' own laws blocked building. They must scrap the “no new pipelines, never build anything anywhere” Bill C-69; the shipping ban, Bill C-48; Canadian energy censorship; the Liberal oil and gas cap; and the federal industrial carbon tax so Canada can compete. Conservatives want to unleash natural resources to make a strong, united Canada self-reliant, affordable—

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 proves one thing for certain: The Liberals broke the system, and Canadians pay the price. An unprecedented $5 trillion of Canadian capital went south and into other countries, and they killed $670 billion in major natural resource projects that could have been built by Canadians with Canadian aluminum and steel for Canada's economic strength, self-reliance, security and unity. In five years alone, 16 major projects were sidelined because of them. It cost Canadians over $176 billion in lost nuclear, critical mineral mines, LNG terminals, pipelines, indigenous-led projects and energy corridors delayed or derailed by lawsuits, bureaucracy, delay and Liberal policies. Imagine how powerful and self-reliant Canada would be today. Instead, Canada ranks last in the G7 for development, and the Liberals now scramble to patch what they themselves destroyed. Bill C-5 would not fix the fundamentals. It admits failure, with hundreds of thousands of Canadian job losses and more to come, unaffordable power and fuel, and skyrocketing costs of essentials. What the Liberals have to do is what the Conservatives said all along. They should scrap Bill C-69, Bill C-48, the federal industrial carbon tax, the Canadian oil and gas cap and all their other antidevelopment policies and laws. Proponents today still face unclear rules, no concrete timelines, interference and limited transparency. As the transport minister said herself in committee, “we have come to a place in Canada where we have such a thicket of processes, rules and regulations...that we are unable to build with the alacrity that this moment in time requires.” It is not during just this current moment that major projects cannot get built in Canada with brisk and cheerful readiness. That has been the worsening reality of the last decade of Liberal antidevelopment laws, policies and messages. That dense, cumbersome thicket was created by the very same government that claims to be new while half the ministers are the old ones. Conservatives offer real solutions: to cut red tape, gatekeepers and taxes; to create clear rules; to attract private investment; and to fast-track major projects for the benefit of all Canadians. The place the Liberals should start is with all the projects stuck in the federal queue right now, such as the Ksi Lisims LNG project, LNG Canada phase two and Bruce Power upgrades, and they should be looking at the dedicated west coast export pipeline to serve Asian energy demand that they killed 10 years ago and indigenous-backed roads to unlock the Ring of Fire. They are in the national interest, and they are waiting for a green light. They should be on the national interest list and fast-tracked yesterday. Nevertheless, Conservatives worked in good faith with other opposition parties and with the Liberals to help improve Bill C-5, and here I want to thank the Conservative team for all its efforts. It will be up to the Liberals to deliver on their rhetoric and to keep up all their big, but vague, promises to Canadians. It will ultimately be up to Canadians to determine whether they do, and Conservatives will hold them accountable in the meantime. Even now, Bill C-5 sets up a politically driven and determined process. Ministers will decide who goes ahead and who waits. They can even one day decide a project that they said was in the national interest earlier is no longer and remove it from the list or whatever ad hoc review a responsible minister determines. This is a problem I tried to fix: inherent uncertainty, huge powers behind closed doors and not a permanent fix or way to regulate and review projects in the sector most important to Canada's economy, imperative to help turn poverty into prosperity and to help lower emissions globally. Bill C-5 blurs the lines, just as Bill C-69 did. What is worse is that the Liberals know it. At committee, the Canada-U.S. trade minister admitted, quote, whoever puts forward these projects, be they public, private, indigenous, provincial or municipal, does not have to go through an evaluation and approvals process that could take five to six years. He admits the Liberal system takes years and delays building. It is not clear whether projects that are actually in provincial or municipal jurisdiction may end up in the Bill C-5 queue for a federal review, which would be a similar overreach problem to that in Bill C-69. The mix of public and private infrastructure should cause taxpayers to take notice too, but again the obvious first step should be to fix that whole evaluations and approvals process the minister himself says is too long. Proponents and the government itself are trapped by the red tape they imposed. Still, Bill C-5 does not fix it for everyone; it will fast-track a chosen few. At first, it did not even define “national interest”, which left every decision to the whims of cabinet and a lack of clarity for everyone involved, but Conservatives fought to require the government to define national interest with clear, specific criteria. We succeeded in adding that necessary clarity and structure to a process that started with none. Conservatives also successfully incorporated the requirement of a public list of national interest projects, with timelines, estimated costs and rationale; application of the Conflict of Interest Act to officials and proponents to prevent abuse and prevent politically connected insiders from pursuing personal profit over the public interest behind closed doors; mandatory national security reviews for hostile regimes and state-owned investments into major national interest projects to combat foreign interference and economic imperialism from adversaries and to protect Canadian sovereignty and security; a requirement for