Kyle Seeback

[Committees of the House, November 3rd, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I find it ironic that the member talks about unity, and then goes on to give a speech basically attacking Conservatives and attacking the Conservative Leader.

First of all, the member should take a look at something published on February 20, 2022, by the Conservative leader, where he condemns the invasion and calls for more support. To say that the Conservative leader has not done that is absolutely the definition of misinformation. There is so much misinformation in what the member said. First, there is an existing free trade agreement right now, one that the Conservatives negotiated.

To talk about the issue before us, this piece of legislation is at pre-study at committee on Tuesday. The pre-study will turn into the study so that the bill can be voted on and brought back to the House. To suggest that this is somehow delaying that shows the member's absolute incompetence as a member to understand what is happening in the House.

He should stop using those lines. In fact, he should apologize, and apologize to the Conservative leader.

[Steve Hayward, November 3rd, 2023]

We have lost a good one, Madam Speaker. Steve Hayward passed away in August this past summer. He spent his entire life serving our community in Caledon.

I met Steve in 2019 at the Alton Legion during a Remembrance Day ceremony. Steve was a fixture there. In fact, Steve spearheaded the $400,000 renovation of the Alton Legion. He was also in charge of trying to get Dixie Road renamed “Veterans Way”. He was always giving to our community and always giving to the Legion.

It was all about community for Steve. He volunteered everywhere. He founded Club Caledon to help young people. He volunteered with lacrosse, minor baseball and minor hockey, just to name a few. He was also, in 2021, Caledon's senior of the year. However, there is more. To children all across Caledon, he was Mr. Santa. He dressed up in that beautiful red costume and brought joy to children all across Caledon.

We have lost a good one. Steve's family and friends have our deepest condolences. He will be missed.

[Carbon Pricing, November 2nd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, a minister making $300,000 a year, who gets driven around in a limo, says it is a political stunt when I talk about a retired senior who cannot pay the carbon tax. This behaviour by the Liberals is disgusting.

Not all Liberals have to behave that way; on Monday, there will be a common-sense Conservative motion to axe the tax. They do not have to behave like a limousine Liberal minister. They can stand up for their constituents. They can vote to take the tax off, so people like Sigi can keep the heat on.

[Carbon Pricing, November 2nd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, what is actually shameful is how the Liberals continue to divide Canadians every chance they get. Now it is about heat. Sigi from Dufferin just paid $100 in carbon tax to heat his home for one month. In the Maritimes, Sigi would pay zero. That is dividing Canadians. Sigi is on a fixed income. He cannot afford it. They are basically saying he should freeze in the dark.

Why do the Liberals not stop dividing Canadians? Will they take the tax off so Sigi can keep the heat on?

[Housing, October 31st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, our leader has made very clear what our plan is on housing. It is going to get units built, unlike these announcements the Liberals are making.

The member said he found it hard to take me seriously with my question. What is amazing to me is that he talked about how there are going to be thousands of units built. It is hard to take him and his entire government even remotely seriously, because everyone knows we need 3.5 million homes built by 2030 to address the housing shortage. The Liberal plan comes up with a few thousand.

We had the housing minister at committee. He talked about all the levers he is pulling. When he added up the sum total of housing he thought his plans would build, it is a couple of hundred thousand. I am not great at math. That is why I became a lawyer. However, a couple of hundred thousand units is really far from being 3.5 million units.

The member is saying the Liberals have a great plan when they do not acknowledge how far behind they are. We need 3.5 million units. Their plan for a couple of hundred thousand does nothing for Canadians. They are out of gas and have no plan and no future. They should just apologize to Canadians.

[Housing, October 31st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the last time I was here, I asked a question about housing, talking about the Liberal government's absolutely abysmal record on housing. When one looks at the problem with housing, what one sees is that there are actually two elements. There is the building of units, and we know that building starts are down. They have announcements where they say they are going to build something, but no one can actually live in an announcement.

What they actually do at these announcements is find homes that are already going to be built and say that they will partner with the municipality and that the municipality will get a little extra money if it says they somehow contributed.

Their building homes strategy is a big nothing burger. It is an absolute failure.

Let us look at cost because cost is the other part that is making housing so unaffordable. We know that housing prices have doubled under the government, but let us look at interest rates. We know that interest rates are sky-high. The Governor of the Bank of Canada has said, many times, that the government's inflationary spending is like putting the foot on the gas pedal, as the Governor of the Bank of Canada tries to ease inflation by raising interest rates.

