Debates of June 7th, 2023

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

And the green.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent, our shadow minister of the environment, reminds me about the green floors in this place. One might wonder why it is green and why the other place is red. Of course, this place is green because the first commoners met in the fields of Runnymede. In fact, the first House of Commons, the first Parliament, happened in the fields and the commoners represented those who worked and harvested the fields. They were the ones responsible for the bounty.

Of course, it was the aristocrats on the inside of the castle walls who made their way by taking what others had earned. Obviously, the greed of those within the castle walls was insatiable. The commoners pushed back and fought back for their ability to control what they had earned and to limit what could be taken from them, that nothing could be taxed from the people without the consent of the people.

That is why we are debating this budget here today. We debate something called the estimates. It seems like a technical procedural detail but it is not. No dollar can be spent or taxed by government without it being voted on in this place. That is because it is the people, it is the common people in the fields, who earned it whose consent is required before it can be taxed or spent. That is a powerful tradition.

We should never forget. Every time we look at the green, let us think of the people who continue to work figuratively and literally in the fields in order to deliver the harvest, the abundant harvest that is our blessing in this country, the prodigious harvest of Canada's workers, its farmers, its truckers and the people who dig stuff, fix stuff and move stuff. Those are the people who produce this great bounty, with God's help, and it is our duty to be custodians of their freedom and to work on their behalf.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is rising on a point of order.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, earlier we had a situation where members of Parliament were using props in this House. They were not speaking, but they were very clearly holding up props and making comments about them. It seemed to make a total mockery of the rules around props, and people it seems had brought in items that were supposed to represent certain things that were in relation to past comments the speaker had made.

There is a long-established convention in this place that members cannot and should not be able use props. I understand there may be some interpretations around whether the person is speaking or not, but the principle of not being able to use props and use them as a tool for heckling, prodding or in effect trying to disrupt another member should not be allowed.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

I know he needs a break, but this is debate.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I would ask that the Speaker call in particular the parliamentary secretary across the way, who should be listening to this point, because in the midst of heckling this point, the parliamentary secretary was in fact one of the offenders in the course of these events.

The members opposite should take seriously their obligations to follow the rules in this place. Instead of heckling, the members should listen to the point being made and should show more respect for the rules. When we have rules that are well established in the House, the members should be following them rather than engaging in this kind of activity.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I am well aware of the rules, and I called the members on that at the time. As the member may have noticed, there are no props in the House at the moment. There have been rules enforced for that reason.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, we need to replace the pain that Canadians are feeling with the hope that they need. That is one of the reasons I am rising today in the House of Commons. It is not just to point out the suffering that the Prime Minister has caused by doubling the national debt, by fanning inflation to levels not seen in 40 years and by ballooning mortgage and government debt.

We need to acknowledge that this pain exists, but the official opposition also has a responsibility to offer an alternative to replace this pain and suffering with hope for the future. That is exactly what we are going to do. We need to recognize that hope is possible. We need to reverse the negative trends we are seeing and give Canadians hope for a better future. We are going to do that by using and recognizing the common sense of everyday Canadians.

What is our plan for doing that? What is the plan for bringing in a government that works for those who do the work?

First, we need to lower prices. We are going to do that by getting rid of the deficits and inflationary taxes that are causing the current problem. History has shown us that deficits lead to higher prices. More money chasing the same goods means higher prices. That is obvious.

To reverse that, we must control spending and put in place a law that requires politicians to save one dollar for every new dollar spent.

The United States implemented this policy in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was in power. This policy made it possible for the United States to balance its budget for the first time in 50 years. We know that the U.S. government was able do pay down $400 billion in debt, which led to a considerable increase in wages during a period of economic growth with very low inflation. This strengthened the government's finances.

Unfortunately, when that law was repealed, the U.S. government fell back into deficits, and it is still running deficits. This demonstrates once again that politicians need legal discipline to control their spending. All living things in nature must live with limits. For all living things in nature, there are never enough resources and there is always rising demand. Only politicians can avoid this problem by imposing these limits and lack of resources on other people by creating inflation, debt and taxes. The only way to limit the costs that must be borne by citizens is to pass a law that will force politicians to save.

This is exactly what a waiter, a mechanic or a small business does when they choose between one expense or another, or when they try to make two purchases, but at a good price. It is the kind of self-imposed discipline shown by Canadian families and small and medium-sized Canadian businesses. It is the kind of discipline that I am going to impose on politicians. Canadians have had enough of cutting back on their spending. The time has come for politicians to show a little discipline themselves.

