Madam Speaker, I usually say it is my pleasure to rise to speak, but today I definitely question why we have to be here to discuss this. It impacts all Canadians significantly when the Minister of Finance's ethics are on the line. That is what we are discussing today, and I am sad we have to be here to that. Nonetheless will go forward.
My riding is a riding of farmers, loggers, and oil field workers. That is typically what we do. My farmers get out of bed every morning to farm, and it has been rough lately. The crops are under snow. Last year they were under snow as well in the fall. Therefore, we are looking at two years of significant crop failure.
I will talk a bit about a farmer named Guido. He is a 24-year-old farmer who still lives with his parents. Two years ago he saved up enough money to rent a quarter section of land and seed it. He drives a logging truck all winter so he can save up enough money to put in a crop. Last year, it was pretty much a total failure. He picked himself up, drove a truck again throughout the winter, and saved up enough money to rent the land again and put in another crop. We are talking about that spirit. A total failure one year, he gets up and does it again.
He does not have a French villa to go back to during the winter. He has to drive a logging truck. He made a significant amount of money doing that and he invested it forward. He has the opportunities at this point in his life to take a total loss into his stride and go forward. That is what we are dealing with when it comes to farming in northern Alberta. It is a risky business.
Farmers are entirely dependent upon the weather. They are always looking at the weather to see if it is going to rain enough, if it is going to rain too much, or if it is going to be too dry, all of these kinds of things. Is the frost going to come early, or is it going to come late, or will they get a good harvest? Is the price going to be good? That is what we deal with when it comes to farming.
I mentioned that he also drives a logging truck. Many people in northern Alberta are not tied to just one industry. They often will work in one industry and subsidize their efforts in another area. I know many people who service a number of oil wells, who are farming on the side, and who are perhaps souping up trucks at a hot rod shop down the street. That is very common. Many people work three jobs in northern Alberta just to make a living.
Now, to be told they are nothing but tax cheats, that if they have a private corporation to limit their liability in the particular area they do business in is merely just a way to avoid paying taxes, is disingenuous on the part of the government. It is also severely hypocritical when the finance minister himself has, what appears to me, put in place private corporations to avoid paying taxes. Many of the people I know who have private corporations do that purely to limit their liability, not to avoid paying taxes. However, the finance minister on the other hand appears to have put in place private corporations purely to avoid paying taxes.
We are here today asking the finance minister to table documents between November 4, 2015 to July 18, 2017. We would like to know where the finance minister is on this, because his ethics and integrity are critical to the functioning of the country. If we cannot trust our finance minister, where will we go from here? We are already suspicious of the finance minister coming after significant amounts of taxes.
The Liberal government has a spending problem, and it is looking everywhere for the next dollar. It is not looking at the next million dollars; it is looking for the next dollar. I know this because it is going after employee discounts. It said that this was a mistake. If this was a mistake, it did not happen overnight. Somebody was drafting that document and building that website. I know from my own experience that drafting and building a website does not happen overnight. It typically takes a minimum of two or three days.
If the Liberal government is going after the employee discount, what else is it going after? We know it is already going after the small businesses when it comes to income sprinkling. When people are shareholders in a farm, they are asked if they actually do any work on that farm.
Farming is a way of life more than it is a business. It is said that if we love what we do, we never work a day in our lives. Therefore, to ask farmers what they did for their company today, they would scratch their heads and say that they were not exactly sure, that they did the thing they loved to do. If they were asked what their individual tasks were, they would say that they were not sure, that they would have to go through them.
Are we going to require an accounting of all the individual tasks that get done? Farmers do not punch the clock like everyone else. They typically take their paycheques one day of the year, when they deliver their crops to either the terminal in Westlock, or drive it down to Edmonton or that kind of thing.
Therefore, we know the government is significantly out of touch when it comes after things like employee discounts, or small businesses or family farmers. We know it does not understand what it is like to be the average everyday Canadian. The hypocrisy stinks. I know that the people I represent up in northern Alberta were suspicious of the current government when it was elected and their suspicions have been confirmed, for sure.