Debates of June 7th, 2023

Government Response to Order Paper Questions

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

I have repeatedly asked the hon. members to please keep order and give the hon. Leader of the Opposition the chance to complete his speech.

The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock is rising on a point of order.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, earlier this evening I was voting via hybrid Parliament. I just want to bring to the attention of the House that, when I went to vote this evening, when clicked the camera on, my screen did not light up. My stock image stayed there, and actually—

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

It was brought to the attention of the Speaker who was taking the vote at the time that there were technical difficulties.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

May I hear the rest of the hon. member's point of order?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, it was just interesting that, when I turned my camera on, I had the grid of members of Parliament up there. Another member of Parliament's picture disappeared and my picture appeared there, and my stock image was still there. When I—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

I have just informed the hon. member that I cannot resolve that issue. IT services can, and it has been brought to the attention of the Speaker and will be looked at.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition has the floor.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-47, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, be read the third time and passed.

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Madam Speaker, we can only, at times like these, quote Ecclesiastes:

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

The Prime Minister claims he has invented some marvellous new concept: the government's taking over the economy, taking people's money and supposedly giving it back worth more than when they lost it, and that this is a brand new idea. In fact, all his ideas are very old. They have all been tried before and with exactly the same disastrous results. All we try to do here is to remind them a little of history.

The reason we study history is to avoid repeating its mistakes. Maybe that is why this Prime Minister is so fond of deleting our history. Is that right? If we can forget about the history, if we can wipe away the past, well, then we have unlimited power to control the future. Orwell warned of this, actually, in 1984, which, unfortunately, this Prime Minister thought of as an instruction manual instead of as a cautionary tale.

The Prime Minister wanted to delete some of the most beautiful images of our history from the passport: images of the great Terry Fox, a man who ran across the country on one leg to fight cancer, and images of the great Quebec City, the most spectacular and possibly the most historic city in all of North America, which would be washed away, but “Forget about it; we need not remember the great cities that built our country.” He wanted to erase the RCMP images and the images of the victory at Vimy over tyranny, which was a victory that the French and English both were unable to achieve, but one in which Canadians triumphed the first time. All the divisions of our Canadian Forces fought together as one. It was the first great triumph, one of which we could all be proud. Why delete all those beautiful images of history?

I will posit a few explanations as to why the Prime Minister is so determined to delete our history. Just as this member tries to silence me with his overbearing voice right now, it is this: If the government can delete our heroes, it can make the people feel weak and helpless, and therefore reliant on a powerful state. It can make the people think they cannot achieve great triumphs on their own and that great things can be done only by the government and by the great leader. I note that the Prime Minister deleted all these great images so he could put a childhood picture of himself swimming at Harrington Lake in Quebec, doing a little splash into a pond as though that little trivial moment in his life were more important than all the great historical triumphs of our nation. That is the triumph of egoism. That is what the statist really cares about: the idea of concentrating everything in the state, because “I am the state”, said King Louis, and that is the thinking of the Prime Minister. He wants to control everything, because it is the aggrandizement of the state; it is the aggrandizement of the head of the government. That is exactly what he tries to achieve. By making the people small, he can make himself big.

That is why he is always hectoring and lecturing the people, telling Canadians they are not allowed to use basic common language. One time, I remember, a young lady innocently used the term “mankind”, and he admonished her that it was “peoplekind”. He was trying to make her feel small for using common and well-understood language that he believed was offensive and unacceptable. He is constantly talking down our history and our past, treating Canadians as though they have had nothing but shame that has brought us thus far and treating our country as though it had nothing for which to be proud. He understands that, by making the country ashamed of its past, its history and its people, he can aggrandize the state.

He has recently become very angry that I pointed out that everything feels broken. I am speaking of the airports the federal government manages, the passport system it runs, the inflation it has caused, the housing market it has inflated and the red tape that prevents people from achieving anything in business or even in human mobility.

I point out all those things that are broken. He says I am not allowed to say “Everything is broken”, but the truth is that he believes the country is broken. We both agree things are broken; we just disagree on who and what broke them. I think the government broke these things; he thinks the people and our history broke things. That is what he thinks. He thinks we have a broken people and a broken past; I believe we have a broken government, a government we can fix by electing a new and common-sense government that stands up for the common people.