I am talking about discipline, not the austerity the government is imposing on families. Yes, the government has plenty of money, but that means less money for the workers, the entrepreneurs and the seniors who actually worked.

We will have a smaller government, which will allow Canadians to be bigger. This will also eliminate waste. It will force public servants and politicians to look around for ways to find savings in the bureaucracy, because there are opportunities to save money.

I mentioned an example earlier. There is a federal program that used to send CDs to people so they could listen to audio books. However, the Canadian National Institute for the Blind said it was too expensive and impractical to continue sending CDs. This is the 21st century, after all. Why not send them books digitally online? This meant cutting costs while increasing the number of books available to visually impaired people. It is a win-win situation for everyone.

Therefore, it is possible to reduce costs while improving services if we apply common sense to government management. That is exactly what this pay-as-you-go policy will accomplish, by continually forcing politicians to find ways to deliver services more cheaply. That is exactly what every other Canadian is doing, and that is exactly what my government will do as well.

We will stop giving contracts to consultants. We are going to shut down the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which receives funding to the tune of more than $35 billion and has been around for over five years, but has yet to complete a single project. We will eliminate a program that exists but offers nothing to taxpayers so that we can save money and leave that money in the pockets of ordinary Canadians, reduce debt and balance the budget in order to shrink inflation and interest rates.

People need bigger paycheques. These days work no longer pays. When a single mother with three children who earns $60,000 a year manages to earn an extra $1, she loses 80¢ of it, because the government makes deductions and imposes taxes. After payroll taxes and benefit deductions, she can lose up to 80¢ per dollar. She is penalized for working. The government is penalizing the people we need. There is a labour shortage, but the government is penalizing seniors, mothers and others who work. Why?

The government should be imposing penalties on those who drive too fast on the highway, those who commit crimes and those who break the law, but, in Canada, workers are the ones who are penalized the most. It is shameful to penalize work. An anti-work policy leads to a weaker economy. We need to reform the tax and benefit system so that Canadians take home a greater share of every dollar they earn and so that hard work once again pays off in Canada. I am going to implement that type of reform and cut taxes to support those who work and ensure that they are properly compensated, here in Canada.

In order to work, however, people need to be able to get to work, to make it there. That is why the war on cars has to stop. The woke Bloc and the Liberals are against cars. They tried to kill a major project in the Quebec City region, a third link that Quebeckers could have used to cross the St. Lawrence. Now, that is gone. The woke brigade have an anti-car agenda. It makes no sense. People in the suburbs and in the regions need cars to get to work.

That is why a government under my leadership, a common-sense Conservative government, will support public transit, but also highways and bridges so people can get to work. We are not going to make that more expensive. The Liberals and the Bloc want to raise the gas tax by 20¢ a litre. Quebeckers cannot afford an extra 20¢-a-litre tax. Quebec already has some of the highest gas prices in North America. We are the only party that will cancel this second carbon tax that the Bloc and Liberals are planning on charging. We believe that to save the environment, we need to make green energy less expensive, not make traditional energy more expensive. We are going to protect the environment through technology, not taxes.

As members can see, I am saying exactly the same things in English and French because common sense is universal. Common sense exists in every language. We are going to bring back bigger paycheques by getting rid of the red tape that is preventing energy production.

I have been challenged to express support for nuclear energy in French. Yes, I will support nuclear energy. It is very popular in France, by the way.

I know that the Minister of Environment, who is a radical and an extremist, is against any source of energy. He is even against nuclear energy. He wants to prevent Quebec from building hydroelectric dams. He says he will allow them, but it will take six or seven more years to conduct duplicate environmental assessments.

I have confidence in the Quebec government, which is one of the most advanced governments in the world in terms of environmental protection. The Quebec government will definitely want to protect the environment. There is no need for a second assessment for the same project. We will accelerate the approval of hydroelectric projects.

If we want to fight climate change, we must produce more electricity. How will our green friends charge electric cars if we do not have hydroelectric dams? What is the plan to double the amount of available electricity? We need dams and we need quick approvals for dams. I will eliminate the obstacles being put in place by the federal government so that Quebec can continue to build dams and generate more electricity.

When Stephen Harper's Conservative government was in place, there was a major global economic crisis. Projects had to be built quickly and without delay. The minister at the time, John Baird, said: one project, one assessment.

There was no reason to have a municipal assessment, a provincial assessment and a federal assessment, because prior to that, all three were needed. Sometimes the same consultant was hired three times by three levels of government to delay the project and prevent construction, increasing costs for everyone. At that time, however, projects had to be completed quickly to combat the effects of the global crisis.