the government to fully deliver on its mandatory duty to consult and a clear map for indigenous consultation, with public reporting to build trust, earn confidence and respect indigenous rights and title so that major projects can get to yes in a good way, with minimization of predictable court challenges and delays; and annual independent reviews of project progress so all Canadians can measure the Liberals by their actions, not just their words, and hold them accountable. These amendments matter. They bring transparency, accountability, more certainty, more clarity and integrity to a bill that originally had none. However, even with these improvements, major concerns remain. Bill C-5 would still allow ministers the power to remove a project from the national interest list at any time, without notice, reason or recourse. I proposed to remove the power to take projects off the list once they make the cut, because that uncertainty may continue to push investors and builders to other countries with clearer rules and more predictability, just as the Liberals have done to Canada for the past decade. Since delay is death to major projects, Conservatives also aimed to give concrete timelines that do not actually exist in Bill C-5, despite all the Liberals' claims about a two-year process. I proposed a one-year deadline to issue permits once a project is designated; a 90-day limit for the Governor in Council, the cabinet, to make final decisions; and a requirement to prioritize private or public-private funding to protect taxpayers, to prioritize private funding. Canada should be a place where the private sector can take big risks and build big things on its time and on its dime, not where taxpayers have to be on the hook to get anything done. The Liberals rejected those amendments. Then I brought forward an amendment to apply the Conflict of Interest Act to enforce clearer safeguards to prevent corruption and block Liberals from stacking the deck in favour of their friends. This should not be necessary, of course, but we have a Prime Minister who hides his conflicts and where he pays his taxes, and who ran to make the company Brookfield invested in all the kinds of projects that Bill C-5 would fast-track, although under the Prime Minister, it mostly invested in the U.S. and abroad. This caused a flurry and a huddle among Liberal MPs, a couple of odd questions, and then the Liberals voted against it. Thanks to Conservative pressure and support from another opposition party, we forced the government to follow its own laws designed to prevent corruption and to put the public interest ahead of partisanship. Conservatives also got limits put on cabinet to prevent it from exempting 15 foundational laws that no government should ever sidestep. All Canadians can be forgiven for wondering why the Liberals would have presented such a potentially significant law free from all of those laws in the first place. Conservatives pushed crucial amendments to ensure provincial consultation and to protect provincial jurisdiction and provincial decision-making power, because what the Liberals must show is that they can ensure big projects in federal jurisdiction can be built for Canada's economic strength, security and national unity, not meddle in others. They have to find a will, a spine, a set that they have failed to show in the past decade in order to enforce their own jurisdiction, to treat the national interest approvals according to the general advantage of Canada and to uphold legal and jurisdictional certainty so that proponents can build their projects when approvals face challenges and obstruction. Otherwise, this will all be big talk and a lot of delays without fixing the real problems, which are the antidevelopment laws and policies the Liberals themselves decided they needed this queue-jumping Bill C-5 to work around. Conservatives' work continues today, with subamendments to clarify and fix flaws. We proposed a parliamentary committee with a nongovernment Chair. No government should judge its own actions. Democratic accountability anchors this principle, so the subamendment strengthens review with independent, balanced representation across parties. Canadians expect transparency, not spectacle. They expect real checks, not blanket approval. Canada holds vast potential. Natural resources, energy and infrastructure sustain millions of jobs, fund public services, build communities and bolster global trade. Any bill for national development must reflect this reality and champion, not hinder, the sectors that drive prosperity. Canadians need an approach that does not curb ambition, repel investment or deny opportunity. Canada cannot tolerate a framework that casts resource development as a threat rather than a strength. Canada demands confidence, not caution, and momentum, not paralysis. Conservatives champion responsible resource development, independent oversight and a united Canada, and our amendments to Bill C-5 uphold those values. Conservatives believe in strong paycheques and unity through opportunity, not division and double standards through federal overreach. We believe in reconciliaction through—

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives will not stand in the way of the Liberals' sudden and often diametrically opposed to the tenures of their own words and actions efforts to get Canada working and building, as Conservatives have called on them to do the entire time. We are hopeful, but we do remain skeptical that Bill C-5 can fully solve the problem of the current broken federal regulatory mess that the Liberals made. We believe in reconciliaction and know that indigenous people want to pursue equity, ownership and more powers of development and self-determination with their own rights and title. That is why the government should heed the words of the various chiefs who participated and of the AFN national chief, who cautioned that because of the lack of clarity around the duty to consult in Bill C-5, which Conservatives tried to fix, all approvals out of this may face court challenges, which will delay building. The Liberals need to fix that.

