Bill C-69 (Historical)

An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 enacts the Impact Assessment Act and repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. Among other things, the Impact Assessment Act
(a) names the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada as the authority responsible for impact assessments;
(b) provides for a process for assessing the environmental, health, social and economic effects of designated projects with a view to preventing certain adverse effects and fostering sustainability;
(c) prohibits proponents, subject to certain conditions, from carrying out a designated project if the designated project is likely to cause certain environmental, health, social or economic effects, unless the Minister of the Environment or Governor in Council determines that those effects are in the public interest, taking into account the impacts on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, all effects that may be caused by the carrying out of the project, the extent to which the project contributes to sustainability and other factors;
(d) establishes a planning phase for a possible impact assessment of a designated project, which includes requirements to cooperate with and consult certain persons and entities and requirements with respect to public participation;
(e) authorizes the Minister to refer an impact assessment of a designated project to a review panel if he or she considers it in the public interest to do so, and requires that an impact assessment be referred to a review panel if the designated project includes physical activities that are regulated under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act;
(f) establishes time limits with respect to the planning phase, to impact assessments and to certain decisions, in order to ensure that impact assessments are conducted in a timely manner;
(g) provides for public participation and for funding to allow the public to participate in a meaningful manner;
(h) sets out the factors to be taken into account in conducting an impact assessment, including the impacts on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada;
(i) provides for cooperation with certain jurisdictions, including Indigenous governing bodies, through the delegation of any part of an impact assessment, the joint establishment of a review panel or the substitution of another process for the impact assessment;
(j) provides for transparency in decision-making by requiring that the scientific and other information taken into account in an impact assessment, as well as the reasons for decisions, be made available to the public through a registry that is accessible via the Internet;
(k) provides that the Minister may set conditions, including with respect to mitigation measures, that must be implemented by the proponent of a designated project;
(l) provides for the assessment of cumulative effects of existing or future activities in a specific region through regional assessments and of federal policies, plans and programs, and of issues, that are relevant to the impact assessment of designated projects through strategic assessments; and
(m) sets out requirements for an assessment of environmental effects of non-designated projects that are on federal lands or that are to be carried out outside Canada.
Part 2 enacts the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, which establishes the Canadian Energy Regulator and sets out its composition, mandate and powers. The role of the Regulator is to regulate the exploitation, development and transportation of energy within Parliament’s jurisdiction.
The Canadian Energy Regulator Act, among other things,
(a) provides for the establishment of a Commission that is responsible for the adjudicative functions of the Regulator;
(b) ensures the safety and security of persons, energy facilities and abandoned facilities and the protection of property and the environment;
(c) provides for the regulation of pipelines, abandoned pipelines, and traffic, tolls and tariffs relating to the transmission of oil or gas through pipelines;
(d) provides for the regulation of international power lines and certain interprovincial power lines;
(e) provides for the regulation of renewable energy projects and power lines in Canada’s offshore;
(f) provides for the regulation of access to lands;
(g) provides for the regulation of the exportation of oil, gas and electricity and the interprovincial oil and gas trade; and
(h) sets out the process the Commission must follow before making, amending or revoking a declaration of a significant discovery or a commercial discovery under the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act and the process for appealing a decision made by the Chief Conservation Officer or the Chief Safety Officer under that Act.
Part 2 also repeals the National Energy Board Act.
Part 3 amends the Navigation Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) rename it the Canadian Navigable Waters Act;
(b) provide a comprehensive definition of navigable water;
(c) require that, when making a decision under that Act, the Minister must consider any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada;
(d) require that an owner apply for an approval for a major work in any navigable water if the work may interfere with navigation;
(e)  set out the factors that the Minister must consider when deciding whether to issue an approval;
(f) provide a process for addressing navigation-related concerns when an owner proposes to carry out a work in navigable waters that are not listed in the schedule;
(g) provide the Minister with powers to address obstructions in any navigable water;
(h) amend the criteria and process for adding a reference to a navigable water to the schedule;
(i) require that the Minister establish a registry; and
(j) provide for new measures for the administration and enforcement of the Act.
Part 4 makes consequential amendments to Acts of Parliament and regulations.

National Council for Reconciliation Act

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to speak today in support of Bill C-29, which would establish a national council for reconciliation.

It was, of course, the previous Conservative government that first launched the TRC, along with other measures that sought to better the outcomes and the lives of indigenous Canadians, especially indigenous youth, the fastest-growing group of young people in Canada.

Unfortunately, it must be said that the Liberals took far too long to bring in this bill, given they have been in power for seven years and that the Prime Minister claims the relationship with indigenous people is the most important to him.

That is why Conservatives pushed an amendment to ensure that it is the Prime Minister who will respond to the national council’s annual report, as the TRC’s call to action says, unlike the Liberals’ original draft, which delegated this responsibility to a minister.

That was just one improvement of the 19 substantial amendments from Conservatives to uphold the principles of transparency and independence, to increase accountability and accelerate the timelines for government responses, and, most importantly, to implement concrete, measurable targets and outcomes.

What is crucial is ensuring that good intentions and well-meaning words deliver actions and better outcomes. It is a testament to the good will, spirit of collaboration and shared aspirations that all parties supported 16 of the 19 Conservative amendments.

I am proud to represent nine indigenous communities in Lakeland, just as I am proud to represent every Canadian in the 52 communities across the region. As always, those people and those communities are foremost on my mind, so, like my neighbour from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, I will address an extremely consequential Conservative amendment that was inexplicably rejected by the MPs of all the other parties. Conservatives wanted to ensure that one seat on the board of directors of the national council would be filled by an indigenous economic national organization.

It makes little sense to talk about mutual commitments between governments and citizens to tell the truth about historical, systemic and paternalistic injustices for societal reconciliation but to also simultaneously reject entrenching economic reconciliation as a priority so communities can move from managing poverty to generating prosperity. There are so many ways that can help resolve the disproportionate socio-economic challenges that indigenous people and communities face as a consequence of generations of oppressive and discriminatory government policies and programs.

This especially matters when it comes to ongoing challenges for indigenous leaders and entrepreneurs who want to secure jobs and create jobs, equity ownership, mutual benefit agreements and other economic opportunities in natural resources development. These are a main source of employment, and often the only source, for communities in rural and remote regions. It also matters in the public policy debates and duties around definitions of decision-makers, roles in consultation, consent and consensus, identity and local impacts.

In Lakeland, four of the nine indigenous communities are Métis settlements, half of all the settlements in Canada. They are unique to Alberta, with legislated Métis land bases, local governments and infrastructure costs, like water treatment facilities, roads and schools. They pay taxes, including carbon taxes.

For years I have pushed for their recognition, and I was finally able to get an indigenous and northern affairs committee report to cite them as “distinct entities with unique needs”.

In September I urged the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations to include the settlements in Bill C-29, because it is an obvious hindrance to reconciliation if they are excluded from meaningful participation in the council, but I am still waiting for a response.

Representatives of the settlements in Lakeland often tell me they feel abandoned and forgotten by the government. Lee Thom, a Kikino Métis Settlement councillor, says that the Métis settlements must have a seat at that table to advocate for their indigenous communities, which are stand-alone and not a part of existing Métis nations in Alberta and nationally.

Still, the settlements have never been mentioned in a federal budget and are often excluded from federal initiatives. To me, this remains a glaring omission.

It is particularly relevant to the pursuit of economic reconciliation because the Métis settlements in Lakeland, along with most of the first nations, are currently, and have been, heavily involved in energy and natural resources development for decades. Many have previously met all their community needs with their own source revenue from their businesses and contracts.

The NDP's and Liberals' anti-energy agenda and aim to phase out oil and gas, which have already driven away investment, cost over $150 billion in lost projects and hundreds of thousands of jobs, have hit indigenous communities as hard as everyone else.

Last year, the indigenous and northern affairs committee tackled barriers to indigenous economic development. We heard from dozens of witnesses and one thing was clear: Empowering indigenous communities to set up businesses, develop their natural resources and create wealth for their communities and surrounding areas is crucial.

In later work, witnesses said that housing, health care, governance, infrastructure and emergency preparedness challenges all come back to the core concept of economic reconciliation. Several elected leaders from Lakeland participated.

Chief Gregory Desjarlais, of Frog Lake first nation, talked about the importance of access to capital to get projects built, like the carbon capture proposal led by Frog Lake and Kehewin, both in Lakeland. Frog Lake is heavily involved and invested in energy operations, whether through jobs or their community-owned Frog Lake Energy Resources Corp.

The benefits of indigenous-owned businesses are many. As Chief Desjarlais put it:

Look at these projects.... Look at indigenous ownership. If you involve the first nations, you allow them to build homes. You allow them to send kids to school. You allow them to send people to treatment. You allow them to deliver water to these homes. You allow them to remove mould. That's problem-solving. That's a takeaway, instead of all the money leaving Canada and still having poorer first nations living on CFAs and begging for handouts.

These benefits were echoed by Stan Delorme, chair of the Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement, as they would help to meet their major infrastructure needs for the disproportionate number of unemployed youth and to lift Buffalo Lake’s average annual income of $27,000 a year.

The ever-increasing carbon tax hurts them even more, as the cost of lumber, fuel, and home heating skyrockets, and the accessible oil and gas jobs that used to exist for them have disappeared because of the Liberals’ anti-energy agenda. Lee Thom says, “Our settlements are communities—living, breathing—with roads, schools and water, with everything that comes with a small municipality and are in dire need of funding.”

Those are three of the nine indigenous communities in Lakeland who are now part of the 23 communities that are now all proud owners of over a billion dollars' worth of pipelines in the Athabasca region.

