I made the point on India, which was that what we saw was a strategic silence by the Conservatives when Parliament was talking about an issue they didn't like. It wasn't in their political interest, so that's how they got out of that one.
We're seeing something similar happen on the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement. They decided that they wanted to vote against it. I talked earlier about Preston Manning encouraging closer collaboration between Danielle Smith and the federal Conservatives. What we're seeing in the United States with the Republican movement there—and Donald Trump particularly, who I think was bought and paid for by Russia—is that Republicans are raising doubts and criticisms of Ukraine in order to undermine that effort.
We know that a lot of strategy is shared between Canadian Conservatives and the Republican Party in the United States, and they're going to these conventions now as Republicans in the States and what are they hearing? It's that we should be more critical of Ukraine. What are the Conservatives doing? For maybe the first time ever, they're voting against an international free trade agreement. They want to make it about the carbon tax because that's what they like to talk about. Suddenly, they're not talking about the war in Ukraine anymore. They're talking about the carbon tax.
They're not talking about the fact that President Zelenskyy himself wanted Canada to implement this agreement and asked Canada to vote in favour of it. They're not talking about the fact that on the Day of Dignity and Freedom in Ukraine, they voted against the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement that President Zelenskyy had asked Canada to pass, because they want to talk about the carbon tax because that's more politically expedient for them. To try to make the Canada-Ukraine conflict about the carbon tax works better for them than explaining why, after hanging out with their Republican buddies in the United States, they came back and decided to vote against the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement.
I get why that's an uncomfortable conversation, but that's the conversation we should be having—not another conversation about the carbon tax, which we have often in this place and which is often used to distract from a number of topics. In fact, I've seen Conservative MPs from provinces that don't even have the federal carbon tax use that same strategy. In British Columbia there's no federal carbon tax, yet I've watched Conservative MP after Conservative MP get up to talk about how they're serving their constituents by talking about the federal carbon tax, as if the carbon tax in B.C. wouldn't apply the day after a federal carbon tax was eliminated.
We see pretty consistent strategies going on.
I made reference earlier and I'll do it again.... And I'm sorry Mr. Perkins isn't here because he was one of the MPs up in the chamber last night talking about the anti-scab legislation, an uncomfortable topic for Conservatives because they have been trying to portray themselves as being on the side of workers. We know that the right to strike is one of the most important rights when it comes to workers being able to stand up for themselves and bring home powerful paycheques. We know, because we have watched Conservatives vote against anti-scab legislation in the past and for right-to-work legislation in the past, that Conservatives are not on the side of workers.
They don't want to talk about it in the House. It's why they wouldn't talk about it in the House last night.