Kelly Block

[Business of Supply, June 21st, 2023]

Madam Speaker, there are a number of things that we might decide not to spend Canadian taxpayers' money on.

Let us talk about the carbon tax. We would cut the carbon tax. We would stop paying high-priced consultants. We would not allow the Prime Minister to consider exorbitant spending on vacations. We would not provide sole-source contracts to Liberal insiders that have cost Canadians millions of dollars. We might get rid of the infrastructure bank.

[Business of Supply, June 21st, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I rise in this place today to speak to the opposition motion put forward by the Conservatives to address the cost of living crisis facing Canadians. This is a crisis that the government has done nothing to fix. In fact, it is the Liberals' inflationary policies that created the crisis in the first place.

What has their response been? They have continued to run high deficits, pushing inflation to 40-year record highs. The Prime Minister excused this reckless spending by claiming that interest rates were at record lows and would remain there for many years to come. Now we have record debt, record inflation, and interest rates that have continued to rise despite the Prime Minister's prediction. This is causing pain for Canadians across the country, as their household budgets are being stretched thinner and thinner under the Liberal tax-and-spend plan. While Canadians are struggling, the government continues to increase taxes, making the essentials more expensive.

The Liberals have been persistent in their misinformed statements that the carbon tax is a net positive for Canadians. The Parliamentary Budget Officer's reports on the two carbon taxes have rejected this notion. The first carbon tax the government introduced will end up costing Canadians up to 41¢ per litre of gas. The added second carbon tax will cost another 17¢ per litre. Adding GST, this comes to 61¢ per litre. This will cost Saskatchewan families an extra $2,840 each year, but some Canadian families will pay up to $4,000 for the combined Liberal carbon taxes in other parts of the country.

This is a slap in the face to Saskatchewanians and Canadians. The carbon taxes have only made life more expensive for Canadians and have cost them more money for no results. The carbon taxes were never an environmental plan; they were a tax plan to fuel government spending.

Even while Canadians are struggling, the government cannot show fiscal restraint. It has no respect for taxpayers, as it continues to ramp up its inflationary spending. When the Prime Minister formed government, the national debt was $612.3 billion. By the end of this fiscal year, the federal debt is projected to reach $1.22 trillion. This means the Prime Minister has doubled the national debt in just eight years.

The national debt will break down to $81,000 per household in Canada. Additionally, debt-servicing costs have been growing just as fast as the government's deficits. This fiscal year, it is projected that the cost to service the national debt will be $43.9 billion. This cost is quickly approaching the amount of money given to the provinces through health transfers.

Canadians are deeply concerned about the economic policies of our country, except, it would seem, those sitting on the government benches. Most Canadians do not have a trust fund to fall back on, so they need to be careful with their money. The government needs to start demonstrating respect for hard-working Canadians by being good stewards of the public purse.

Without a plan to eliminate the deficits and balance the budget, inflation and interest rates will continue to rise and hurt Canadian families across the country even more. The Liberals have not put forward a plan to do this. Instead, they poured more gasoline on their inflationary fire by adding more than $60 billion in new spending. That is $4,200 per Canadian family. This spending is driving up deficits and consequently increasing inflation.

The Bank of Canada, which was widely predicted to lower interest rates, instead raised them from 4.5% to 4.75% following the tabling of the Liberals' budget. That is why the Conservatives are now calling on the government, through this opposition motion, to return to balanced budgets and give Canadians a break.

Now we are receiving warnings from the International Monetary Fund that Canada is the country most at risk of massive mortgage defaults. Across Canada, average mortgage payments have increased by 122% since the Prime Minister took office. Despite this warning, we see no plan from the government to get inflation under control to avoid a potential mortgage default crisis. Instead, the Liberals are burying their heads in the sand, leaving Canadians to their own devices as they spend away their future. This is not sustainable and is pushing Canadians closer to the edge.

Canadian households now have the most debt as a share of GDP of any country in the G7. This is not a record we want to hold. There is a solution. The Liberals must eliminate the deficits and balance the budget in order to bring down inflation and interest rates. I know this may not be easy for them, as they seem to know only one economic policy, which is to raise taxes and print money, but the fact is that if the Liberals were to put together a plan to return to balanced budgets and eliminate deficits, lower inflation and interest rates would follow. However, this is not something they can wait to do. We are already at a crisis point.

Just last month, the food bank in Saskatoon held a food drive, as the usage of food banks has reached a new record of 24,000 people a month. Across Canada, there are 1.5 million more people using food banks on a monthly basis, not to mention that one in five Canadians is skipping at least one meal a day because they cannot afford to eat. This is because food price inflation is also at a 40-year high. “Canada's Food Price Report 2023” has predicted that a family of four will spend up to $1,065 more on food this year. With many Canadians struggling paycheque to paycheque, the rising cost of food is breaking their banks.