Many other indigenous-led and indigenous-owned projects and partnership projects have been outright killed by this anti-energy government, like the Prime Minister’s unilateral veto of the northern gateway pipeline, which destroyed the aspirations of and all the work of 31 communities, which had mutual benefit agreements, and he did that without consultation, or all of the projects that are at risk by anti-energy policies and activists who threaten projects and are often not even from the locally impacted area.

The outright cancellation or the deliberate policy-driven delays to force private sector proponents to abandon major natural resources development and infrastructure projects have all been major concerns, and often totally devastating to numerous indigenous communities, leaders and business groups.

Those projects are opportunities for economic reconciliation. They are tools for indigenous communities to meet their core social and economic needs, invest in their cultures, and preserve and nurture their heritage and their languages for future generations.

For example, Chief Councillor Crystal Smith from Haisla Nation opposes Bill C-48, the shipping and export ban, and supports Coastal GasLink as a way to bring her community out of poverty.

Last week, Calvin Helin, an indigenous author and entrepreneur, said that what really irks indigenous Canadians involved in responsible resource development is the meddling and interference from “eco-colonialists”, these groups whose only interest is in stopping projects, and government interference where the government is only listening to the side of the project that supports their politics.

There are countless examples of the Liberal government trampling on indigenous Canadians’ work and hope, roadblocking their pursuit of self-determination, including Eva Clayton of the Nisga’a, whose LNG export facility is on hold because of Liberal red tape; Natural Law Energy, 20 prairie first nations who lost a billion-dollar investment opportunity when Keystone XL was cancelled due to Liberal inaction; the Lax Kw’alaams, who are litigating against the Liberals’ Bill C-48 export ban, which violated their rights and title and ruined their plans for a deep-water port and oil export facility without consulting them; and the 35 indigenous communities with the Eagle Spirit Energy Corridor proposal, whose work and hopes for economic benefits were quashed by Bill C-69, the no more pipelines act.

The Liberals and the anti-energy activists’ anti-resource, anti-business and anti-energy agenda, usually outside and far away from the local indigenous communities, sabotages all their efforts to benefit from natural resources development and to participate in their local economies.

These actions look a lot like those of a centralist, colonialist government imposing its views against the goals and priorities of the majority of directly impacted indigenous people and leaders, like those in Lakeland.

While Conservatives will support this bill, the Liberals still need to fix their own paternalism that prevents economic reconciliation to ensure that indigenous voices, not just those that align with Liberal political priorities, are all represented in reconciliation efforts.

Division of Bill C-27 for the Purpose of Voting

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to add to this morning's point of order raised by the NDP House leader concerning the application of Standing Order 69.1 to Bill C-27.

In general, we have reviewed the hon. member's submissions and concur with them. That said, there are a couple of additional citations I want to put before the Chair for your consideration. I will not repeat the arguments, because you already have them before you, Mr. Speaker, but we do agree that the measures proposed in part 3 of Bill C-27 are significantly different from and unrelated to parts 1 and 2 such that they warrant a separate vote at second reading.

As my NDP counterpart articulated, the purpose of parts 1 and 2 of the bill concern privacy protections, the powers of the Privacy Commissioner and the establishment of a new government tribunal. Part 3, meanwhile, would create a whole new law respecting artificial intelligence. The mechanisms under the minister and department's powers are completely unrelated to those in parts 1 and 2. That last point is significant in view of another aspect of the March 1, 2018, ruling of Mr. Speaker Regan, which my colleague cited. Allow me to quote your predecessor, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Regan said:

As each of the first two parts of the bill does indeed enact a new act, I can see why the hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé would like to see each one voted separately. However, my reading of the bill is that the regimes set out in part 1, the impact assessment act, and part 2, the Canadian energy regulator act, are linked in significant ways, reflected in the number of cross-references. For example, the impact assessment act provides for a process for assessing the impact of certain projects, but contains specific provisions for projects with activities regulated under the Canadian energy regulator act. There are also obligations in the Canadian energy regulator act that are subject to provisions in the impact assessment act. Given the multiple references in each of these parts to the entities and processes established by the other part, I believe it is in keeping with the standing order that these two parts be voted together.

Deputy Speaker Bruce Stanton also encountered a similar situation in his June 18, 2018, ruling at page 21,196 of the Debates. Unlike the case that I quoted just now respecting the pipeline-killing former Bill C-69, Bill C-27 does not feature any significant or intertwining cross-references. In other words, Speaker Regan found that the two parts should be voted on together because of all the intertwining and cross-referencing in so many parts, and one part mentioning and referencing items in the first part.

This is not the situation we have today with part 3 of Bill C-27. In fact, part 3 of Bill C-27 does not explicitly cross-reference the personal information and data protection tribunal act, which part 2 would enact. Furthermore, there appears to be only one single, tiny, solitary cross-reference to the consumer privacy protection act, which part 1 would enact, and that is solely for the purpose of proposing a definition of personal information, which would be common to both of those laws. That is certainly not enough to warrant any kind of grouping when it comes to votes.

Part 3 is completely separate. It is its own independent section. There is not anywhere near the level of cross-referencing and intertwining that previous Speakers have ruled are justification for deciding not to have a separate vote. Therefore, it is clear in this situation that Bill C-27, should you, Mr. Speaker, agree with the arguments, should be dealt with in such a manner that there can be a separate vote on part 3.

Standing Order 69.1 is a relatively recent innovation. It has only been in the last number of years that Speakers have been given the authority by the House to separate aspects of bills for separate votes. I will read it:

(1) In the case where a government bill seeks to repeal, amend or enact more than one act, and where there is not a common element connecting the various provisions or where unrelated matters are linked, the Speaker shall have the power to divide the questions, for the purposes of voting, on the motion for second reading and reference to a committee and the motion for third reading and passage of the bill. The Speaker shall have the power to combine clauses of the bill thematically and to put the aforementioned questions on each of these groups of clauses separately, provided that there will be a single debate at each stage.

If we think about the context in which this standing order developed and was ultimately passed by the House, it was to allow members more flexibility and latitude to make their votes count on various aspects of the bill. It is important to think about why the House decided to adopt this measure. There had been, over the course of several Parliaments and across different governments at various times, more and more subject material being included in bills, and this was done at the time to give members the option of voting in favour of some aspects of a bill and oppose others and to clarify for their constituents and Canadians which parts of a bill they supported and which parts of a bill they opposed.

The reason I am talking about this context is I do not believe that at the time, the rationale and impetus for the inclusion of this measure in the Standing Orders was meant to be terribly restrictive. The whole point of the standing order was for it to be more permissive to allow greater latitude and flexibility. This is a relatively new innovation that has only been used a small number of times, and in parliamentary terms certainly a very small number of times, and I believe it would not be in keeping with the spirit and intent that was guiding members when we adopted it to start off, early on in its new use, with being very restrictive, because things around here tend to go in one direction and powers or flexibilities accorded the Chair over time often get more and more rigid as rules and precedents develop around them.

If the Speaker were to adopt a very restrictive interpretation of this standing order, I believe it would take away the point of this innovation, as it was proposed. I do not believe it would take a permissive interpretation of the standing order to agree with my hon. colleague from the NDP and the points that I raise here today. It is very clear that these parts are separate. Part 3 of Bill C-27 is completely independent, stands on its own and is not related, intertwined or cross-referenced in earlier parts of the act.

I only mention the point about restrictive interpretation as one further point to urge the Speaker to consider what the spirit, intent and purpose of this innovation was meant to do, which was to allow members to clearly differentiate which parts of legislation they support and which parts they do not. I would urge you, Mr. Speaker, to keep that in mind as you study the arguments that were put before you. I hope you will find in our favour and allow members to vote separately on part 3.

Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, when I take a walk through this country, I cannot help feeling like everything is broken.

Inflation is at a 40-year high. In a single month, 1.5 million Canadians visited a food bank. In the GTA, the greater Toronto area, that number was 180,000, in one general metropolitan area. One in five Canadians is skipping meals, because they cannot afford their groceries. About half of Canadians are $200 or less away from insolvency. The number of insolvencies is up by a fifth compared to a year ago, the biggest increase in 13 years. One in six businesses is considering closing their doors.

Households now face the prospect of 15% of their income going to debt servicing alone, a recent record. Mortgage interest costs for the average family are up 11%. Year over year that is the biggest increase since 1991. If someone renewed their mortgage today, after having secured it five years ago, they would be paying about $7,000 more per year for the very same house they lived in last year.

If people think home ownership is expensive, they should be careful about renting. That now costs $2,000 a month in the average Canadian city. Vancouver has the world's third most inflated housing market. Toronto has the 10th. In fact, Vancouver is more expensive than New York, Singapore, London, England, and countless others of the world's most famous cities where they have more people, more money and less land.

If we took a walk out of our homes onto the street, we would find ourselves 32% more in danger of being attacked. That is the increase in the violent crime rate since the Prime Minister took office. In fact, there were 124,000 more crimes committed this year than in 2015, when the Prime Minister came to office. There were 788 homicides in Canada last year. That is up from 611 back in 2015, which is another 29% increase. There has been a 92% increase in gang-related homicide and a 61% increase in the reports of sexual assaults since 2015. Police have reported hate crimes are up 72% over the last two years alone. After the government tells us it is investing so much of its rhetoric and its money in fighting racism, we see hatred and hate-based violence has increased by three-quarters.

Some 31,000 Canadians have lost their lives to overdoses. If we take a walk down streets like East Hastings in Vancouver, we will see tent cities where adults are lying face-first on the pavement, having just completed their most recent dose, not sure whether they will actually awaken. Police and social workers literally have to scour the streets 24-7 to check pulses of people lying on the pavement, not as extraordinary circumstances or one-time emergencies, but as daily events. In fact, there were 71,069 Canadians who died of overdoses in 2021. Twenty-one people are dying of overdoses every single day. That is up from 11 per day.

