Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this place on behalf of the people of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke to speak to Bill C-15, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016, and other measures.
On behalf of the over 3,000 CNL employees in the upper Ottawa Valley, their families, and the communities they live in, as well as the small businesses that rely upon the economic activity that happens when those employees spend locally, I would like to thank the Minister of Natural Resources for the science-based decision that was made in announcing an $800-million investment over five years in the Canadian nuclear industry, specifically, in the ongoing refurbishment and modernization of the capital assets at the Chalk River location of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
While I would like to be hopeful about the construction of a new version of Canada's success story, and I am referring, of course, to the NRU, Canada's nuclear research reactor, the longest successfully operating research reactor in the world, I understand that with this $800-million announcement Canadians will see more infrastructure construction like the $60-million hydrogen lab our Conservative government built.
What was most encouraging when I read the Minister of Natural Resources's comments with the $800-million announcement was the support for all the work our Conservative government did in building a new business model for the nuclear industry in Canada.
Canadians can see the $800 million being invested over five years as an expression of confidence in the future of the nuclear industry in Canada. I am referring to the government-owned privately managed GOCO model that has currently been in place since September 2015 at Chalk River Laboratories' site at Chalk River.
When our government first came to power, there were two immediate challenges that directly affected the constituents of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke: the decade of darkness of underfunding our military, which we witnessed every day at Garrison Petawawa, and the neglect of Canada's research assets at our world-class nuclear research facility in Chalk River.
I am appreciative of the employees at Chalk River who responded positively to my call to create a grassroots bottom-up effort to provide a new vision for Canada's nuclear industry. The CREATE committee issued a report that I had the privilege of personally presenting to guide our deliberations to support the 50,000 workers in Ontario who work in Canada's nuclear industry.
As thoughtful Canadians who are informed about the environment understand, nuclear plays an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as being a reliable economic way to generate electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions. Today, nuclear accounts for 62% of the electricity generated in the province of Ontario. Nuclear is the only bright spot in an another otherwise failing and corrupt Ontario energy policy.
The fear among many of my constituents was that with a Liberal budget Canada's nuclear industry would return to the decade of darkness they experienced under Paul Martin. AECL operated for years without a budget from the government.
It is publicly known that a number of the political refugees from the corrupt government of Kathleen Wynne in Toronto have fled to hide in government offices in Ottawa. These include environmental extremists like the Prime Minister's principal secretary, who played the same role for Dalton McGuinty to earn the nickname of Rasputin from the Ottawa press as an author of the Green Energy Act. Their left-wing, ideological policy has gutted the manufacturing sector in Ontario with the highest electricity prices in North America. The carbon tax on electricity is called a delivery charge on hydro customers' bill statements in Ontario.
Environmental extremists like the principal secretary choose to deny science-based facts about clean, greenhouse-gas free nuclear-generated electricity. The European experience has shown massive job losses for every so-called green job with no tangible benefit to the environment. Still the Liberals push their extreme left-wing agenda on unsuspecting Canadians.
What was surprising about the April 11, 2016, $800-million announcement was that it was not in the federal budget. There was silence from the Minister of Finance on budget day. It was not in the main estimates. Canadians learned about the $800 million in a planted question by a government member, which was asked in a parliamentary committee. What is that all about?
Canadians can only assume that the $800 million over five years is accounted for in the government infrastructure line of public spending. I was told it was an accounting trick, sort of like when one cuts $3.7 billion in military capital spending and pretends it is not a cut. The fact is that Canadians do not know.
This goes back to the problem of transparency, which has become a real and growing problem with the government. According to the former non-partisan parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, the budget is heavy on spending programs for government consumption and lacking in details, including when the federal budget would return to balance, which is how the Conservative government left the nation's finances. “It could be better in transparency. It’s kind of a budget without a fiscal plan”, according to Page. “I think there’s going to be pressure to raise taxes with this kind of spending in the budget”, he said.
The budget office went on to observe this was the least transparent budget, certainly when compared to Conservative budgets or even the previous Paul Martin budgets. As an example of that lack of transparency, the bank recapitalization bail-in scheme being proposed on page 223 of the federal budget should have seniors worried. It would allow the government to convert a bank's eligible long-term debt into common shares in order to recapitalize the bank. In addition to being concerned about bank deposits, any retirement savings that included bank shares would be exposed also.
Canadian chartered banks would be expected to lend some of the money required to cover the projected $30-billion annual deficits announced in the March 22 federal budget. In addition to financing the federal spending spree, Canada's banks are holding billions of dollars of debts from the oil sands. The depressed price of oil has already caused tens of thousands of jobs to be lost. Internationally, there are at least five countries teetering on insolvency due to low oil prices.
There is a lack of confidence that started the day after the federal election. According to Statistics Canada, since the 2015 federal election, billions of dollars have been transferred out of the country by Canadian investors, the largest recorded flight of capital since records began to be kept. Maybe we will find some of that money in Panama or on one of the Caribbean islands so favoured by the Liberal inner circle. It would appear well-connected insiders got all their cash out in time.
Canada, in contrast with other countries that have seen central banks become net buyers of gold since 2010, has sold off all its official gold holdings. The Bank of Canada, on February 23, 2016, showed gold reserves at zero. Canada now stands as the only G7 nation that does not hold at least 100 tonnes of gold in its official reserves. Out of 188 member countries of the International Monetary Fund, 100 countries hold gold as part of their monetary assets. Canada is now among the 88 countries that have no gold, countries such as Angola, Belize, and Tonga.
As the member of Parliament for Garrison Petawawa, I share the pride we all feel when we see our soldiers in action. Our women and men in uniform put their lives on the line every day for us. We need to ensure that members of the Canadian Armed Forces have the tools, training, and equipment they need whenever we require them to go into harm's way. It is therefore very disturbing to see the Liberal government reallocating, postponing, or cutting $3.7 billion over the next five years for necessary equipment procurement.
Canadians remember what happened the last time a Liberal government interfered in equipment acquisition processes. In Afghanistan, the casualties would have been lower had the EH-101 contract not been cancelled. We do not know what tomorrow will bring. It is a dangerous world. We need to be prepared. Large-scale purchases are not a simple process. We need to ensure funding is available, not taken away. Is Canada preparing for financial disaster? Are savings protected? Those are the questions being asked of this first budget since the last federal election.
Not since the disastrous budget of former finance minister Allan J. MacEachen, when five-year mortgage rates spiked to over 21%, have Canadians been more apprehensive about their own personal financial security. It has to be a Canadian record for breaking campaign promises. The first budget deficit is not $10 billion each of the first three years of the mandate, as promised; it has jumped to $30 billion each of the first three years, with no plan to get out of debt.