The dream of home ownership is also fading fast. When the Liberal government took power, Canadians spent 39% of their paycheques on their monthly housing payments. Now they spend 62% of their paycheques. This is reflected by the growth of average rental and mortgage costs. Mortgage payments have doubled, from $1,400 per month to over $3,100 a month. Rent across Canada has doubled, from $1,172 to $2,153 for a two-bedroom apartment, and it has more than doubled in Canada's largest cities. This is why we must get interest rates under control.

For years, the Conservatives have warned the Liberal government that its out-of-control spending has consequences and hurts Canadians across the country. However, it responded with the infamous quote from the Prime Minister that budgets will balance themselves. We are now eight years into the government's tenure and have seen the effects of the Prime Minister's so-called self-balancing budgets. It has been a disaster for Canadians.

According to an article last month from the Financial Post and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, over 10 years, real GDP per capita growth has been at its lowest since the 1930s. The article states, “This extended period of slow growth has widened the gap between per capita growth in the United States and Canada, demonstrating that the causes of our slumping growth are domestic, not external.” The Liberals can no longer blame external factors for their own failures. The economic troubles our country now finds itself in are a result of the failed economic policies of the government.

In conclusion, I think it is in the best interests of every Canadian that this House call on the government to rein in its spending. It is time for the government to show the fiscal restraint that was promised by the Minister of Finance prior to the introduction of her latest budget. Instead of cancelling Disney+, let us cancel the deficits, axe the taxes and balance the budget.

[Online News Act, June 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I think this is obviously a result of the partnership between the NDP and the Liberals. The NDP seeks to support the Liberals in whatever the government presents. It is actually almost comical that the NDP is trying to make it harder for working Canadians to access government handouts.

[Online News Act, June 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's observations about the CBC and small media outlets, as well as about Google and Facebook.

The bottom line here is that the CBC does not need any additional support from Canadians, contrary to what some members might believe. It already receives over $1 billion a year from taxpayers. I, for one, question if Canadians are getting value for those tax dollars that are being spent.

If the purpose is to support smaller domestic media outlets, this bill will not do that, and we do not need to give more money to the CBC.

[Online News Act, June 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the answer is quite simple: This bill will not do that. Although there are a few small publications that will benefit from Bill C-18, the vast majority of local and ethnic media will not.

During the study of this bill at committee, Steve Nixon, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Weekly Newspapers Association, made this point. He said that only four out of the 56 publications will benefit from this legislation.

The PBO has stated, as I mentioned in my speech, that 75% of the money will go to the CBC, Rogers and Bell. This government does not want to help small publications, and neither does that member's party.

[Online News Act, June 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, in my speech I outlined a number of concerns that we have with this bill. I hope that the hon. member was listening to it.

Conservatives are not saying that addressing the issue that the bill is trying to address is completely without merit, but rather that this legislation is not the right solution for the problem. Once again, it is deeply flawed.

The NDP-Liberal coalition is not really looking for fair solutions. It is only seeking more centralized power and bureaucracy in Ottawa through this piece of legislation.

[Online News Act, June 20th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in this place to speak to Bill C-18, An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada, which has been returned to the House by the Senate with amendments.

Before I begin my speech, I would like to point out once again the hypocrisy of the Liberals, who imposed time allocation on this bill for a second time earlier today. If that was not egregious enough, yesterday a member of the government interrupted a member of an opposition party in the middle of their speech to give notice that it would be moving a time allocation motion on Bill C-18 today. The government then switched debate to Bill C-42, forcing that opposition member to finish their speech this afternoon. Perhaps it is understandable that the government is in such disarray as it stumbles from scandal to scandal, mismanaging its agenda in the House so poorly that it must now rely on these heavy-handed measures at the end of this session, although it can always count on the blind support of its NDP backbench to bail it out.

Moving on to the bill, this bill will require digital platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay Canadian media outlets for sharing their news content. Digital giants will have six months to negotiate private deals to compensate Canadian media outlets before being required to enter into arbitration. The proposed legislation will also create a framework for the arbitration process.

This is yet another ill-conceived bill from the NDP-Liberal government. Subject matter experts have raised numerous questions and concerns about it, including the impact it will have on news media, the Internet in Canada and the benefit or lack thereof to Canadian media.

Some questions remain unanswered: Why was the CRTC selected to be the regulator? Does the CRTC have the knowledge and expertise capacity to do the job properly? Does the CRTC have the capacity to enforce the regulations once they are created? The answers to these questions and others are impossible to know, because they will stem from the regulations that will follow if this bill is passed into law.

Essentially, what the government is asking of us is to grant them these new powers and just trust that it will be fair in its application. It is a ridiculous thing to ask for. The government has been chronically plagued with introducing deeply flawed and deliberately vague legislation, leaving the details to be fleshed out by the bureaucrats through regulation, which does not get the kind of public scrutiny that bills do through a debate in this place.

It is not only that: The government has also been chronically plagued with scandals and cover-ups. How can it be trusted to do the right thing when it has shown time and time again that it is prepared to abuse its position of power to help out its friends?