More than six million Canadians do not have access to a family doctor. The most simple expectations that we have for our health, like going into a pharmacy and getting painkillers for our children have now become out of reach. Canadians are now forced to drive south of the border to get the same medications that are not available on this side of the border. In fact, according to an association of pharmaceutical wholesalers that represents businesses in 19 countries, only Canada is suffering from these shortages.

Meanwhile, speaking of the rest of the world, there are still people who want to come here, and we hope they do, but 2.6 million of them are waiting in immigration queues. Over a million have been waiting longer than the acceptable wait time. When they arrive, they would arrive at Pearson, one of the worst-ranked airports on planet Earth. Montreal is not far behind when it comes to records for delays. The port of Vancouver is now ranked 376th out of 380 ports around the world. Speaking of getting people into the country, 10,000 Canadians were sent wrongly into quarantine by a $54-million app that we did not need, that did not work and that could have been procured for $250,000.

Speaking of building stuff, whether it is apps or anything else, our country is now ranked the second slowest for the time it takes to get a building permit. The average building permit takes over 250 days in Canada, but only 28 days in South Korea. It is no wonder we cannot build the factories, the pipelines and, most important of all, the houses that give people homes. We import 130,000 barrels of overseas oil every day even though we have the third-biggest supply on planet Earth.

All of these things are broken. What is most interesting about them is that they all happened under the Prime Minister's watch, while he refuses to take responsibility for any of them. Any one of these things in isolation would be considered a catastrophic embarrassment, but together they show the story of a country that cannot get anything done and that has accepted dramatic reductions in its quality of life and its expectation for what a person can receive living in this country of ours. The Prime Minister, who is in charge of the central government, ought to take some responsibility, but he takes none.

He says that a 40-year high in inflation has something to do with the war between Russia and Ukraine, even though inflation was already two and a half times the target before the war even began and less than 0.3% of our trade is with Russia and Ukraine combined. As for the stuff they produce, the stuff we already have here, he is not responsible for the massive increases in cost.

The Prime Minister is not responsible, he says, for the doubling of house prices or the fact that rental costs are out of reach. He is not responsible for the skyrocketing crime rates in our streets, even though his government oversees the Criminal Code and the national police force and border security. He is not responsible for the overdose deaths of so many Canadians. He is not responsible for the fact that so many people are going to food banks. He is not responsible for the fact that our children cannot get medication.

He says he is not responsible and he is right: He is not responsible. He is not responsible, even though he has the power to affect all of these things and, in many cases, he is the one who caused them in the first place.

I have never seen a prime minister who is so desperate to have more power with less responsibility. He wants to take over what we see and say on the Internet. He wants to control a greater share of the money that Canadians earn by constantly increasing spending faster than the economy grows. He wants to have more power over dental and pharmaceutical and child care, rather than allowing Canadians to control those things for themselves. He wants to have more control over health care by dictating terms to our provinces on how they should run their hospitals, even while he does not want to be responsible for any of the health outcomes that we see in our emergency rooms across the country. He wants more power, but he does not want more responsibility.

When we ask him about these failures, his constant refrain is that he is spending more money, and on that count he is right. There is no question that the government is the all-time heavyweight champion of spending. It has increased spending by 30% over pre-COVID levels even though COVID programs have now ended, but the results, as I have just listed, speak for themselves.

It is not a consolation prize that we are spending more to achieve these failures. The only thing worse than failing is failing expensively, and that is what the Prime Minister is doing.

Only in government, by the way, would politicians think that it is acceptable to measure their success by how expensive they can be. For example, this week, the Auditor General came out and said that the Liberals have spent an extra $1 billion-plus specifically on homelessness. Well, that sounds good, but they cannot keep track of how many homeless people there are in Canada. They have no idea what the results are. They have an overall housing program of $40 billion, which is supposed to make housing more affordable, but all the while house prices have doubled. The more they spend, the more things cost and the worse the results.

In the real world, people judge things by the outcome. For example, if I go to the grocery store, come back home, pull out a receipt and say to my wife, “I spent $700 on groceries” while I am holding two bags of groceries, she is going to say, “Where did all the money go?” I would say she has to give me a high-five because they were really expensive and that whatever I have in those bags must be terrific because it cost more than when she goes grocery shopping.

The reality is that nobody in the real world judges their success that way. We do not have restaurants that say, “Come dine with us. It is $500 a night to be in our dining room. We will not tell you anything about the service, the ambience or what ends up on the plate. What is most important is that our meals are the most expensive and therefore must be the best.” Only in politics do people think it is appropriate to judge success by how expensive government can be. What if instead of judging our success by how much we spend, we judged it by how much we delivered and the results that we actually achieve?

Everything feels broken in the lives of everyday Canadians, but the good news is that we can fix it. We live in the greatest country in the world. Our country has overcome these difficulties before and has rebuilt and given new hope where before there was hurt. There is a very clear path to achieving that result, and that is to start with the issue of money. Instead of spending more, let us achieve more.

How do we do that? Why do we not cap government spending and cut waste, and bring in a dollar-for-dollar law that requires the government to find a dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending measures? That would force politicians to make the same either-or trade-offs when they spend our money that everyday Canadians make in their lives.

When a local mechanic decides he is going to spend a little more on advertising, he has to spend a little more somewhere else in order to free up that money. When a family decides they are going to build a new porch, they might decide not to go on vacation or might try to find a bargain on both. They might get a deal on a vacation and go to the local construction yard to get some discarded lumber in order to build a porch more affordably.

Politicians and bureaucrats do not make those kinds of calculations because they do not have to. There is always more in the pot. They can tax more, borrow more or print more.

That scarcity gets passed on to the taxpayer. Every creature in the universe has to live with scarcity. The great economist Thomas Sowell once said that the first law of economics is scarcity. There is always more demand than there is supply. The first law of politics, however, is to ignore the first law of economics. That is what politicians do by simply putting scarcity onto other people by driving up their costs and externalizing the consequences of spending decisions.

If instead we forced politicians by law to live with the same laws of scarcity as every other business, consumer or taxpayer, we would force better results. Politicians would need to go into their departments and ask themselves, “If I want to increase spending on this initiative, where can I find savings somewhere else?" They would be incentivized to go line by line, year after year, to find low-priority items in order to redirect the money to high-priority results for Canadians.

Let us get the Bank of Canada back to its core mandate of 2% inflation rather than printing money to pay for political spending. Let us also get rid of the obvious examples of wasteful spending. We could cancel the ArriveCAN app and get rid of the multi-billion dollar Infrastructure Bank, which has achieved no projects but has guaranteed the profits of large multinationals and the bonuses of executives. Getting rid of this waste would allow us to save money and free up more resources for things that could achieve results for our people.

Instead of creating more cash, why do we not create more of what cash buys in this country? Why do we not grow more food, build more houses and generate more Canadian energy?

Speaking of energy, I had the privilege of visiting the single largest infrastructure project in Canadian history, LNG Canada, a $40-billion private sector investment approved by the previous Conservative government. It could only come to pass because the Government of British Columbia agreed to exempt the project from the carbon tax. Otherwise, it would not have been economical. What result will actually be achieved by this project? The answer is that it will cut 60 million tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere by replacing overseas coal-fired plants with clean Canadian natural gas.

Is it not interesting that this project had to be exempt from both Bill C-69, the government's environmental law, and the carbon tax in order for it to go ahead and reduce emissions? In other words, for this environmentally friendly project to occur, the government's environmental policies had to be ignored. That proves how backwards they are.

If the carbon tax had been in place, the project would not have been economical. If Bill C-69, the anti-energy law, had been in place, there is no way it would have been approved. What would have happened? About 60 million more tonnes of greenhouse gases would have gone into the global atmosphere because there would not have been clean Canadian natural gas to replace the dirty coal in Asia.

We have an enormous advantage reaching Asia. B.C. is the shortest North American shipping distance to Asia. We also have the shortest North American shipping distance to Europe from the east coast of Canada. Speaking of the east coast, when the Prime Minister visited there, he was asked about approving natural gas projects in Canada's east coast. He said there might not be a business case. He was standing next to the German Chancellor when he said that.

Ironically, the Germans just announced that they completed a new natural gas import terminal in 194 days. Do members know what they will not be importing there? It is Canadian natural gas. Why? It is because we do not export any natural gas overseas. We do not have any terminals completed. Despite 15 of them having been proposed when the Prime Minister took office, not one of them has been completed. Only one is under construction, the aforementioned LNG Canada. The rest are in limbo.

We could be sending the Germans our natural gas to break European dependence on Putin and to transform dollars for dictators into paycheques for our people in this country. Why do we not do that?

Let us think of the human benefit that would bring. When I was in northern British Columbia, I spoke to a Haisla Nation grandmother who broke down into tears when she said that her granddaughter had been diagnosed with autism. After decades of federal promises that these kinds of conditions would be met with services and treatment, there is no treatment in her region of rural, remote northern British Columbia. She said that if natural gas projects like LNG Canada were allowed to go ahead, and if her nation could sign agreements to share in the benefits of those programs, there would be local resources under the control of first nations communities to provide children like her granddaughter with autism treatment and countless other things. Why do we not empower first nations to do more things like that by allowing these projects to go ahead?

We need to get the government out of the way so these opportunities can occur. We need, for example, to incentivize more home building by requiring our large municipalities with overpriced markets to approve fast and affordable building permits so that we could build the millions of new homes that are required for our existing population and for those who have yet to come to our country. We need to require that every federally funded transit station be pre-approved for high-density housing around it so that our young people do not even need to own a car to live in an affordable house.