The great Thomas Sowell pointed out that for those on the hard left, it is not so much a view they have of the world, but a view they have of themselves as higher beings who are capable of deciding for everyone else. That is actually the core ideology to which they adhere, because, when we really look at the inconsistency in application of their woke ideology, we see that there is nothing underneath it other than the concentration of power. For example, the Prime Minister likes to preach about woke identity politics, but that did not stop him from firing the first indigenous attorney general. He had no problem doing that. Why did he fire her, by the way? It was because she refused to interfere to protect a wealthy multinational corporation from prosecution after it had stolen from Africa's poorest people.

Here we have a woke Prime Minister protecting a multinational corporation that stole from the poorest people in Africa, and doing so by firing the first female indigenous attorney general. Did he not violate all the precepts of wokeism in that one act? Of course he did. Why did he? It is because wokeism was never about any of those things; it was only about giving him more control. Wokeism is only about control. It is about dividing people based on their group identity rather than celebrating them for their individual humanity. We believe in judging people based on their personal character, not based on their group identity, and Liberals used to believe in that too. It used to be the basic precept of a liberal ideology, to look past people's race, their sexuality and their gender and just judge them as individual human beings. That is what “liberalism” was; that was the meaning of the word. Now, it means exactly the opposite; it means that there is nothing more important than a person's group or other identity. People should be judged only, according to modern-day woke thinkers, by the group with which Liberals and wokeists identify them.

We believe in the traditional view of individual freedom and responsibility, where we see each individual as a precious and unique creation who can live out their life based on their merits, and be judged for those merits, rather than being wrapped up in divisive ideologies that base their judgments on race, ethnicity and other irrelevant characteristics.

I point out that the reason for dividing people by group is that it allows the woke estate to control people. It is always easier to control groups than it is to control individuals, and we know that the Prime Minister's objective is to control them. It also creates the justification for all the censorship. The government can say that there is new language that is no longer allowed: for example, “mankind” versus “peoplekind”. Now, the Prime Minister has created the justification for censorship, because if people are allowed to freely express themselves, they might violate some of the new woke rules that have been invented. There are rules that are invented every day. The new words that must be stated and cannot be stated can only exist if we have a powerful state to impose those rules. The rules are for the rulers, and that is what the Prime Minister attempts to do through the corrosive ideology of wokeism, which does nothing but divide.

We, as Conservatives, do not believe in divide and conquer. We believe in uniting for freedom. Let us unite for freedom again in this country of ours. Why do we not judge people based on their individual character? We should treat them as people rather than as groups. Why do we not let individuals make their own decisions? Why do we not look past irrelevant characteristics like sexual orientation, gender, race? These characteristics should not define any human because, at the end of the day, we are all the same people. We are all one common people, are we not?

I go across this country and one of my favourite things to do is visit with people of different cultures and different backgrounds. Every time I do, what do I discover? It is how much we have in common. The other side would love to focus and obsess about the differences of the various traditions in our land. I believe that we should celebrate what we share in common, the common people. For example, I am very proud that I had the occasion to spend so much time with the Sikh community in this country, who welcomed me with open arms into their gurdwaras, to learn of their legends and their stories, and I found that they are the same stories that I grew up with, just different names, different characters, but all leading to the same human outcome.

I have learned from my shadow minister of finance the story of the khalsa. The story of the khalsa is that the 10th guru of Sikhism, Guru Gobind Singh Ji, abolished the caste system. He said there should no longer be different castes in society, but that all should be equal. Everyone should eat from the same bowl, he said, and he got rid of all of the caste-based names, so everyone became known as Singh. They had different first names, but they had the same last name of Singh, and “Singh” means “lion”. No longer would there be little people, everyone would be a lion. That, to me, is an incredibly inspiring story.

That was what I meant when I ran for prime minister. I said I was running for prime minister to put people back in charge of their lives by making this the freest nation on earth, so everyone can decide—

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

The hon. member for North Okanagan—Shuswap is rising on a point of order.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am in my eighth year in the chamber. A member across the way has been here that same period of time. It was brought to his attention earlier that we are not to eat in the chamber.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

I cannot hear the hon. member. I would like some silence in the House so I can hear him.

