Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have a motion that I would like to move.
Madam Clerk, would you please distribute that motion to the committee?
I move:
That the committee recommend to the House that it be granted the power during its consideration of Bill C-57, An Act to implement the 2023 Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Ukraine; in light of the fact that the Liberal Government granted a waiver exemption to allow for the export of a turbine from Canada that was then used to export Russian gas; to expand the scope of the study of the Bill in order to facilitate Canadian LNG and other energy expertise to further assist Ukraine; and to support expanded munitions production in Canada; and increasing munition and weapons exports to Ukraine and support the development of weapons and munitions manufacturing capabilities in Ukraine by Canadian industry.
I'd now like to speak to that motion, Madam Chair.
We are in a situation where certain members of the government are suggesting that Conservative members do not support Ukraine because we have a principled objection to certain things that are contained within the free trade agreement, one of which is a price on carbon, which is not in any of our other existing free trade agreements, and is, in fact, not in any free trade agreement Ukraine has ever signed. It's the first time it's ever been in that.
We think that there are many ways that this trade agreement could be enhanced to help Ukraine in the middle of the war, so I'm going to start with this first of all.
We are being told that we are hurting Ukraine by voting against a bad trade deal. What, in fact, has happened is that this Liberal government granted a waiver exemption to allow for the export of a gas turbine that was used to transport Russian gas. Think about that for a second. What funds Putin's war machine? What helps fund his war, his illegal, outrageous and barbaric war in Ukraine? It's gas, the revenues Russia gets from the sale of gas.
The Liberal government granted a waiver to export a turbine to help them do it. Then they have the audacity to say that we are hurting Ukraine on a vote that was inconsequential, because this bill has been referred to the committee. It's here. I don't know if Liberal members know that, but the free trade agreement is here at committee. The vote didn't hurt anything.
We are His Majesty's loyal opposition. We get to oppose bad pieces of legislation or bad trade agreements. When you insert a carbon tax, carbon price or carbon leakage into a trade agreement for the first time, we get to object, which is what we've done. It doesn't hurt Ukraine. The deal came to committee. The deal's most likely going to pass the House—the other parties are supporting it—because they all also have a carbon price—carbon tax—obsession. All the parties in the House of Commons are obsessed with taxing Canadians through carbon into poverty.
I agree that trade deals are about exports. Let's import and let's export, but you know what we shouldn't export? The misery of the carbon tax, the misery of the carbon tax that has two million Canadians going to a food bank in one month alone. Never in the history of Canada has this happened. Seven million Canadians are now cutting back on food because they can't afford to eat. We just heard from the pork producers, and the carbon tax is making pork more expensive. Why? They have to heat their barns. This can cost tens of thousands of dollars in carbon tax every single month. We should not be exporting that.
What's amazing is that the foreign affairs committee did a report in February 2023 wherein they recommended that there not be a waiver granted to Siemens to export that turbine. Guess what. The government did it anyway. When you look at what's hurt Ukraine, what's hurt Ukraine was exporting that turbine to give some more blood money to Vladimir Putin in his war.
There's a real opportunity here, Madam Chair. One of the things that Ukraine desperately needs is energy security in this war, and there's an article here, a very well-researched article on the issue, and one of the things it says right in the article is:
As Ukraine rebuilds and adapts to a new geopolitical reality, achieving energy security will be instrumental to put the country back on its feet—
What is not included in this free trade agreement is anything on LNG co-operation or energy security co-operation. This motion is going to allow us to expand the scope of the review of this to include these things. If Liberals actually want to make up for the fact that they exported a turbine that helped Vladimir Putin, they can now vote to expand the scope of this bill to allow for there to be chapters on energy security and LNG co-operation, which will actually help Ukraine.
The second part of this motion is with respect to munitions and weapons. Let me tell you this. Canada has not increased its exports of munitions to Ukraine from day one. Three thousand shells a month is where they started, and 3,000 is where we are today. There has been no increase whatsoever. Ukraine goes through 6,000 shells a day, every day. We are not increasing our exports of these. That should be something in this agreement.
How do we co-operate to increase the number of shells available to Ukraine? There's actually a formula in war. The number of artillery shells you can use reduces the number of lives you lose on the battlefield. By voting for this we are going to find a way to increase Canadian exports of munitions, which will directly benefit the Ukrainian armed forces and save Ukrainian lives, as opposed to exporting a turbine, which helped Vladimir Putin.
We could also absolutely be helping with weapons. In fact, in March of 2022 there was a Conservative proposal that we would send decommissioned LAVs to Ukraine to help in the war. Guess where they ended up. It was on the scrap heap. The Conservatives recommended exporting three hundred fighting vehicles to Ukraine to help them in the war. The Liberal government did not do that.
Madam Chair, the Liberals have a chance to redeem themselves. A similar motion came to this committee, and all Liberals voted against it. I was prepared to move a motion like this on the floor of the House of Commons today, but—guess what—you had to put it on notice. They played a little procedural game so the motion wouldn't be able to be debated today. The rubber hits the road today, Madam Chair.
Will these Liberals actually do something to help Ukraine or will they vote this down again?
I expect that's what they will do, because they're all talk and no action.