We also need to sell off 15% of the 37,000 underutilized federal buildings so they can be made into affordable housing for our young people. We need to get government out of the way so that our projects can get completed and our people can have homes and energy.

Finally, we need to get government out of the way and off the backs of our farmers so they can produce more nutritious food in this country. Is it not an outrage that Canada has the sixth-biggest supply of farmland per capita on earth, but in one in five households, people are actually skipping meals because of the excessive cost of food?

We should not only be able to feed our own families but be the breadbasket of the world by cancelling the carbon tax, not just on primary farming but on drying food and transporting it. We need to cancel the carbon tax on our truckers so they can bring that food affordably to our supermarkets. We also need to remove the ridiculous fertilizer tariffs and taxes the government is bringing in so we can produce more food on every acre of land in order to have greater output and reduce the amount of fuel that has to be burned to produce that prodigious output. Let us unleash the fierce power of our farmers to feed us again.

Let us also make it possible for our people to walk safely in the streets once again, something we used to take for granted. The answer is clear: The vast majority of crime is committed by a tiny minority of criminals. A recent letter from the Union of B.C. Municipalities demonstrated the number of instances of crime and criminality that are generated by a tiny minority. For example, in Vancouver, 40 individuals were responsible for 6,000 negative interactions with the police, most of them arrests. Let us think about that. The same 40 people were arrested 6,000 times in a year. That is like 150 arrests per person per year.

We all agree that if a young person makes a mistake, we should invest in rehabilitating them to get them back on the street once they are ready and into a job as productive members of society. However, when someone commits 60, 70, 80 or 100 violent offences and we consistently and automatically release them early on bail and even after they are convicted, that is contributing to the criminality that has grown by one-third since the Prime Minister took office. Let us target that small minority of criminals with serious consequences to get them off the streets and keep the streets safe.

It is not out of hatred for the criminal that we take these actions. It is out of love for the victims, the people who desperately want to live safely in our neighbourhoods. Instead of investing money in going after the lawful, licensed, trained and tested hunters and sport shooters, we should put that money into bolstering our borders to keep the smuggled drugs and guns that are terrorizing our communities out of our country altogether.

Finally, we need to come to the rescue of the people living in these all-too-common tent cities, whether they are in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal, or in smaller centres like Peterborough, where this phenomenon is growing out of control. We see people who could be our brothers, sisters or, God forbid, sons or daughters who have lost their homes, are living on the streets and are playing Russian roulette with their lives. Every single time they ingest these poisons, they risk stopping their hearts, and we can change that.

We know that the government's current approach is to liberalize access to the most dangerous opioids and, in fact, use taxpayer funding and public resources for so-called safe supply to make them even more abundant. There is no such thing as safe poison; it is all deadly. We know what we can do to save these people's lives, because they are doing it in Alberta today.

Alberta has redirected the resources away from a so-called “safe”, taxpayer-funded supply of drugs over to recovery and treatment, getting addicts off the street and into a recovery centre, where they are first given detox, which cleans the poison out of their system, and then given 60 to 90 days of treatment, in-patient care, building up the habits of a clean, drug-free life. They are then gently reintroduced into society in jobs and opportunities, during which time they have counselling that keeps them on the right track. What is the result of that approach? It has cut overdoses in half and they are saving lives, proving there is always hope. It is possible to save these people.

Everything feels broken in this country, but it is our role in the House to turn all of that hurt into hope. It is our job to come forward with the practical, common-sense solutions that have made this the best country on earth. It is our job to take responsibility for the suffering that exists in this country today and replace it with opportunity, to give people back control of their lives here in Canada, the freest country on earth, where people can chart their own destinies and be masters of their own fate.

Natural Resources

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, it is true that they have to meet environmental standards. We had real environmental standards under the previous Conservative government. In fact, the only way that the LNG Canada project in western Canada went ahead was by exempting it from the new anti-development, Bill C-69.

She is right also that first nations have to be consulted. One person is an indigenous grandmother from the Haisla first nation who told me that LNG Canada and projects like it meant that her autistic grandchild would have the resources for treatment. That means help for first nations, paycheques for people and clean energy for the world.

Why will the Liberals not get out of the way and let it happen?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Revenue-neutral, Mr. Speaker? It is not neutral for taxpayers who will pay thousands of dollars more in the tax than they get back in any rebates, according to the government's own Parliamentary Budget Officer.

If the government really wanted to fight greenhouse gas emissions, it would approve projects that do that. For example, there were 15 LNG projects proposed when the government took office. Not a single one has been built. The only one that is under construction was approved by the previous Conservative government and it required subsequent governments to exempt it from the carbon tax in order for it to be economical and to speed up its approval by ignoring Bill C-69.

Will the government get out of the way and let our projects go ahead to protect the earth?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, on June 3, I asked the Minister of Natural Resources a question about Canada's role in providing the world with energy solutions. I pointed out the government's failures in having Canadian resources delivered to world markets. My question was one about long-term impact, the result of the government's constrictive policies on Canadian resource development and delivery to world markets, and Canada's role in providing the world with energy security.

The minister told me I was wrong, that I was wrong in pointing out that hundreds of billions of dollars of investment projects have left this country since the government was elected. He said I was wrong that government-funded delays on resource development projects have left Canada with a reputation as an unreliable place to invest. He said I was wrong in indicating that their flagship Impact Assessment Act, the famous Bill C-69, has led to more uncertainty in the process of having projects approved. He said I was wrong in protesting the constraints on Canada's signature contribution to reducing worldwide CO2 emissions by exporting the world's cleanest natural gas to world markets and, in the process, displacing coal burning for electricity production in the developing world. He said I was wrong in actively working to get Canadian resources to world markets like Germany, which were thrust into the arms of Russia, as it filled the void left by Canada these past seven years. This led to a transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from democratic countries to authoritarian regimes, the most problematic, of course, being the funds that flow to Russia to wage war against our friends in Ukraine.

The government has made this bed and now it is saying that it would take too long for Canada to provide solutions to the obvious problem.

Well, I am not wrong.

The government has failed the world by constraining clean Canadian energy development for the past seven years. It has failed the developing world in providing clean Canadian energy to a growing world demanding more energy. It has failed the environment by keeping Canadian natural gas from markets that have had to burn more coal and emit more CO2. It has failed the democratic nations around the world by forcing them to source their energy at great expense from the world's most authoritarian regimes. We should have developed these resources for the world seven years ago. It is true. These are great policy failures for Canada and for the world.

The best time to move forward was seven years ago, then six years ago, then five years ago, then four years ago, then three years ago. The best time to move forward is right now. Let us get these things off the building blocks and let us get some things going in Canada.

Let us talk about the supply disruptions. I know one of the excuses I am going to hear is that these are global supply disruptions. Well, who is causing the global supply disruptions? It is Canada. We cannot get projects built.

On inflation, if we think about the mounting cost of energy around the world, it is because Canada has not been there to provide energy to a growing world. This past summer alone, energy was $60 per thousand cubic feet in Europe and $10 per thousand cubic feet in the United States. That is a big difference. It was worth negative at times in Canada.

We have to get our resources to market.

Government Business No. 22—Extension of Sitting Hours and Conduct of Extended Proceedings

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the NDP-Liberal attack on parliamentary committees in the form of Government Business No. 22.

This undemocratic motion is a crass attempt at frustrating the work of committees by further limiting their resources. On the face of it, the motion allows the government House leader to extend the hours of any sitting of the House to midnight until June 2023. The Liberals say they are simply seeking more time to debate their legislation, but we must look at the broader implications of the adopting this motion.

With the persistence of virtual Parliament, workplace injuries for interpretation staff have increased ninefold. Since 2019, there has been a 25% decline in the number of interpreters employed by the translation bureau and nearly 40% fewer freelance interpreters available to the House. These unionized professionals work each day to ensure that our business is conducted in both official languages.

The Liberals and NDP dismiss the plight of these workers, demanding that our work continue in a hybrid fashion against the objections of interpretation staff. Due to the lack of interpreters, there is a strict limit on how many parliamentary activities the House administration can facilitate in any given sitting week. As a result, every time the hours are extended in the House, two committee meetings must be cancelled. Put simply, more time for the House equals less time for committees.

Let us keep in mind the government is in complete control of the House agenda. It determines the business each and every day, including which of its bills will be debated. It has tools at its disposal to cut off debate as it deems appropriate. It even designates which days will be allotted for opposition days. With the blind support of the hapless NDP, the Liberals have the votes to pass their legislation.

In other words, the Liberals are in complete control of the House, propped up by the NDP. However, they do not control committees in the same way. Conservatives have secured several committee investigations that are holding the Liberals accountable for their failures. For example, the government operations committee is digging into the $54-million ArriveCAN app, including Liberal misinformation reported to the House that contractors were paid millions when they did not receive a dime. That committee is tasked with answering two key questions: Where is the money and who got rich?

The heritage committee is investigating the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion for providing funding to known racist and anti-Semite Laith Marouf. The procedure and House affairs committee is investigating the Prime Minister who has known for over a year about foreign interference in our elections and has yet to act. The public safety committee is investigating allegations made against the Minister of Emergency Preparedness for political interference in the investigation into the mass killings in Nova Scotia. It is shameful.

The veterans affairs committee is looking into allegations that a government employee recommended medically assisted suicide for a veteran struggling with mental health. The declaration of a public order emergency committee has heard considerable testimony that contradicts the Liberal rationale for invoking the Emergencies Act. The transport committee recommended the repeal of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, a Liberal-made organization that has failed to get any infrastructure built. Conservatives on the foreign affairs committee continue to advocate for the listing of the IRGC as a terrorist entity, so that this brutal regime about to execute 15,000 of its own citizens cannot fundraise and organize in Canada anymore.