The hon. member.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Madam Speaker, there is absolute disrespect being shown on the government side of the House. We have already discussed this once today. The member said he was only finishing what was in his mouth at the time, even though I had seen him shovelling stuff into his mouth on his way into the chamber. The same member is now putting food into his mouth in the chamber. It is not what he walked into the chamber with in his mouth at the time. He is actually sitting in the chamber eating food.

Madam Speaker, you instructed him not to do this earlier. He has been here many years and should know that.

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

I had not noticed it, but I will look more closely and if I see it, I will call the member on it.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I understand the member is enjoying a little bit of popcorn. He is enjoying the show. I agreed to put on a show for the members of the government here today. I hope that they have learned a little bit here today because the message that I am bringing to them is one that they should have already known if they had spent more time talking to truckers, waitresses, welders and other great Canadians. I do include truckers among the greatest of Canadians. If they had listened to those people then we would not be in the mess that we are in.

It is funny. I would say on Parliament Hill, as the Liberals were printing all of this money, that we were going to have inflation. The Liberals would say, “Oh, that's so simplistic. That'll never happen." Then I would go out to my riding and I would say that to farmers, truck drivers and welders who would say, “Yes, of course”. Who was right in the end? The farmers and the truckers. The everyday hard-working people with common sense actually had the right answer.

In fact, I think we would all be better off if fewer of these so-called self-appointed experts, who consistently get it wrong, were in charge of the country and more of the common sense of the common people were brought forward. That is really the purpose of my candidacy for prime minister, to bring forward the voice of those common people, a voice that the Liberals would like to drown out.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Right now they are trying to shout me down and talk me down but they cannot silence me. The voice of the people is growing louder and louder. It is growing into a chant. The common sense of the common people will prevail against this tiny group of elites who continually try to silence them as it pushes us further and further into the trouble we face today.

We need to discuss how we are going to fix the mess that I will inherit when I become prime minister. Canadians deserve to know that there is a way to transform the hurt that the Prime Minister has caused into the hope that Canadians need, and so it is today that I bring forward that hope.

We are going to bring home lower prices by capping government spending, cutting government waste to eliminate inflationary deficits. Now this is a point on which the government agreed with me only six months ago when the finance minister said that she would deliver a 2027 budget balance, something that surprised but impressed me. Only six months later, half a year, she has plunged us deeper into debt with $60 billion of additional inflationary spending; that is $4,200 per person. By cutting waste like the ArriveCAN app, the $35-billion Infrastructure Bank, the contracts to McKinsey and the other consulting insiders, by rooting out waste and corruption, by finding ways to compress internal and back-office budgets, we will get back to a balanced budget and, in so doing, we will lower inflation and lower interest rates. That will allow those hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of families who will be renewing their mortgages to do so at a moderate rate in order to avoid the mass bankruptcies that I warned against earlier on today.

This kind of common-sense fiscal management is not foreign to Canadians. In fact, it was common across this country for a quarter-century from the mid-1990s until 2015, there was a consensus that government should balance the budget unless there was a recession or some major temporary crisis. This was a consensus, believe it or not, across all political parties, NDP, provincial governments, Conservative and Liberals here in Ottawa, a consensus that was shattered by the Prime Minister whose radical, leftist agenda took us into the permanent deficits, the permanent borrowing, the money printing that created the chaos that we have today.

What did that quarter-century of consensus give us? It gave us a massive increase in our quality of life as Canadian housing became more affordable, paycheques became more powerful and taxes were much lower. The cost of the government went from 52% of GDP in 1993 to approximately 37% of GDP. That meant that Canadians had more money to make their own decisions, to raise their families, to start their businesses, to build a future. We developed the lowest debt in the entire G7 as a share of our GDP, something that we protected and something that allowed us to be a shock absorber against the crises of the 2008 recession and the COVID pandemic.

All of that was enabled because governments accepted a common-sense approach to balancing their budgets and to reducing debt as a share of the economy year after year. A Conservative government, led by me as prime minister, would re-establish that common-sense consensus and make balanced budgets the norm and deficits the exception again.