The fact that the CRTC, which is a government entity, will decide which news outlets qualify under this legislation is effectively a form of indirect funding. This bill allows the CRTC to pick winners and losers by determining which news businesses are included and will get to bargain for compensation and which news outlets will be left in the cold. Conservatives proposed amendments to level the playing field but were voted down by the other parties. While the government may suggest that the CRTC is independent, I am not reassured. The WE Charity scandal came out of a supposedly independent process. The SNC-Lavalin scandal came out of that same supposedly independent process. For the Liberal government, an independent process is independent in name only.

Another flaw in the conception of this bill is the idea that hyperlinks possess monetary value. While 99.9% of Canadians may not be aware of it, a case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2011 dealt with this very issue. In the case of Crookes v. Newton, the Supreme Court stated clearly in their decision that hyperlinks are akin to footnotes. Since footnotes do not carry a monetary value when used in publications, why should hyperlinks? Although access to the information behind the link is much faster than having to look up the reference in a footnote, the two are considered to operate in the same way.

The Supreme Court was quite clear in their findings on this case. Experts are asking why the government is ignoring the Supreme Court in this matter and whether it planning on challenging this decision from over a decade ago. How does it reconcile what is in this bill with the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2011?

Another flaw in thinking that links have monetary value is that often publishers and sellers are paying to feature their links at the top of search engines or to boost their outreach on Facebook. It is interesting that when organizations are paying to feature their links on these sites more prominently, the government now turns around and says that it is the one that should be getting paid.

Initiating this “link tax”, as it has been called, can open the door to other issues, such as the ability of larger organizations to take less money per link than smaller organizations, making the larger organizations a more attractive partner for big corporations. That raises the question of how smaller websites will be able to compete.

The reality of media marketing is that organizations pay money to push links to their sites on platforms like Google and Facebook all the time. They spend quite a bit of money to do this. This boosting of their links is essentially an advertisement for their respective websites. Does providing access to these sites not boost user engagement with their articles? If Google or Facebook were taking the articles of Canadian news outlets and republishing them as their own, then we would have a real issue, but it is an issue that can already be addressed through existing laws and legislation. However, that is not the issue at hand. Anyone who has used Google would know that search engines do not republish articles in this way. If I were to search for an article, I would need to click through to the article in order to access the content behind it.

Another deep concern with this legislation is that the CBC would be the largest beneficiary of the provisions in this bill. The Parliamentary Budget Officer reported that the majority of the money—three-quarters of it, to be exact—would go to the CBC, Rogers and Bell, with less than a quarter left for newspapers. After the larger newspaper businesses take their share, very little, if any, would be left for local and ethnic media.

Canadians already give over $1 billion to the CBC each year. If the purpose of this bill, as the government purports, is to support smaller domestic media sources, why include the CBC? Again, Conservatives proposed an amendment to exclude the CBC so that more money would go to local and independent news sources, but it was voted down by the NDP-Liberal coalition and the Bloc.

In conclusion, I am very concerned that rather than helping Canadian news outlets, this bill would harm them by restricting their reach, as I have mentioned. Independent media are foundational to Canadian democracy. Experts in the field have raised the concern that this legislation would negatively impact this principle in Canada. When the government creates criteria for access to funds, even media organizations may self-censor to ensure they qualify. This could lead to Canadians having less information, fewer options and an unbalanced media field.

Once again, I am unable to vote for this bill in its current form.

[Finance, June 13th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, after eight years, this Prime Minister is out of touch and Canadians are out of money. The Liberals' out-of-control spending has caused inflation to reach record levels.

That is not all that is reaching record levels: More Canadians are using food banks than ever before. In fact, just last month, the food bank in Saskatoon held a food drive, as food bank usage has reached a new record of 24,000 people monthly.

Will the Prime Minister reverse his inflationary policies so that Canadians can afford to put food on the table?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, June 13th, 2023]

With regard to the COVID-19 vaccine doses procured by the government: (a) how many doses purchased are known to have (i) been lost or stolen, (ii) expired, broken down by manufacturer; and (b) what are the details of each instance where doses were lost or stolen, including, for each, the (i) date, (ii) number of doses, (iii) manufacturer, (iv) location, (v) incident summary?

[The Economy, June 8th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, the Bank of Canada raised the interest rate for the ninth time since February 2022. Of course, this should come as no surprise, given the budget the Liberal government tabled in March.

The real surprise was the budget itself. We thought relief was on the way when the finance minister admitted that deficits cause inflation, and then she added another 60 billion dollars' worth of fuel to the inflationary fire. The Liberal government’s deficits have caused the inflation crisis, and this in turn has caused higher interest rates, which has now put Canadians across the country at risk of losing their homes.

The IMF has warned that Canada is at the greatest risk of mortgage defaults out of all advanced economies. What is the solution? It is very simple. It is to stop the deficits, which would stop inflation, which would stop the interest rates from going up and stop the defaults. The Liberal government needs to stop its out-of-control spending before it is too late.