These are just some examples of how Conservatives are making parliamentary committees work for Canadians. Under Government Business No. 22, this and all work of committees would be restricted and constrained. The motivation for this motion is clear, the Liberals want Parliament to serve only their purposes. To them, Parliament is only useful when they can control it.

Canadians expect Parliament to hold the government to account, and Conservatives will fight to maintain the dignity of this institution.

There was a time, if we can believe it, when Liberals believed that committee work was essential. In the 2015 election, they made the following promise:

We will strengthen Parliamentary committees so that they can better scrutinize legislation.

Better government starts with better ideas. We will ensure that Parliamentary committees are properly resourced to bring in expert witnesses, and are sufficiently staffed to continue to provide reliable, non-partisan research.

The Liberals made that promise when they still believed they were the party of sunny ways, but after seven years of corruption and cover-ups, the mirage of an open, transparent and accountable government has been exposed.

Last week, in mainstream media, the government House leader justified his motion, claiming that Conservatives were employing tactics that amounted to “parliamentary obstruction by stealth.” The irony of this claim is not lost on me. He is the one, under the pretext of expanding debate in the House, who is attacking committees by stealth. I will address his claim directly.

Conservatives do not obstruct for the sake of obstruction. In recent weeks, we have allowed several bills to proceed in a reasonable time frame. We supported the swift passage of Bill C-30, which provided GST tax relief for low-income Canadians. The government did not need to use time allocation to shepherd that legislation through the House.

On September 29, the Conservative member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, with whom I am splitting my time, secured the unanimous consent of the House to pass the national council for reconciliation act at second reading and send it for study at the indigenous and northern affairs committee.

We allowed for Bill C-22, the disability benefit act, to be sent to the human resources committee after just two days of debate. Again, time allocation was not required.

Just before the last constituency week, Conservatives supported Bill S-5, which will strengthen environmental protection in Canada. No time allocation was required.

Conservatives can be counted on when the government brings forward proposals on which common ground can be found. The government House leader's accusation about obstruction is simply not true.

Having said that, Conservatives are openly opposed to the Liberal agenda. There is no “stealth” about it. We use every tool available in the parliamentary tool box to both expose Liberal failure and corruption and propose our ideas for Canadians to consider as an alternative.

If the government House leader had been paying attention, he would know that the new Conservative leader and our Conservative team are putting the people first: their paycheques, their savings, their homes and their country. We are against deficit-driven inflation. Instead, we demand that all new spending be matched with savings found somewhere else. We are opposed to payroll and carbon tax hikes in the middle of this cost of living crisis.

We defend energy workers against the Prime Minister's attacks on their livelihoods. We would repeal anti-energy laws like Bill C-69 and remove other Liberal-made barriers to producing our natural resources. We oppose the failed climate change plan of this government, which has not achieved a single emissions reduction target. We say no to the oppressive carbon tax and yes to technology in the fight against climate change.

We abhor $6,000-a-night hotel stays for the Prime Minister while Canadians are visiting food banks in record numbers, like 1.5 million in one month. We oppose wasteful spending and the $54-million “arrive scam” app that did not work. We did not need it, and it could have been designed over a weekend for about $250,000.

We are vocal when the Prime Minister is silent about foreign actors interfering in our elections. We reject Liberal inaction while shelves that should be stocked with children's medication sit empty. We stand with victims, not criminals, as the rates of violent crime have spiked in our cities under this government's soft-on-crime policies, and we oppose this outrageous attempt at seizing control of parliamentary committees.

There is no “stealth” about our opposition to the NDP-Liberal government. We proudly oppose the costly coalition on all these fronts, in broad daylight, for all to see.

Fall Economic Statement

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not allowed to mention the presence or absence of the Prime Minister, but I will just say that some people bring happiness wherever they go and others bring happiness whenever they go.

Conservatives are going to cap government spending. We are going to get the Bank of Canada back to its core mandate. For 25 years, the Bank of Canada had a very simple mandate of 2% inflation, brought in by the Mulroney government. It was to stick to 2%. Interest rates and money supply were all governed to that purpose, and it worked. It worked until the current Prime Minister came along and pushed the bank to print cash to pay for his spending. We are going to have no more of that.

Conservatives will fund our programs with real money, rather than printed cash, because we know that there are no freebies in this world and we know that, ultimately, the taxpayer and the consumer pay for everything. We will reinstate that mandate and we will audit the central bank through the Auditor General to make sure that never again is there such a horrendous abuse of our money as we have seen over the last couple of years.

Instead of creating more cash, we are going to create more of what cash buys. We are going to grow more food, build more houses and produce more resources right here in Canada, and here is how we will do it. We will incentivize our municipalities to remove their gatekeepers so that we can build more houses. We will remove the gatekeepers off the backs of our farmers by cancelling the tariffs and taxes on their fertilizers and fuel so they can produce more in this country. We will remove the government gatekeepers that stand in the way of our resource sector.

Do members know that Canada today has the second-slowest time for building permits of any country in the OECD? The only other country that is worse is the Slovak Republic. In Canada, if we take all the types of building permits that exist, everything from a renovation permit on a house all the way up to a full uranium mine, and we average it out, the average permit time is 250 days. In South Korea, it is 28 days.

We wonder why investors are taking their money to places like South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Ireland. It is because they can actually get things built in those countries. That is what Conservatives are going to do in this country. We are going to compress the timelines and speed up approvals. We are going to challenge all levels of government to meet the goal of Canada being the fastest place to deliver a building permit anywhere in the developed world.

The minister said today she is going to pitch the world on our critical minerals. The problem is that she cannot get them out of the ground. She is going to tell everyone that they exist. Out there in that field there is some lithium, copper and nickel, but companies have to wait seven years for us to give a permit for anyone to dig that mine. She says she is going to give out a bunch of corporate welfare to mining companies, which can fill their bank accounts with taxpayers' cash. If they cannot get a permit to dig the mine, they will not be able to turn it into anything other than big, fat boondoggles for taxpayers.

Conservatives will repeal the anti-energy law, Bill C-69, so that we can build Canadian pipelines with Canadian steel to take Canadian energy to Canadian marketplaces and around the world. We are going to eliminate the anti-investment taxes that pile on the backs of our entrepreneurs so that it is actually rewarding to build things in this country. We are going to axe the carbon tax so that it is possible for our industries to compete and for our people to afford energy in this country.

As for energy, there are two very different approaches. Across the aisle, they believe that we should tackle climate change by making traditional energy that Canadians rely on more expensive. Conservatives believe in tackling climate change by making new alternatives more affordable. We will do that by incentivizing and speeding up permits to mine lithium, copper, cobalt, graphite and other necessary minerals that will eventually go into Canadian-made electric cars and other forms of renewable energy. We will incentivize the production of these energies here in Canada. We will incentivize nuclear energy here on Canadian soil so that we can power our economy emissions-free.

We will also get rid of the red tape to get dams built in Quebec. We know that in Quebec, there will not be enough electricity in the future to charge electric cars and to meet all the needs of a green future.

Their solution is to build dams. However, the Prime Minister wants to prevent or delay the construction of those dams with duplicate processes.

We agree with the Government of Quebec. It is not necessary to add three or four years to the time frame for these projects since the Government of Quebec already has processes in place to protect the environment. Quebeckers are capable of protecting the environment, and we are going to help them by approving the construction of hydroelectric dams.

Finally, we will make this a country where work pays again. It does not pay to work for a lot of people. Let us look at someone on disability who recovers to a point or arrives at a point in their life where they realize they can work 10 or 15 hours and they want to get out into the world and contribute. The clawbacks right now mean many people on disability lose more than a dollar for every extra dollar they earn.

The government published a report showing that if a single mother with three kids who earns $55,000 a year earns another dollar, she loses 80¢ of that dollar. She earns about $25 an hour. She loses in clawbacks of her benefits and taxes on her income 20 of those dollars, so her real wage on that extra hour of work is five dollars an hour. Nobody in Canada should be expected to work for five dollars an hour. That is an outrage. That is why my government will reform the tax and benefit system to ensure that whenever somebody works an extra hour, takes an extra shift, or earns an extra bonus, they are always better off and they always keep more of that dollar.

We will do this to restore the Canadian promise. I look around this chamber and I see many inspiring stories, like my finance critic, who rose today to ask the first question. He is the son of immigrants. He grew up in a tough neighbourhood and had a difficult childhood, but he was able to get a diploma in accounting, which he is putting to very good use in this House. He started a business, built homes and was elected to serve in a G7 Parliament.

I, myself, am the son of a 16-year-old unwed mother who had to put me up for adoption to two school teachers. They always taught me it did not matter where I came from, that it mattered where I was going, and it did not matter who I knew, that it mattered what I could do. That is the country I want my children to inherit, and that is the country we will fight for every single day in this House.

Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will start by wishing you a belated happy birthday.

I am pleased to rise on Bill S-5. I have not spoken in the House for a while. I have been too busy covering committees. It is nice to be back.

Of all the hundreds of bills I have debated, this one has to have the sexiest title: an act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, to make related amendments to the Food and Drugs Act, and to repeal a couple of words that I cannot pronounce Virtual Elimination Act. This bill basically replaces Bill C-28, which the government brought in during a previous Parliament.

When introducing this bill, the environment minister talked up the usual propaganda. He talked about Canadians knowing the urgency of the need for this bill and said that the government is responding to this urgency. I have to laugh, because, again, this bill existed in the previous Parliament, but the environment minister was part of the government that called an early election and effectively killed the bill, using crass political opportunism to take advantage of what were favourable polls at the time and also to kill the Winnipeg lab inquiry. Basically, it killed the bill, the same one that is so urgent that the government was seized with it but decided to waste a year by killing it with a cynical election.