Mr. Speaker, I think it betrays the lie the Liberals have been peddling for 10 years, which is that the most important relationship to them is with indigenous people. They have a track record of killing major research projects and pipelines that indigenous people worked years and years to negotiate in a good way with big companies to secure their own source revenue for self-sufficiency and self-reliance. There are big questions about how on earth the Liberals could try to bring in this law that exempted 16 different acts and six different policies, including the Indian Act. I appreciate my colleague's comments and thank him for his collaboration. This is the major issue that the Liberals must get right; otherwise, they risk and threaten getting to yes in a good way, which every single Canadian and indigenous person in this country deserves.

Mr. Speaker, this is part of the concern we have with the government bringing forward a bill where it is trying to fix the mess that it made itself. Maybe I will just take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleague for all of his passionate, dedicated, steadfast advocacy for health, mental health and wellness for men and all Canadians and congratulate him on the successful passage of the 988 line, which is a lifeline for vulnerable and at-risk Canadians. Congratulations to him. We are so proud to have him on our team.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for our work together in trying to improve Bill C-5 as best we could. I am glad we won the fight to ensure there would be some limits on the cabinet in Bill C-5 to prevent it from exempting laws such as the Access to Information Act, the Lobbying Act, the Canada Elections Act, the Criminal Code, the Investment Canada Act, the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act, the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Trade Unions Act, the Explosives Act, the Hazardous Products Act, the Indian Act, the Governor General's Act and the Official Languages Act. That is an issue on which we worked co-operatively to help the Liberals improve the bill. Maybe the member wants to comment on why in the heck they would ever try to sidestep all those laws in the first place.

Mr. Speaker, after the last lost Liberal anti-development decade, Canadians pay the price. Today the G7 starts. Canada used to be powerful, but the Liberals are lucky we still have a seat at the table. Canada's economic growth is now last in the G7. Allies like Germany and Japan begged for Canadian energy, but the Liberals rejected them, and $670 billion in natural resource projects died by delay and Liberal attacks. This PM claims “elbows up”, but they have been “elbows down”. Canada has the world's highest per capita resource wealth, but the Liberals made Canada more reliant on the U.S. Canada's standard of living falls behind, with an income gap of over $30,000 per person versus the U.S. The U.S. will still take up to 90% of Canada's energy at big discounts if the Liberals keep their job-killing Canadian oil and gas cap; the anti-development bill, Bill C-69; the shipping ban bill, Bill C-48; and the federal industrial carbon tax on Canadian businesses. In Canada, anyone from anywhere should be able to work for a powerful paycheque. Conservatives will—

Mr. Speaker, where is Canada after this last, lost, anti-development Liberal decade? Only 11 years ago, Canada became internationally recognized as home to the richest and biggest middle class in the world, with more children lifted out of poverty than ever before. Heading into 2015, the budget was under control, with a billion-dollar surplus, and Canada's economy was the strongest in the G7, the last in and the first out of the great global recession. Today, Canada's economy has fallen behind those of our allies. Productivity lags. Workers cannot make ends meet and wonder whose job will be gone next. Canada's natural wealth sits idle in the ground and offshore. Investment heads south and to other countries. Families, and people with no one else to count on but themself, fall further behind. Young people lose hope for their future and wonder whether they will ever be able to afford a home, build up a nest egg or actually capture their big dreams. Communities lose opportunities and dwindle. Businesses close due to excessive red tape, taxes, costs and constant uncertainty, and they have to reduce their charitable and community contributions. Violence, crime, mental distress and suicide, especially among rural men, are on a steady rise. Killing energy projects does not just cost jobs; it also costs communities. It takes away critical revenue to build roads and bridges. It takes away revenue for critical supports for social programs; to build arenas; to support health care, like the long-term partnerships with the Lloydminster and Bonnyville regional health foundations and energy companies; and to build schools and universities. Today, Canada works for the super-rich, the well established, the elites, the well-connected, the big companies of all kinds, mostly foreign-founded and multinationals. It does not work for the Canadian people who do the work, take big risks and build big projects: individual entrepreneurs, small