The minister did something else. He told his officials he wanted a one-page permit application, because they were having to fill out 200 pages for one application. They said they were okay with the 200 pages. He said no, one page. They suggested a compromise of 100 pages. He repeated that he wanted one page. They said 100 pages. He insisted on one page. They said 50 pages. He again said one page. They offered to agree on 10 pages. He persisted and told them one page. In the end, the officials managed to produce a one-page permit application for a project.

Can we have more of that?

I was the MP for Nepean. The founder of Nepean, Aubrey Moodie, was the region's mayor. He used to tell the story of a man who came to his farm at 6 o'clock in the morning and told him that he had bought some land and wanted to build a car dealership. The next day, they met with the city's lawyers, and on Tuesday, two days later, construction had begun. That is how common sense works. Cut through the red tape. Eighty years later, that same company is still there. It sells cars and pays its employees. That is common sense. By removing bureaucratic obstacles, we are going to facilitate bigger paycheques and people will still be able to build in Canada. That is common sense.

When I am prime minister, I am going to issue a challenge to provincial premiers and municipal mayors. We are going to meet and I am going to tell them that, of all OECD countries, Canada will be the place where building permits can be obtained the fastest. We can do it. We can protect the environment and ensure safety, and we can do it quickly. We can get things done. We can still get things done in Canada. Yes, we can.

We want our young people to be able to buy a house. Right now, nine out of 10 young people cannot. Canada is the second-largest country in the world by landmass, but there are not enough houses for our young people. That does not make any sense. What is the reason for that? The reason is that Canada is the second-slowest country when it comes to issuing building permits. That is why we have the fewest houses per capita in the G7. Houses in Canada cost almost double what they do in the United States, and yet the U.S. has 10 times more people to house in a smaller territory. The price of houses in the U.S. is lower because they can get building permits.

Here, we should be encouraging our municipalities to build housing more rapidly. I will ensure that the funding for municipal infrastructure corresponds with the number of houses that the municipality manages to build. I will require every big city to increase building permits by 15% per year or they will lose their infrastructure funding. On the other hand, if they build more housing, they will get more infrastructure funding.

We will compensate successful municipalities. We will give more money to those that build more housing. We are going to force the big cities to build a lot more apartments near transit stations. We will bring in more immigrants who can build things. We are going to promote trades, not just professions, by supporting colleges and trade schools, not just universities. We are going to support the working class of the future.

For those who do not believe me when I say that housing can be built faster, just look at what the Squamish Nation has done in downtown Vancouver. In Vancouver, a single building permit costs $600,000 per house. That is the cost just for the permit, not for the materials, not for the workers, not even for the land. That is how much the government charges for the paperwork.

Fortunately, the Squamish Nation, part of which is located in the city of Vancouver, does not have to follow those rules and fill out that city paperwork. It is indigenous reserve land. They control it themselves. This has enabled them to build 6,000 apartments on 10 acres. That means 600 apartments for every acre. It is incredible. That means 6,000 families, 6,000 young people, 6,000 seniors who will have a place to live thanks to the Squamish Nation's ability to get things done and start building.

By following this example, we could build housing across the country. Let us follow the example of our Squamish friends and build housing more quickly. We will build homes that Canadians and Quebeckers can afford. We are going to make homes affordable again.

We will also bring back safety. The Liberal government and the woke Bloc are so out of touch with the real world that they are trying to ban hunting rifles. When the Bloc members saw the list of long guns that the Liberals wanted to ban, they thought it was a great idea, that it was the list they had long been waiting for and that they would be happy to ban all these hunters' guns.

Suddenly, the Bloc found out that there were hunters in their ridings. Many people go hunting in la belle province, but the Bloc did not know that. This is a tradition that has been passed down for thousands of years. Even before the arrival of the Europeans, there were indigenous people who hunted. Even after the French arrived and founded la belle province, there was a lot of hunting. It is a tradition that has existed since time immemorial. Many patriotic Quebeckers still hunt today.

The only party that was there to defend hunters against this unwarranted attack was the Conservative Party. We will never allow the Prime Minister to realize his dream of banning hunting here in Canada. Instead, we will invest that money in strengthening our borders. That is just common sense.

We know that 80% of gun crimes are committed with illegal weapons smuggled in from the United States. Why spend $5 billion to harass sport shooters who have licences, are trained and have already undergone RCMP checks, when we can invest that money in strengthening our border and providing more resources to our police so they can arrest the real criminals and street gangs? Common sense will keep every Canadian safe in this country. I am simply talking about common sense.