Generally, as my colleague from Oshawa commented before me, we support Bill S-5. Our chemical management plan is probably the best in the world, along with our chemical engineers, especially in Alberta at DuPont. I used to work in Fort Saskatchewan, at a chemical plant there, with lots of great jobs, lots of very strong investment and high-paying jobs, which is very good for Canada.

This bill will also modernize the CEPA and ensure it sticks with a risk-based approach to management, as opposed to the more burdensome red tape and growing hazards-based approach.

The bill also recognizes a right to a healthy environment, which I generally support. I mean, who would not support a right to a healthy environment? However, I have to say I have great concerns that it does not define what that is in this bill, and it gives the government two years to do this. The failure to define this issue can have great implications in the future. I am very wary of a bill from the Liberal government that says, “Just trust us on this issue and we will get back to you.” There were five years of consultations on this specific issue, and the government is asking for two more.

Of course, I have to say that five years late from this government is not bad. The government is seven years behind on icebreakers; seven years behind on joint supply ships; seven years behind on fighter plane replacements; seven years behind on the offshore patrol ships; six or seven years behind on fixing the Phoenix pay fiasco; years late on buying handguns for our armed forces; years late on the frigate program, which has gone from $92 billion to $306 billion; years late on introducing whistle-blower protection; years late in getting ATIPs processed. I actually have some ATIPs that are so late and so old that they could have gone through a graduate program at university in the time it has taken for them still not to have been brought before this House. That is just to give colleagues the idea.

Those are just the examples that I am dealing with out of the operations and estimates committee. I imagine every single person in this House has further examples. While I fear outright malfeasance from the Liberals in leaving this issue open, I generally accept it, knowing that given the incompetence of the government, it will never get done.

Speaking of not getting stuff done on the environment, we have had lots of big announcements from the government. As I mentioned, the environment minister, when introducing Bill S-5, talked about the urgency of getting it done. He said Canadians have an urgency; the government has an urgency.

The Liberal government talks a lot but delivers very little. At the same time, we have the same environment minister in the paper this week, with a headline saying something about the environment minister slamming oil companies for sitting idle on the climate. That is from the government that killed Bill C-28, this bill, the urgent bill that was before the last Parliament, yet it is blaming the oil companies for not taking action.

We have some Alberta oil companies and transmission companies that are working on the environment, not sitting idle.

TransCanada PipeLines is investing in solar and wind for both its customers and to power its ops. Enbridge is building green energy to power its products. It is investing in 24 wind farms, five waste-heat recovery facilities and hydrogen facilities as well. These are companies that are investing in green technology, despite the government planning to phase them out and despite getting slammed by the environment minister for doing nothing. Both these companies, as well, have committed to zero carbon emissions by 2050, or neutral anyway. Suncor, CNRL and others, since 2012, have spent $10 billion on green energy R and D. Suncor, CNRL and Synovus have spent over a billion dollars in 2020 alone in green R and D.

If members remember, in 2020, during the worst of COVID, oil had a negative price. Oil companies and people had to pay to store the oil. CNRL lost a quarter of a billion dollars in 2020, Imperial Oil lost $1.3 billion and Suncor lost $3.2 billion, yet they were still investing in green energy R and D. Those are the same people the environment minister is slamming for sitting on the sidelines. They are actually getting stuff done while the government is not. That was $5 billion in losses just for those three companies, yet they still invested a billion dollars. It was $10 billion alone in the last decade.

This is from an industry that has had to weather the downturn in 2014 in oil, the 2020 crash and the Alberta provincial NDP trying to block the pipeline. The former NDP premier actually went on TV and said that she would block northern gateway. Of course, we also had the Liberal government with Bill C-69, which was the “no more pipelines” bill; Bill C-48; and everything else it has been trying to do to destroy that industry, which is investing in green R and D.

The environment minister attacks the companies for not doing enough, but they are doing their part for Canada. I would suggest to the environment minister, when he attacks these people for not doing enough, that people in glass houses should not be throwing rocks, or in his case people in glass greenhouses should not be throwing rocks.

I am going to look at the minister's own department results. These are numbers from the Treasury Board. These are not my numbers. These are not made-up numbers. This is from GC InfoBase, from the departmental results. In 2021, the environment minister achieved, with his department, 14% of its targets. That is one out of every seven. In 2020, it was 27%. In 2019, it was 23%. In the department's best year in the last three years, it barely got to 25% or one-quarter of its targets.

The minister has the gall to attack Alberta's oil industry for not doing its part. He attacks Canada's largest exporter of goods. The minister attacks the largest industrial employer in Canada of indigenous people. The largest investor in green R and D in the private sector, he attacks for not doing enough, yet he presides over the abysmal failure in his own department of just 14%. I am wondering if the environment minister would have stopped at scaling just 14% of the stairs at the CN Tower when he was illegally doing his protest and consider 14% a success.

There are other failures from the current government. The Auditor General reports in the “Greening Government Strategy” report that the government has failed on its results. Those are the exact words from the Auditor General. The report states:

...government decision makers, parliamentarians, and Canadians do not...know...whether the government will meet its...target.

It actually gets worse. The Treasury Board requires, as part of the greening government strategy, that assistant deputy ministers sign off on the integrity of the government's emissions reduction reports. Seventy-four per cent of the bureaucrats have refused to sign off on their mission targets.

We will support Bill S-5, but we actually need action and not just talk from the government.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I first want to say happy Bandi Chhor Divas and happy Diwali as well.

I have sat through the Bill S-5 debate, which has been riveting. I think the pages are wide awake, maybe not so much after my time.

Bill S-5 deals with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which has not been significantly updated since it was passed in 1999. Bill S-5 is the first major update since 1999.

We agree that this outdated act needs to be updated, but we have some concerns. Throughout the course of my 20 minutes, I will speak to that. First off, it is hard for us to take lessons from a government that has failed at every step of the way in the last seven years. It has promised a lot and talk a big game, yet it has failed every step of the way. Earlier on, I mentioned that the government likes to fly the flag and say that it is here for reconciliation and that it is the environmental steward of our economy and our country, yet it is still approving billions upon billions of litres of raw sewage being dumped into our waterways right across the country.

I do not need to remind the House, although I will, that this is also a government that has waged war on our natural resource sector from day one. The Prime Minister apologized. He said that under his tenure Canada would be known more for its resourcefulness than its natural resources. That is not true. He has absolutely waged war.

I will remind the House that it was the government that brought in the no more pipelines bill, Bill C-69, which absolutely punishes Canadian producers. The government has waged war. It has sided with these third-party groups that helped the Liberals get elected in 2015. I will remind the House of that. Over 105 different organizations waged war against the Conservatives and sided with the Liberal Party to get it into power, and now it is paying them back. These organizations have infiltrated even the highest offices of the PMO.

Bill C-68 was an act to amend the Fisheries Act. I debated and studied that. I stood in the House and talked about it for hours on end. That is the act to amend the Fisheries Act where we looked at the harmful alteration or destruction of fish habitats, which we showed and proved. Not one government scientist or biologist could prove that any of the changes that were done by the previous government resulted in or had harmful alteration or destruction of fish habitats.

Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium act, is another one where the government waged war on our natural resources and energy sector. It essentially said that any tankers coming to the west coast to get Canadian products would be banned, yet American or other foreign vessels could come. Nothing similar was done on the east coast, where hundreds and hundreds of tankers each week are bringing in foreign dirty oil into our country.

I know that we have just a short time before we get into a riveting session of question period. I am excited about that, too. I know the gallery is, and so are my colleagues. We have a lot of concerns about this, notwithstanding the 24 amendments that were passed, 11 of which I will get into when I have more time after question period.

The government talks a good game on climate change, yet it has failed to reach any of its targets in the seven years since it was elected. It really has no plan. It was the member for Timmins—James Bay who mentioned this. My colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands said she has many concerns about what is in this bill and that amendments need to be addressed.

However, we have heard the government say over the last seven years to just trust it and that it will deal with it in committee, yet it failed to do that. Trust is earned; it is not just given. Time and again, the government continues to burn that trust and any goodwill with not only the opposition, but also Canadians.

Climate Change

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question and remind him that we have one of the most rigorous environmental assessment processes. It is a process, by the way, that the Conservatives opposed with Bill C-69.

We are also committed to supplying clean, renewable energy to European countries. That is why the German chancellor came to Canada to sign an agreement on hydrogen that will be produced with wind power. This is exactly what we are doing in Canada: supporting Canadians and Canadian businesses and fighting climate change.

Opposition Motion—Moratorium on New Taxes

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton Mill Woods, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my father has worked very hard ever since he immigrated to this country. He has worked in sawmills and in coal mines in Alberta and B.C., and to this day he continues to drive a taxi, because he just cannot stay at home, so he would rather go out and work. He has always said that in Canada, if people work, they can pay their bills and provide for their families, and if they work hard, they can buy really nice things, too. That is the reason so many people, like my father and many others, have come to this country. They came to Canada for the opportunities and to be able to provide for their families.

However, the Liberal government has created a Canada that many Canadians struggle to recognize now, where working hard no longer means people will be able to pay for fuel, heat their homes or even own a home at all. Affordability is a top concern for Canadians across the country. When asked in a recent survey what issues we should focus on during this parliamentary session, almost every response listed the cost of living as a top concern.

Now in Canada we have college students living in homeless shelters, single mothers who cannot afford to buy nutritious food for their children, and seniors turning to food banks as a last resort. Even in recent reports, those same food banks are saying that they are struggling to even stay open, that they do not have enough food to provide to those who show up for help and support.