business owners, innovators, and workers and contractors who fuel, feed and power this country for our Canadian people. That is the Liberal legacy; the cost to Canadians is real, and it is staggering. Today, we as MPs find ourselves in an odd position. The very same government that inflicted the last decade of anti-energy, anti-private-sector death by delay and uncertainty on natural resource workers and businesses in every corner of Canada, that harmed all the secondary and tertiary sectors that depend on it everywhere, that sent allies away in dire need of Canadian resources, and that divided our country, pitting Canadians, provinces, businesses and sectors against each other, suddenly claims to want big natural resources and infrastructure projects to get built in Canada, so it brought in Bill C-5, with all kinds of big promises. However, at its heart, Bill C-5 is really a glaring admission that everything the Liberals have done for the last 10 years has made Canada a place where the red tape and constantly changing goalposts get to “no”, and nothing can get built efficiently or affordably. The real question is this: Would the Liberals' Bill C-5 really clean up the colossal mess the Liberals themselves have made? Where are the projects held back by the lost Liberal decade? Where are the investments that would have created prosperity for every single Canadian? Where are the thousands of well-paid jobs for Canadians everywhere, and especially in rural, remote, northern, Atlantic and indigenous communities that need them most? Where are the revenues for all three levels of government to fund public services and programs, build public infrastructure and support communities? Where has all that gone, and how much are we talking about here anyway? Well, Canada has lost $670 billion in cancelled oil, gas, LNG and pipeline projects alone since 2015, due completely to the Liberals' anti-energy, anti-development messages, policies and laws. On Wednesday night, in committee of the whole, the minister and I discussed Bill C-5 a bit. I suggested an obvious, immediate first step, if the Liberals really want to get Canadians working and building to strengthen Canada's economy and sovereignty, that would not require weeks and months of delay, meeting after meeting, and press conference promises with very few details. The minister said I brought up “hypothetical projects”, and he refused to say whether they met his factors for projects in the national interest, which the Liberals themselves will decide. That was alarming in itself, since the projects I mentioned are real projects, with real proponents, that would offer real jobs with powerful paycheques for Canadians and long-term tax revenue for all three levels of government. Real businesses are paying real money and losing real time trying to get to build their big projects. The problem is that they are stuck in one form of federal regulation or red tape right now. The immediate solution is blindingly obvious, without all the extra rigamarole, uncertainty and time delays. What was extra weird about the minister's evasion is that of the five vague factors the Liberals have outlined for Bill C-5, which they will use themselves to decide what is in the national interest, two of these factors are that projects must bring economic or other benefits to Canada and that they must have a high likelihood of successful execution. Clearly the top priority action, then, to fast-track efficiently should be all the projects and proponents stuck in red tape right now by the Liberals' own conditions. Where is the Crawford nickel-cobalt mine project near Timmins, Ontario? It was proposed in 2020 but is stuck in the regulatory mess the Liberals created. Where is the Troilus gold and copper mining project in Quebec? It has been stuck in the regulator since 2023. Where are the Rook I uranium mine and Denison uranium mine projects in northern Saskatchewan? They were proposed in 2019 and are both still stuck. Where is the Bruce C nuclear project planned for Ontario? It is stuck in double layers of regulatory review. It is no wonder Canada ranks dead last in the G7 for development. The projects are not only lost in red tape; they also seem to be lost completely from consideration by the minister, since he was so adamant on Tuesday night that they did not exist. They are five projects, five chances to grow Canada's economy, five chances to lead the world in energy, innovation, responsible resource development and indigenous opportunities. Of course, it is not only those five projects. In fact, there are dozens of major energy, nuclear, critical mineral and indigenous-backed resource road proposals that are stuck in limbo right now at the federal level. These projects are not theoretical; they have names, investors and local support. They have involved years of engineering, technical, environmental and consultation work, risk and investment. The missing piece is a federal government with a will to fast-track the assessments through the regulatory maze it created itself, to approve them efficiently and to back proponents once they approve them so proponents can actually build on their time and on their dime. In Bill C-69, as would also be the case in