moved:
Motion No. 123
That Bill C-33 be amended by deleting Clause 121.
Motion No. 124
That Bill C-33 be amended by deleting Clause 122.
Motion No. 125
That Bill C-33 be amended by deleting Clause 123.
Motion No. 126
That Bill C-33 be amended by deleting Clause 124.
Motion No. 127
That Bill C-33 be amended by deleting Clause 125.
Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise and to have numerous amendments in my name. I am proud to be working hard on behalf of the people of Northumberland—Peterborough South.
As some may know, I am the newly minted shadow minister for transportation for our side. I was on the finance committee, and we spent a lot of our time studying the economy. I even did so in my career before that. I just want to put things in context in terms of where the Canadian economy currently is. I will relate that back to transportation and to the bill; I hope we will have an understanding of why Conservatives, and really all right-thinking folks, cannot support the legislation in good conscience.
Let us wind back the clock to April 30, 2014. The New York Times put out the article “Life in Canada, Home of the World's Most Affluent Middle Class”. Does that not seem long ago? It was when Canadians could afford housing, when there were available and affordable rents, when food was at a reasonable cost, when the dream of Canada seemed as alive as ever and when the promise of Canada was shining perhaps brighter than ever in Canada's history.
We then heard from a Liberal candidate at the time who said that better was always possible. That is true, but we found out that, in this case, better was certainly not the result. We have seen this both empirically and subjectively. We have seen that GDP per capita, which is perhaps the best measure of the standard of living for Canadians, has flatlined. Over the last decade, the standard of living, or the GDP per capita, has seen zero growth.
We will hear from members of the opposition who say that this is because we are stuck in a bad world economy. We have had the pandemic and other events; there is no way we could have possibly done better. However, that is just simply not true. We can compare those numbers to other benchmarks. One easy benchmark for us is that of the United States of America, which is geographically quite close and shares many things in common with Canada.
During that same time, in the United States, the GDP per capita grew by nearly 19%. The GDP per capita is, in many ways, a substitute or an equivalent measure of our standard of living. We know, in contrasting and comparing it to peer nations, that Canada has done exceedingly poorly and that we are on a trajectory that leads us down a very dark path.
Let us also compare the case historically. Perhaps there have been other times when we have had these challenges and emerged on the other side brighter. Maybe we were paying this price for a reason. Unfortunately, the damning truth is that our GDP per capita has not grown this little since the Great Depression. We had decades and decades of going through tumultuous world events and recessions. We have never seen a standard of living flatline or, in real terms, decline as we have under the Liberal government.
We have talked about where the Canadian economy, over the last nine years, ranks in history. We have benchmarked it now with the United States of America. Let us look at them both. Back in 1984, the Canadian economy was producing 88% of the value generated by a U.S. worker per hour. By 2022, that collapsed to 71%. It is actually quite well known why this is. The problem has been diagnosed by many, including the deputy of the Bank of Canada, Carolyn Rogers. She said that we are in a productivity crisis and that this is a “break glass” moment for the Canadian economy.
That is after nine years of a complete lack of care for productivity, which not only underlines our GDP per capita but also, more importantly, powers our economy and our standard of living. We have professionals, non-partisan and arguably non-biased economists, saying from coast to coast that the Liberal government has led us to this productivity decline and, therefore, the flatlining of the standard of living. Of course, those who are wealthy have not done too poorly, but those in the middle class have suffered. I see it in my riding every day. We see individuals who used to donate to food banks and are now clients of food banks. Two million Canadians are going to food banks every day.
One key factor of any economy, something that has provided a real lift throughout history, is transportation. In fact, there is perhaps no better example than Canada and the construction of our railway. Transportation can power and transform an economy. It can take an economy from one that is lagging to one that is succeeding. What is the record, after nine years, of the Liberal government? We have seen inaction and incompetence, probably in equal parts. What happens is that, in an economy, there are factories and people producing things. However, that matters very little if we cannot get those products and services to market. Unfortunately, that continues to be a tremendous challenge here in Canada. We see almost constant work stoppages because of the Liberal government's failure to effectively manage ports, airports and other transport sectors. We see its inability to get major projects built to get our valuable resources to market.
As if it were not enough to have legislation that has acted to prevent growth and kneecap our own economy, such as the no-pipeline bills and other legislation, we have now decided to bring in legislation that promotes bureaucracy over productivity. Over the last hundred years, if we have any doubt, we have seen the impact of bureaucracy on productivity. We have an absolute slam dunk case. I have no doubt that, in 20 or 50 years' time there will be people studying this decade. They will look at this in history and say that we had a country with an amazing economy. The New York Times said that we were the most affluent middle class in the world, but in just 10 short years, we saw a government actively work against its own people to develop our economy and increase productivity.
Let us talk a bit about Bill C-33 specifically. I am always a big fan of listening to experts, as opposed to politicians. Thus, I want to read into the record some quotes from individuals, folks who are actually on the ground. These are the boots, not the suits, who are talking about it.
The CEO of the Association of Canadian Port Authorities said:
The concern for the smaller ports really was in the heavy reporting that's associated with the bill. It'll be a question mark on whether this will be a lot of new work that's required or if it's a repackaging of material that's already being provided.
One of our larger ports actually said they'd have to hire [multiple] full-time people. This was going to cost them [hundreds of thousands of] dollars a year.
This is one of a million productivity cuts that are slowing down our economy.
I want to read one more thing here from the executive vice-president of the Trois-Rivières Port Authority. He states, “Bill C-33 and its extension, Bill C‑52, restrict the Trois-Rivières Port Authority's ability to fulfill the mission entrusted to it by the Canada Marine Act.”
We see over and over again that the Liberal government is standing in the way of Canadians realizing their dreams and of the Canadian economy realizing its potential.