We have a generation of young Canadians living in their parents' basements without the hope of ever moving out. Young families who were once saving up for a down payment are now having to use that down payment to buy groceries and pay for gas. Grandparents watch as their adult children struggle to provide for their own children, despite having jobs. There is much pain and struggle among Canadians. They did everything we asked them to do, yet the government is failing them.

When the Prime Minister took office, Canadians were paying 32% of their income, on average, to maintain a mid-size house. Now the average family has to pay 50% of its income just to keep that house. Canadians are putting themselves in debt to cover their basic expenses and repaying this borrowed money at an unpredictable and growing interest rate. The government told Canadians that rates would remain low for a long time, but now we can see interest rates rising every few months and Canadians just cannot keep up. Instead of providing relief to Canadians, the government is increasing taxes on those who are already struggling.

I have heard from many people across my riding, single mothers, small business owners and families in Edmonton Mill Woods, who cannot afford the government's spending agenda, a spending agenda that the government itself cannot afford. As one constituent said to me, we need a government that works for Canadians, not the other way around. I could not agree more.

My riding of Edmonton Mill Woods is very much a multicultural community. Many immigrants have come to this beautiful place to make their lives here. I know many hard-working immigrant families that work long hours, trying to provide a good life for their children, but still fall short of meeting the inflationary demands created by the government.

A constituent of mine, Abdul, is a local business owner and a new immigrant from Nigeria. Like most small business owners, he works a lot more than the usual eight hours per day. This is a person who is driven, hard-working and passionate about his business, yet he struggles to make ends meet. He confided in me that he cannot afford to put his children in hockey or put his daughter in dance. Unlike the government, he cannot spend money he does not have.

Kim, another constituent, is a single mother and the sole provider for her children. She continues to struggle to afford to put gas in her car in order just to get to her job. Unlike the government, she has to save up money in order to spend it on her children. She had to save up just to buy school supplies this year, which, of course, cost more because of the government-created inflation crisis right now. I believe single mothers like Kim and many other Canadians have something to teach the government. It must find a dollar to spend a dollar. It must have the money to spend the money.

Now the government is making things worse for Canadians. The government must scrap its planned tax hikes on Canadian families and Canadian businesses. Canadians cannot keep up with this out-of-control spending, which is driving interest rates and inflation. Instead of just printing more money, we need to produce more things we can buy. We need to produce affordable food, energy and natural resources right here in Canada.

Our farmers are the best in the world. By removing the barriers the government has placed on them, we would increase our food production and make food more affordable. We must scrap these taxes on farmers, scrap the government's plan to reduce the use of fertilizer, and eliminate even the red tape that makes it more expensive for farmers. Let our farmers do what they do best, which is to grow our food.

In fact, if the government would just get out of way, farmers would not only be able to provide more food for Canadians, but could also help in this looming food shortage crisis around the world.

I would also suggest the government go out and speak to Canadians and hear from them. I suggest the government speak to my constituents and other constituents across the country about what is actually happening to them, their families and their businesses. I recently sat down with a group of truckers, and I was astonished to hear that some trucking companies are actually finding it cheaper and saving money by parking their trucks. Diesel and the cost of paying for and finding a driver have become so expensive that they are saving money by not working.

We must ensure Canadians keep more of their paycheques in their pockets and that energy, gas, heating and other costs become more affordable. Instead of importing foreign energy, we must get rid of laws like the ones arising out of Bill C-69 and allow energy to be produced here in Canada. Bill C-69 itself was a major roadblock for bringing new investments and projects into Canada.

Canada currently imports over 130,000 barrels of overseas oil daily, mostly from dictator countries. This is despite the fact we have the third-largest supply of energy right here in Canada, with much of it in Alberta. That is all because the government prefers dirty dictator oil to responsible Canadian energy.

We will repeal the government's anti-energy laws and replace them with laws that protect our environment, consult our first nations and actually get projects done. That will mean more jobs for Canadians and more ethical Canadian energy for the world. This will also help the value of our dollar.

It is never the right time to raise taxes on working Canadians, yet that is exactly what the government is doing. We continue to call on the government to cancel all planned tax hikes, including payroll taxes planned for January 1 and tax hikes on gas, groceries and home heating on April 1. I hope the government and all other members of the House will support our motion today.

Cost of Living Relief Act, No. 2

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Madam Speaker, in my 18 years in politics, I have never seen Canadians suffer as much as they are suffering now. I just criss-crossed the country and met a lot of people. In fact, 93,000 people registered for my events. I make a point of listening to all their stories, and I never leave the room until I have spoken to everyone who wants to meet me. I heard some heartbreaking stories.

We are talking about young people, 35-year-olds, who have done everything they were supposed to do. They earned a degree and they are working hard, yet they are still living in their parents' basement or in a small, 400-square-foot apartment because the price of housing has doubled since this Prime Minister took office. Our housing bubble is the second largest in the world. Yesterday we learned that the percentage of Canadians who own their own home is at its lowest level in over 30 years.

When the Prime Minister took office, Canadians were paying 32% of their income on average to maintain a mid-size house. Now, the average family has to pay 50% of their income just to keep their house. This increase is due to higher costs, but also to an increase in interest rates, which this government had promised Canadians would not happen for a long time. It told Canadians not to worry, to go ahead and take out big loans, since interest rates would remain low for a long time, and there would never be any negative consequences. Now we are seeing interest rates rises 300 basis points, or 3% in simple terms.

This phenomenon is not only affecting the housing sector, it is also affecting the price of food. I will take this opportunity to read out some headlines, because even the media is starting to notice a problem. “Rents are so high in Toronto that students are living in homeless shelters.” “Inflation: Child hunger a major concern in Canada amid skyrocketing food prices.” “GTA food banks say they're facing the highest demand in their history.” “Nearly 6 million people in Canada experienced food insecurity in 2021, U of T study says.” People can no longer pay for food. Some single mothers are even watering down their children's milk because they cannot afford food.

As for gas prices, I met a young man who works in the mines in northern Ontario, and he told me that he could not go see his dying parents in Thunder Bay because diesel was over $2 a litre. He was not able to say goodbye to his own parents.

What is the Prime Minister doing to respond to this crisis? First, he is trying to divide people by attacking them because he thinks that if Canadians are afraid of one another, then they will forget that they cannot pay their bills. The Prime Minister is keeping in place vaccine mandates that every other country has lifted. He is still insisting on the use of the ArriveCAN app, which really does not work. He is trying to divert people's attention away from the cost of living by dividing Canadians and creating problems and division.

The next part of his plan involves increasing income taxes and taxes on gas, heating and food. The first thing the official opposition has called for since I became leader is for the government to do away with the tax hikes so that Canadians can keep more of their paycheques in their pockets and so that energy, gas, heating and other costs become more affordable.

That is our role, here in Parliament, to turn pain into hope. Canadians need hope. The comment I heard most from the people who attended my events was “Thank you for giving us hope”. For the first time, people believe that things can improve, and they will. We can change things.

The first thing we need to do is axe all the tax hikes, but we also need to control spending. Today's inflation is the result of a spendthrift government. The government's spending is increasing the cost of living. The $500-billion inflationary deficit increased the cost of what we buy and the interest that we pay. Inflationary taxes are increasing costs related to our businesses and our workers who provide products and services. The more the government spends, the more things cost. That is “Justinflation”.

We can reverse this trend by introducing legislation to limit government spending. This will subject politicians to the same economic rules that families have to follow. When a family increases spending in one column of their budget, they have to cut spending elsewhere. They have to find a dollar to spend a dollar. The same principle should apply to governments. During the Clinton years, the United States passed a law that helped Americans balance their budget and pay down $400 billion in debt. It was, at the time, the largest debt repayment in the United States. As soon as the law was struck down, Americans were plunged back into a deficit. This is proof that we need to put legal limits on politicians' spending and that politicians should have to follow the same spending rules as single mothers and small business owners.

Furthermore, instead of just printing more money, we need to produce more of the things that money buys, produce affordable food, energy and natural resources here in Canada, and we need to build more houses. We need to remove the barriers that the Prime Minister has put in place.

Let us start with food. The Prime Minister increased farmers' taxes. That increases the cost of fertilizer and of the energy needed to produce food. Now he wants to limit the use of fertilizer. That will require farming more land to produce the same quantity of food. Tractors and other equipment will have to cover a larger area, burning more diesel and other fuels. More food will have to be imported. Bringing this food from other countries to Canada will again require using more energy.

Did we not learn during the COVID-19 crisis that it is irresponsible to rely on other countries for what we need?

We should be able to grow our own food here, in Canada. Our farmers are the best in the world. We should remove the barriers that the government has put in place. We will cancel these taxes on farmers, scrap the government's plans to reduce the use of fertilizer and eliminate the paperwork that is so expensive for our farmers.

Second, we will provide incentives to our municipalities to cut their red tape. At present, Canada has the lowest housing units per capita in the G7, even though we have the largest land area. That is ridiculous. That is why housing prices in Canada are the second highest in the world relative to household income. With regard to home ownership, Vancouver is the third most expensive market in the world, and Toronto is the sixth. A Conservative government will tie the dollar amount for infrastructure in big cities where housing prices are too high to the number of houses built.

This will encourage them to cut red tape and reduce the cost of building permits so that more housing can be built. Every time a federal government funds a public transit station, we will make sure there is intensive densification in the surrounding areas so that young people can live in homes and apartments next to public transit.

Third, we will sell 15% of the 37,000 federal buildings so that they can be converted into housing and create millions of homes that our young people could buy in order to start a family.

Instead of importing foreign energy, we will get rid of laws like the ones arising from Bill C‑69 and others to allow energy to be produced here in Canada. This will create jobs and make the cost of energy more affordable. It will increase Canadians' purchasing power by raising the value of our dollar. When our energy sector is strong, our dollar goes up. The value of the dollar is tied to our purchasing power. When the dollar is low, it costs more to buy anything on international markets. Let us strengthen our dollar, produce our own energy and end oil imports.