Bill C-5, cabinet is the final decision-maker, with all the power. Currently, both officials and ministers already have significant sweeping powers to start, stop, restart, extend, delay and suspend, and to change the rules and start all over again as many times as they want. It is no wonder things cannot get built. The government also has the power to fast-track the projects right now. Instead, it ignores all the real and ready projects, proponents and people, and has brought in a short-term workaround of its own bad policies and laws, Bill C-5. The Liberals talk about emissions reduction and imposed electric vehicle mandates, and they want so-called green growth, but they stalled the very projects needed to make all that happen. We cannot build electric vehicles without nickel, lithium and cobalt, currently dominated by China. We cannot power a reliable, affordable modern grid without uranium and natural gas. We cannot reduce emissions and build new technology without the innovation, jobs and revenues that come from responsible Canadian resource development, mostly from traditional oil and gas, and from pipeline companies. Alberta is an example. By 2023, Alberta oil sands reduced emissions intensity while growing production by 96%. Alberta leads the country in alternative energy development too, as in fact it always has. According to the federal government's national inventory report from 2025, Alberta had the largest absolute reduction in emissions of any Canadian province between 2022 and 2023. That is the truth the Liberals will not tell Canadians. Albertans cut emissions not by shutting down, but by showing up and building through free enterprise, innovation and technology, getting better emissions reduction results, real emissions reduction results, without killing jobs or driving away investment. However, the Liberal government still treats as problems not solutions Alberta and every province that develops resources, those of us in the so-called ROC, the rest of Canada, that politicians in Ottawa usually ignore. The Liberals punish the most responsible energy producers in the world and give a free pass to foreign polluters. They celebrate emissions reductions in Canada when they come from lockdowns, lost jobs and bankrupt businesses. Canadians cannot afford essentials because the government drives up costs and imposes unrealistic targets on power and fuel. It is worse when the facts do not fit the Liberals' narrative. When it turns out that Alberta reduces emissions the most, the Liberals stay silent. When LNG could displace coal from growing energy demand in Asia, India and Africa from B.C., or help secure European energy needs and cut dependence on Russia, the Liberals turn allies away. When western provinces want to build major projects or northerners want to mine and drill offshore, the Liberals deny, ban and delay. When Atlantic Canadians want to drill offshore, ship LNG to Europe or have a pipeline to bring western oil to eastern refineries so future generations of Atlantic Canadians can stay home with jobs and abundant opportunities, the Liberals interfere and then look away. Let me pause here to tell members how important that issue is to me, because the fact is that Atlantic Canadians and Albertans are inextricably linked. We have helped build each other's provinces in the best interests of all Canadians. I say that as a first-generation born-and-raised Albertan and the daughter of a Nova Scotian and a Newfoundlander. The Liberals spend years talking about reconciliation, yet delay, risk or kill pipelines, roads, mining projects and LNG opportunities that so many indigenous leaders, elders, youth, entrepreneurs and workers spent years negotiating with businesses to get jobs, to get their own-source revenue and to do environmental oversight in a good way. The Liberals claim to support first nations but deny them the opportunity to own, to build, to partner and to profit. It is not reconciliation when Ottawa decides who can build and who must wait. It is not partnership when one side always says no. It is not respect when indigenous voices are ignored because they want to make their own development decisions and exercise their rights and title. The bill that we are debating today proves what Conservatives have said all along: The Liberals' antidevelopment agenda kills Canadian jobs, kills Canadian investment, weakens Canada's security, unity and sovereignty, and has made our country a risky place where nothing can get built and where uncompetitive, pancaked and incoherent taxes, laws and policies; uncertainty; and constantly changing goalposts deter big projects from our own country. Canadians deserve a plan based on facts and results, not vague statements and delay from the same government that caused the problems it suddenly now claims to want to fix. The consequences of the Liberals' antidevelopment decade are growing poverty, not prosperity, and fractured national unity. The Liberals pit Canadians against each other and attack Albertan businesses in particular with constant misinformation and myths. The reality is that when Alberta builds and grows, so does Canada, and when Alberta is strong, so is Canada. Albertans have been there all along with