We will also bring back freedom. I know that freedom is a foundational principle of our country. The federal government wants to censor the Internet. The CRTC, a woke agency, wants to impose its values on Quebeckers. It is unbelievable to see what the Bloc Québécois, which calls itself a sovereignist party, is doing. It wants to give more power to the federal state, to a minister of the Canadian government, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and to other woke bureaucrats here in Ottawa, who will control what Quebeckers can see and say on the Internet.

Only the Conservative Party defended the individual sovereignty of Quebeckers to choose their own thoughts, their own words and their own identity. I will never allow the federal government to dictate to Quebeckers what they can think or what they can say on the Internet. I will restore freedom of expression.

The days of being lectured to are over. The same goes for our universities. I applaud the government of Quebec for introducing an academic freedom policy. Unfortunately, the federal government is trying to force wokeism on Quebec universities by issuing the funds it pays for research and development to universities pursuing a woke agenda. Universities have to be woke to get money from the Liberal government. I will never allow that.

I am going to co-opt the freedom of expression policy that the Government of Quebec implemented to ensure that all students and teachers are able to express themselves without censorship and without being controlled by the woke.

We will never allow the central bank to create digital currency. We will protect the monetary freedom of every Canadian to have their own private bank account that is not monitored or controlled by the state. That is how we are going to protect economic freedom, which is just as important as freedom of expression and other freedoms.

If I had to create a party from nothing, it would be a “mind your own business” party. Letting people make their own decisions is the best way to run a country. The laissez-faire approach comes from the French. We need to let people make their own decisions. I believe in the common sense of ordinary Canadians.

These people are often referred to as ordinary people, but that is not true. The waitress who works a 12-hour shift, who has to juggle 10 plates at a time while serving 15 difficult customers at once, who gets home at 8 p.m. and then has to teach her child math while balancing her budget on minimum wage, is not ordinary. She is extraordinary.

The farmer who has a firm grasp on how to work with the soil and the weather to get food from his field to our plate is not ordinary. He is extraordinary. The electrician who helps light the House of Commons is not ordinary. He is extraordinary. These extraordinary people are the people we all work for.

We have to remember that they do not need a lesson. No more giving lessons. It is time to let people to live their lives free from the excessive interference we see from this government and all governments. We have to remember that we are servants.

The word “minister” means servant. The Prime Minister is the first servant of the country, not the master of the people. That is why we are calling for a fiscal policy that gives control back to ordinary Canadians, the people who do the work and pay the bills.

That is why I told the Prime Minister that I would end this speech as soon as he gave me the following two guarantees: First, that he would balance the budget to reduce inflation and the interest rates; second that he would stop all carbon tax increases. These two things would allow people to regain control of their money and be compensated for their hard work. Putting people back in control of their lives is our goal. It is common sense. Let us bring back common sense.

I could stop this speech on a moment's notice if the Prime Minister would walk in here now and just commit to me to make two commitments come true: one, that he will balance the budget to bring down inflation and interest rates, and two, that he will cancel all future increases to the carbon tax. Two simple demands, and I would stop speaking. Two demands is all it would take.

The Prime Minister will not do it because he wants to take more from the people. He believes he knows better; he knows how to control their money and run their lives better than all of those ordinary people.

These people are not ordinary. The waitress who balances 10 plates, serves 15 customers, helps her kid with math and balances her budget on a $15-an-hour salary is not ordinary; she is extraordinary. The farmer who brings the food from his field to our forks is extraordinary. The electrician who captures the electricity from the sky and runs it through a copper wire to light up this room is extraordinary. These are the common people for whom we fight. It is the common sense of the common people, united for our common home: their home, my home, our home. Let us bring it home.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The hon. House leader for the official opposition is rising on a point of order.

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, given the late hour and the special order we are operating under, we understand that you have to put the question, but I believe if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to not see the clock at 11:45 p.m. and allow the hon. Leader of the Opposition to continue, because I think some Liberals remain unconvinced and he has some more—

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

It being 11:46 p.m., pursuant to order made on Tuesday, June 6, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on the motion.

If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, we request a recorded division.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the division stands deferred until Thursday, June 8, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

The hon. Minister of International Development is rising on a point of order.

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Minister of International Development and Minister responsible for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I move:

That this House do now adjourn.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Pursuant to order made on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, the motion is deemed adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 11:47 p.m.)