By the way, where are the Liberal and NDP environmentalists to protest the foreign oil we are importing? Why are we funding dictators? We should be funding Canadians' paycheques here at home.

Finally, we want to give Canadians back control of their lives, in the freest country in the world, where the dollar keeps its value so that Canadians can have the life they work so hard to build. We should be a country that rewards hard work, a country where people can keep more of their money. We need to reform the tax system so that hard-working Canadians who contribute to the economy can keep their hard-earned money and provide better for their families. We should be a country that encourages and supports those who work hard, take risks and help build our country.

It is good to be back in the House, but would it not be nice if our young people could have a home? That is what we should be working towards. Unfortunately, yesterday we learned that the rates of home ownership are at their lowest levels in a generation. House prices have doubled under this Prime Minister. In fact, when this Prime Minister took office, the average family could afford their monthly housing costs with 32% of their paycheque. That has rocketed up to almost 50%. Vancouver is the third-most overpriced housing market on planet Earth. Toronto is the sixth. We have the second-worst housing bubble on planet Earth. No wonder nine in 10 young Canadians say that they cannot even dream of affording a house.

Now, from housing to food, we see the headlines. Even the media has noticed: “Rents are so high in Toronto that students are living in homeless shelters”; “Child hunger a major concern in Canada amid skyrocketing food prices”; “GTA food banks say they're facing the highest demand in their history”; and “Nearly 6 million people in Canada experienced food insecurity in 2021, U of T study says”.

Then there is energy. I met a young man in northern Ontario who said that he could not afford to put the diesel in his car to go and see his dying relatives one last time, who are hundreds of miles away in Thunder Bay. I met a working man, an energy worker ironically, in St. John's, Newfoundland, who said that the rising cost of gas meant he could not afford to replace his boots so he was taping them up with duct tape.

Canadians are suffering, and why is this happening? The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. Half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits means more dollars chasing fewer goods, leading to higher prices, bidding up the cost of the goods we buy and the interest we pay. Inflationary taxes drive up the cost of businesses and workers to make our goods. The more Liberals spend, the more things cost. It is just inflation, and Canadians are paying the price for it.

What has been the Prime Minister's response? His first response was to attack the people who were suffering, to call them horrible and disparaging names, to divide and distract. His strategy is simple. He thinks if people are afraid of their neighbours, they will forget that they cannot pay their bills, so he keeps in place divisive and unscientific vaccine mandates to shut truckers out of their ability to transport goods across the border and soldiers, who have served our country bravely and loyally, out of their jobs. He does this all to stigmatize and attack so a single mother who is putting water in her kid's milk might forget, he hopes, how badly she is suffering under his watch because she will be afraid of her fellow citizens. It is time to replace fear with freedom. It is time for us all to unite.

The Prime Minister's second approach has been ever predictable. He wants to raise taxes with a new tax hike on paycheques that will take effect on January 1, meaning that Canadians will take home less of what they earn. Small businesses will have to pay a higher cost for every single person they keep on the payroll, forcing many to make the painful choice of laying people off. A few months later, on April 1, April Fool's Day, he will continue to carry out his plan to triple the carbon tax. He wants to increase gas taxes, home heating taxes and, indirectly, food taxes because, of course, food requires energy. This is going to make things worse. The Conservatives have made the demand that the government must cancel all its tax increases on our workers and our seniors so that their paycheques go further and their energy becomes affordable.

We in this House have a duty to transform the hurt into hope. That is what Conservatives will do, because things can get better. There is nothing wrong with Canada, with our country, that cannot be cured by what is right with this country. We have the answers that will counter this inflation and reinforce the purchasing power of Canadians.

We will call for a cap on taxes so that Canadians pay no more to the government and can keep more for themselves. We will call for the government to cap its own spending, and it can do this by simply following the same rules that everyday families follow. If a family decides it wants to build a porch in front of their house, they cancel their vacation or, better yet, they go out and find a deal on lumber and look for a way to keep their vacation costs down so that they can do both but for the same budget. This is how small businesses function as well, but not government.

The great Thomas Sowell said that the number one law of economics is scarcity, that people always want more than there is to have and that the number one rule of politics is to ignore the number one rule of economics, because politicians are the only creatures in the universe who do not have to live with scarcity. The birds in the trees, the fish in the seas, all must make maximum use of limited resources, but the politician just passes the cost on to someone else in higher inflation, debt and taxes. A “pay-as-you-go” law would force politicians to make the same either-or trade-offs that everyday Canadians make in their lives.

The principle is very simple. If the government brings in a new dollar of spending, it should find a dollar of savings to pay for it. All of the existing spending that is in the budget goes ahead into the future, but when the government steps into this House to introduce a new measure, it should accompany it with savings to pay for it. The government did this in the United States during the 1990s and that allowed the American government to balance its budget, pay off $400 billion of debt, have booming job growth, record-low unemployment and a massive increase in prosperity, but as soon as it let the law lapse, it went right back into deficit, proving that politicians need the same legal limits on their spending that families follow every single day. Our families have been pinching their pennies long enough. It is time for government to pinch its pennies, too.

Instead of just creating more cash, why not create more of what cash buys? Why do we not grow more food, build more house and produce more Canadian resources right here in our country instead?

Let us start with houses. As I have said, we have the fewest houses per capita of any country in the entire G7, even though we have the most land on which to build. Why? Local government gatekeepers stand in the way.

In Vancouver, the cost of government gatekeepers, that is permitting, delays, consultants and taxes, is $600,000 for one unit of housing. It is about $350,000 in Toronto. This prevents people from owning a home.

I propose is this. The government should link the number of dollars big overpriced cities get for infrastructure to the number of houses that actually get built, so we have an incentive for them to remove the gatekeepers, lower the costs and increase the speed of building permits so we can get more houses.

Let us require every federally funded transit station be pre-approved for high-density housing around it, so our young people do not even need to own a car. They can live right next to transit. Let us sell off 15% of the underutilized and overpriced 37,000 federal buildings, so we can convert that into housing. Let us create millions of new homes, so our newcomers, immigrants, young people and working-class people can re-establish the dream of home ownership.

Let us put an end to importing overseas oil into this country. Where are the protesters? Where are the Bloc, the NDP and the Liberal protesters standing in Saint John, New Brunswick to greet all those big tankers coming from overseas? They say that they are against oil, but they have no problem if that oil comes from foreign dictatorships. There are 130,000 barrels of overseas oil every single day arriving at our shores and taking our money back to their countries at the same time.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister violates his own sanctions against Putin by sending back a turbine so the Russians can continue to pump gas into Germany, so the Germans can fund the Russian war against Ukraine. It is incredible. Those members are against pipelines in Canada, but in favour of maintaining the turbines for Russian pipelines that fund foreign wars.

Meanwhile, we have 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that could be used to free Europe from its dependency on Putin, meanwhile bringing back paycheques to this country. We have the ability to produce it cleaner than anywhere else on planet earth. In fact, the shortest shipping distances to both Asia and Europe from North America are right here in Canada.

What else do we have in Canada that allows us to liquify natural gas so it fits on a ship? Cold weather, which is our most abundant natural resource. That actually lowers the cost of liquefying natural gas by 25%. With Quebec, Newfoundland and British Columbia hydro, we can do it emissions-free. Why do we not ship our clean Canadian natural gas to Asia to shut down coal-fired plants there and ship it to Europe to break European dependence on Putin? Let us turn dollars for dictators into paycheques for Canadians.

Let us make work pay again in our country. Let us stop punishing people for the crime of getting up early in the morning and putting in a hard day's work. According to a Finance Canada document, if a single mother with three kids who earns $55,000 a year goes out and earns another dollar, she loses 80¢ of that dollar to government clawbacks and taxes. If she makes $25 an hour, she takes home $5 of that. No one should work for $5 an hour. That is below minimum wage, and yet our tax and benefits system punishes her for trying to work a little harder so maybe her kids can go to camp in the summer or maybe they can join the little league team.

We should reward hard work in our country. We should set out to reform our benefit and tax systems, so that every time someone works harder, takes another shift, earns a bonus and gets up a little earlier they keep more of what they earn.

My parents raised me to believe that it did not matter where I came from; it mattered where I was going. It did not matter who I knew, but what I could do. That is the country I want my kids to inherit. I want this to be a country again where it does not matter where people start off. If they work hard, if they take risks, if they study, if they learn, if they build and if they contribute, they can achieve anything they want. Right now, people do not feel that way, but hope is on the way.

We are going to bring change to our country. We are going to put change back in your pocket and we are going to make this the freest country on earth.

Opposition Motion—Subsidies for the Oil and Gas Sector

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have some questions about the member's figures, but I am going to get to something that I think is more important.

We are talking about 53,000 families in Alberta that were suffering during the oil and gas downturn. It is no longer in a downturn, I will point out. The Court of Appeal of Alberta came out last week and indicated very clearly that Bill C-69 was ultra vires of the federal government. That being the case, the NDP leader in Alberta indicated that the main cause of the layoffs in Alberta was a punitive regulatory regime as a result of Bill C-69.

Would the member agree with her party leader in Alberta that it is the Alberta Court of Appeal's decision on Bill C-69 that led to those 53,000 families being laid off in Alberta?

Finance

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil for putting this motion forward and the discussion on splitting up the budget implementation act. There are so many pieces in that bill that really should be separated and discussed, debated and considered at committee separately, not pushed through the way the government has pushed legislation through in the past.

I recall Bill C-69, when there were literally hundreds of amendments proposed that could not even be debated. Does the member for Barrie—Innisfil expect the same is going to happen with the budget implementation act?