our friends from Saskatchewan and from Atlantic Canada. We have just been asking the Liberals to help get the country's top export from the industry that is still the biggest investor in Canada's declining economy by far, whether the anti-energy zealots like it or not, to more markets globally so Canada is not dependent on the United States. Ten years later, ten years of this lost last antidevelopment Liberal decade, Canada faces economic, security and sovereignty threats from our closest ally, the world's biggest economy, our biggest customer and now, because the Liberals held Canada back every step of the way, our biggest competitor. Canadians cannot afford essentials, because the government drove up the costs of power and fuel for everyone. Make no mistake; it did not have to be this way. With all due respect, by which I mean almost none, the time to “build Canada” and make our country self-reliant, secure, united and strong was the last decade. The answer has always been to unleash Canada's natural resources and increase production and export customers, as Conservatives and only Conservatives have consistently and unequivocally advocated the entire time. This was never actually an even-sided theoretical or philosophical debate. It has always been simply the fiscal and economic reality of our country. Canadians deserve a government that backs them, not a government that blocks them and not a government that pees down our leg and tells us it is raining. Bill C-5 is breadcrumbs and baby steps, not a real breakthrough of Liberal-inflicted barriers on Canada. Our country needs real change and long-term, concrete certainty for the private sector and for Canadian workers to make us autonomous, resilient and secure, as the Liberals say they want to do now, even though they have been in charge around here for the last 10 years. What would that actually look like? It would mean fixing the fundamentals and repealing the failed “no new pipelines, never build anything” bill, Bill C-69, which is rife with uncertainty; which has no concrete timelines despite Liberal claims, arbitrary and unrelated conditions, political interference and jurisdictional overreach; and which the provinces, territories, businesses and indigenous groups all oppose or want to overhaul. The Supreme Court declared Bill C-69 unconstitutional for every single reason that Conservatives, and it happened to be me, warned about during the debates. However, Liberals ignored this entire Conservative team, all the premiers, all the territorial leaders, the private sector and the Senate and rammed it through anyway. The government should repeal the shipping ban bill, Bill C-48, which blocks dedicated export routes for Canada's much-needed energy to countries with actual emerging markets that need Canadian energy and technology in Asia, like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, and to European allies like Germany, Latvia, Ukraine, Greece and Poland. The geopolitical security aspects of this issue, obviously, cannot be overstated. That ban signals that shipping may be blocked by the government off any coast, just like its offshore unilateral drilling bans and antidevelopment zones on land and in water, but it stays. Clearly, the Liberals are A-okay with Canada's allies and other countries getting energy they will continue to want long into the future from the U.S. or from foreign regimes like Venezuela, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia over Canada, with much lower environmental, labour and safety standards and where the benefits usually only go to a wealthy few. The government should repeal the Canadian oil and gas cap that will cut Canadian energy production by 5%, kill over 50,000 jobs and remove over $20 billion from Canada's GDP. That is self-inflicted sabotage that no other country in the world is doing to itself and totally nonsensical for what is actually a radical anti-energy government suddenly plagiarizing, like someone's thesis, the former Conservative government's vision for Canada as an energy superpower. While the minister and his Liberal buddies laughed when I asked questions about job losses, Canadians stress, wondering where their next paycheque will come from. In 2021, TD Economics projected that of Canadian oil and gas jobs, up to 75% could disappear by 2050. The Liberals call it a transition for Canada. It is devastation. The Liberals should repeal the globalist, top-down economic restructuring, just transition plan in Bill C-50 that they already know will threaten the livelihoods of 2.7 million Canadians and cause labour disruptions, which is bureaucratese for job losses, for 642,000 workers in the transportation sector, almost 300,000 agriculture workers, 202,000 energy workers and, get this, 193,000 in Canada's important manufacturing sector, which is maybe more important than ever before, given this world becoming more dangerous and the global threats that Canada faces because this Liberal government has failed us. The truth is, the future does not look brighter with the same government pretending to be a new one. TD reports the unemployment rate in Canada has risen to its highest rate since 2016, outside of COVID, to 7%, and 100,000 jobs are to be