Interest rates are at absolute highs and this has tragic consequences for builders; they cannot build the units because interest rates are so high. It makes the cost of building them even higher. It drives up the cost of building and makes it even less affordable for Canadians to buy them.

Let me just give one little example. Right now, we have $186 billion worth of mortgages coming up for renewal in 2024. Let us say that one had a $600,000 mortgage coming up for renewal and an interest rate of 3%, which was not a great interest rate up until recently but is a very good rate compared to now. On a $600,000 mortgage, one's monthly payment until now would have been $2,500. Today, it is almost $4,000. That is a $1,500-a-month increase. These are the kinds of things that are crushing Canadians.

This Liberal government has done the impossible on incompetence. If one does not have a home, one cannot afford a home because the cost of a home has doubled. If one is renting or looking to rent, one cannot afford that either, because rent has doubled. If one has a home and one works so hard to save and actually have a home, when one's mortgage comes up for renewal, one cannot afford to keep one's home.

This government has somehow had the amazing incompetence to do two things: make it impossible for young buyers to buy a home and make it virtually impossible for people who have a home to keep the home. This is stunning incompetence on housing.

What makes it worse is that household debt in Canada is the highest in the G7. Remember that the Prime Minister said that they were taking on borrowing money so that Canadians did not have to? Well, they have had to because their inflationary spending has driven up interest rates so high that Canadians now have to borrow just to survive.

The most frightening stat I have seen just came out: 31% of Canadian households are having to find extra income just to make ends meet.

Look at what is going on in this country after eight years of this absolutely incompetent Liberal government. One cannot buy a home. One cannot keep one's home. One cannot make ends meet. People are actually having to take on side hustles to pay the bills. This is the catastrophic record of a tired, corrupt Liberal government after eight years.

I do not have time to get into the corruption. That would be an entire other late show, but let me say that housing and affordability is a disaster.

The government is responsible. Why does it not, instead of puffing up its chest and saying what a great job it has done, just apologize to Canadians for the mess it has made?

[Carbon Pricing, October 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, now we have just been treated to the great carbon tax fable: first, it was revenue neutral; second, we get more money than we pay into it; third, it fights climate change. It does none of those things. What it does, and what the Prime Minister has admitted by pausing the carbon tax, is that it makes it more expensive for everyone. The real tragedy is for Canadians outside Atlantic Canada. Why? It is not being paused, and most people heat their homes in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, B.C. and Quebec not with heating oil. It does not apply across the country.

Will they stop playing politics, picking winners and losers, dividing Canadians and axe the tax?

[Carbon Pricing, October 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has finally admitted the carbon tax makes heating homes more expensive and he is pausing the carbon tax in Atlantic Canada, and we know why. It is because the minister, the member for Long Range Mountains, said Atlantic MPs forced the Prime Minister to do it.

What the Prime Minister is saying after eight years is that if someone is a Liberal MP from Brampton, Toronto, Mississauga or Thunder Bay, their voice does not matter at all. They cannot have any change. They are effectively useless.

Will the Prime Minister stop playing politics with the carbon tax and just axe it?

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, that was a great question, the best one so far. The issue the member raised with respect to the export of those turbines was a shameful affront to Ukraine. The Liberal government and Liberal members should be ashamed of that.

If we look at LNG exports to the European market, the United States is at 26%, Qatar is at 24% and Russia is at 20%. Canada could absolutely fill that need if we had a government that recognized that LNG exports are good for lowering emissions, are good for the Canadian economy and would be very good at disrupting the Russian war machine.

[Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023, October 23rd, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, eight out of 10 people know one can make up statistics about anything. That is effectively what this member is doing in saying they have done the most. Anyone can make up statements about anything.

It is great that they came to the trade party, but they came to the trade party late. I still recall their vehement opposition to free trade with the United States. I led in my speech with what they said about the one final line they would like to change, and they erased the border between Canada and the United States. The member is saying not to go back in time, yet every time we talk about things, they talk about former prime minister Harper, from 2006. It is typically Liberal: They want it their way one way but everybody else has to have it a different way.

I am glad this free trade agreement has been modernized. I look forward to looking at it, examining it and doing the due diligence that it seems like parliamentarians want to do, whether they are in the NDP or the Bloc. The only members who do not seem to want to study this agreement are the Liberals, because as usual, in their arrogance, they believe they have birthed the perfect child and nothing could be wrong with it. We want to verify if that is true.