Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my good friend, the hon. member for Edmonton Riverbend.
It is a true privilege to rise in the House with my maiden speech in response to the government's Speech from the Throne.
At the outset, I would like to thank the tens of thousands of people in the St. Albert—Edmonton riding for placing their trust and confidence in me. I can assure them that I will work every single day to do my very best to represent their interests here in Ottawa.
Like every other hon. member in the House, I did not get here on my own. I got here because of the hundreds and hundreds of people who offered their support, commitment, and assistance, not just during the campaign but over the course of my entire life, in helping to shape the person I am today.
While it is not possible to thank each and every one of those individuals, I do want to pay tribute to and thank my family. In particular, I would like to thank my parents, Tom and Rita Cooper. At an early age, they instilled in me the importance of hard work, the value of education, and the need to be engaged and involved.
Indeed, it was they who encouraged me to get involved in the political process at a young age. They saw that I had been quite interested in politics and suggested that, rather than sit on the sidelines, I should roll up my sleeves. They themselves had never been politically active. I took their advice, and at the age of 14 I joined the Alberta provincial Progressive Conservative Party. I guess I have never really looked back since, in terms of my political involvement.
I would like to acknowledge my brother, Timothy Cooper, who is a medical doctor presently completing his residency in the area of the ear, nose, and throat at the University of Alberta, for his lifelong friendship.
I would also like to acknowledge my paternal grandparents, who came to Canada from Ireland, and my maternal grandparents, who fled communism and came to Canada from Lithuania. Like so many people from all around the world who come to make Canada home, they did not have much monetarily, but what they did have was a strong desire to work hard, contribute to Canadian society, and build a better life for their families. For that, I wish to pay tribute to their legacies.
I also wish to acknowledge Mary O'Neill, the former MLA for St. Albert, as well Doug Horner, the former MLA for Spruce Grove—St. Albert, who served in a number of cabinet portfolios, including deputy premier and minister of finance in the Government of Alberta. Both Mary and Doug are people with whom I first got involved and whom I supported in their campaigns. Over the years, they have been tremendous political mentors, and I was so very proud that they stood with me both during the nomination and during the election campaign.
I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Richard Plain, the former mayor of St. Albert, who served ably as my campaign manager during both the nomination and the general election.
Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge the partners of the Edmonton law firm, Ogilvie LLP, for their support and understanding as I tried to balance, on the one hand, a busy civil litigation practice with the demands of seeking elected office.
With that, I turn to the substance of my speech, namely, responding to the government's Speech from the Throne.
The Speech from the Throne accurately stated that Canadians want to trust their government. If anything is clear in less than two months, it is very clear that Canadians cannot trust the Liberal government. The list of broken promises in less than two months is truly breathtaking. With each new day seems to come a new Liberal broken promise.
One such broken promise was the government's commitment to run a $10 billion deficit in this fiscal year. It now looks as if we are looking at about a $1.2 billion shortfall. It may be billions of dollars more to pay for the government's spending spree. Who is going to pay for the government's spending spree? Well, of course, it will be working Canadians, because after all there is only one taxpayer, something that the Liberal government seems to have already forgotten about, if the members knew it in the first place.
For working Canadians, living in Canada is going to become much more expensive thanks to the Liberal government. How is it going to be more expensive, one may ask? The government wants to impose a carbon tax. It wants to hike payroll taxes. It wants to eliminate income splitting for single income families. It wants to eliminate the universal child care benefit. It wants to roll back TFSAs.
It is clear that the government has no plan and no vision other than job-killing, tax-and-spend, redistributed schemes. This is evidenced by the fact that there was no mention in the Speech from the Throne about the trans-Pacific partnership, the biggest trade deal in Canadian history, which is going to allow Canadian businesses to get their products to market, to 800 million consumers, duty-free, but the government did not even bother to mention it.
There was no mention of Alberta's vital energy sector. There was no mention about any meaningful strategy to create jobs to get the economy growing and to get Canadians back to work.
When it comes to keeping Canadians safe, the government has been equally shortsighted. The greatest security threat to Canada comes from ISIS. ISIS is responsible for slaughtering tens of thousands of people in Iraq, Syria, and around the world. Entire villages have been upended and literally rivers of blood flow in Iraq and Syria, and yet the government's response is to cut and run by pulling out the CF-18s. The Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Prime Minister cannot explain how that is going to assist the international coalition to defeat ISIS. The reason is that it is completely unhelpful.
I say to hon. members opposite, in closing, that in terms of a road to prosperity, it does not come by spending more, by regulating more, by taxing more, and by redistributing more. It comes from being fiscally responsible and trusting taxpayers and creating the conditions for growth.