lost by the third quarter of this year. The job outlook for students is even worse, with a 20% unemployment rate; that is the highest since the 2008 recession. In fact, Canadian manufacturing has lost 55,000 jobs in a period of only four months. This is not getting Canada on track; it is the continued track record of the same Liberal government, and we know what they say about lipstick on a pig. It was not always this way. Under the former Conservative government, Canada ranked fourth for ease of doing business of all countries in the world. However, by 2020, with the Liberals, Canada had fallen to 24th, behind Georgia and Thailand. Today, Canada ranks near the bottom globally for construction permits, property registration, securing electricity and cross-border trade. In fact, Canada is ranked second worst in the OECD for construction permit timelines because of the Liberals. The Liberals' blocked projects, hiked taxes and doubled debt have made Canada 30% less productive than the U.S. today. Since 2015, $5.6 trillion has left Canada for the U.S. That is not a coincidence; that is a Liberal consequence. The trend of Canadian investment up in the U.S. and U.S. investment down in Canada is a historic anomaly caused squarely, and for the first time ever, by the Liberals' damaging economic and energy policies. Just last week, StatsCan reported a more than 5% decline in forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, and oil and gas since last spring. Declines in primary and resource-producing sectors impact everything else. Ontarians now face the worst unemployment, outside COVID, since 2013. In April alone, Ontario lost 33,000 manufacturing jobs. Tens of thousands of real people lost their jobs while the Liberals patronized and laughed at opposition MPs fighting for those workers. It is a travesty that it has taken global instability, external threats, growing conflicts and a cost-of-living crisis that the Liberals created for them to even appear to take notice. Canadians now know, without a doubt, that energy security means food, job and national security for Canada. Last year, the energy sector contributed 7.7% of GDP, or $208.8 billion, to Canada; 446,600 Canadian workers, including 10,800 indigenous people, relied on natural resources. My point here is that none of this is accidental or externally inflicted on Canada. It is the direct result of domestic antidevelopment laws and policies. Canada's top global energy and resource competitors have ramped up their production of all kinds in the same time period, with much lower standards than Canada. We now arrive at Bill C-5. The current Prime Minister, who advised the last one for half a decade and is well known for his global advocacy to keep resources in the ground, has not actually explained whether he has had some kind of major philosophical metamorphosis, transformation and awakening from all his previous values and views but nevertheless has met with premiers and businesses and suddenly claims to want to do what Conservatives have been urging the gatekeeping, road-blocking, radical Liberals to do the entire time, which is to build, build, build. However, there are a lot of questions. Let us start at the beginning. As of right now, the Liberals say five factors will be considered to determine whether projects are in the national interest. Bill C-5 says a project must “strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience and security”; “provide economic or other”, whatever that means, “benefits to Canada”; “have a high likelihood of successful execution”; “advance the interests of Indigenous peoples”; and “contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change.” Now, it is worth a a pause here to point out that most Canadians would likely be shocked that these factors are not already part of regulatory and cabinet decision-making and may rightly wonder what the heck the government has been thinking about for the past decade. Also, it is worth noting that these concepts are broad enough that any interpretation or any argument could be made about each factor either way for any project, which is, of course, automatically and inherently uncertain, and wide open to manipulation and ideological or politically connected decision-making. So much for objective, technology- and sector-agnostic, predictable, clear, certain and evidence-based decision-making in Canada. As of right now, there is no public list of projects. Now, the Prime Minister says he is getting lists from provinces, and some premiers have said what their asks are, yet the minister claims there is no list and that that will happen after Bill C-5 is law. The minister specifically said on Wednesday, and I meant Wednesday earlier when I said Tuesday, that “when the projects are designated, they will be made public.” Do the projects drive the legislation, or does the legislation drive the projects? Do they have a list from premiers or do they not? Nobody knows, because of mixed messages and misleading answers. What is clear is that the whole thing is a politically driven and determined process, which is, actually, already exactly what the Liberals have been doing for the last decade. That is the opposite of clarity and certainty--