That would allow for our debt to decline, for our interest rates to be low, for our purchasing power to be maintained or, perhaps, in some cases, even grow.

I see the members across the way say that there is no way that purchasing power could ever grow, but why not?

We have an increase in technology every single year, incredible technology that is able to generate more output with every hour worked. That is what technology does. We are actually able to produce more food on less land than ever before and we are able to produce more milk with fewer cows. We are able to produce more beer cans with less tin. We are able to produce more output with each hour. Why does this not translate into lower prices? Should it not? If the input is lower to produce the output, then why is the cost not lower to the end-user?

The answer is that the government continues to print cash, which neutralizes the cost savings and prevents people from truly benefiting from the massive productive power of the free enterprise economy.

By reinstating disciplined spending, our central bank can focus exclusively on preserving and protecting the purchasing power of our money. The Swiss did this for 25 years. Their average inflation rate was 0.8%, half of what it was here in Canada during the same time period. They have the lowest inflation today.

What this means is that over a 25-year period, the Swiss franc has now about 25% more purchasing power than the Canadian dollar. Why? Because they disciplined themselves to protect purchasing power, so that their money would be worth more. That means that the paycheques of the Swiss are more powerful and the money that those paycheques represent buys more.

That should be our goal, to have powerful paycheques but also more powerful money with which one can buy things. That is the dream that we must aspire to by disciplining government spending and respecting the currency that we use.

That is why I will get the central bank back to its core mandate, of protecting our money, and ensure that it does not engage in social and economic engineering. No more money printing. No more social causes. No more pushing governmental agendas that have nothing to do with the purchasing power of our money and no central bank digital currency. I will never allow the government to force people to put their money into a government bank account.

Rather, we already have digital money. It is called a bank account. We already have digital money. It is called a credit card. People can already send e-transfers. We do not need the government to nationalize electronic financial transactions because we know that would only mean one thing. It would mean government bank accounts, which would mean government surveillance and government control.

After the abuses that we saw with this government cracking down on the bank accounts of the people who disagree with it, I will make sure that this country never allows the government to take control of people's personal bank accounts.

By bringing common sense back to our money, we will bring home lower prices for our people. That also includes getting rid of the carbon tax, the inflationary carbon tax. This government has brought in a 14¢-a-litre carbon tax, which has increased the cost of living for everyday Canadians without benefiting the environment.

Today, the Prime Minister went so far as to claim that the carbon tax would mean fewer forest fires, something that is utterly contrary to basic science and basic reality. His carbon tax has not been able to reduce emissions; far be it to eliminate forest fires. The way that we combat climate change is with technology and not taxes.

[An hon. member]

Is climate change real?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Yes, it is real but their policies to respond to it are not real. The policies to respond to it by the government are designed to raise money for the politicians to spend, not to protect the planet. Our approach will be to deploy technology, not taxes, to defeat—

[An hon. member]

Name one.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Across the way, she heckles. That is okay. This could be a conversation—

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

Not really, because if we want to respect the Standing Orders, this is not a conversation. I would ask the hon. member from the government side to please let the hon. Leader of the Opposition continue his speech.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member asked for an example of a technology that can defeat climate change. There is one that the government killed, which is the tidal power the private sector was trying to build in Nova Scotia. It would have been a tidal power system that would allow the forces of the ocean to turn propellers and generate electricity, which could be beamed to the shores and put into the electrical grid without a single tonne of emissions going into the atmosphere.

What could stop such a common-sense idea from happening? The federal government could stop it by imposing six years of delays through Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Without even proving that a single, solitary fish or frog would lose its life, the Liberals managed to kill this common-sense idea and prevent Nova Scotians from powering their electrical grid with the forces of the seas.

Under my government, we would green light green technology and allow for our brilliant engineers to invent the technology that will bring about cleaner, greener and more affordable electricity.

I have a second example. I will throw it in for free. It is hydroelectric dams. I wish I could say this was a new idea, but fortunately, the brilliant Quebec engineers and construction workers mastered it, and the Manitobans did as well, with massive hydroelectric dams that use the force of gravity and H2O to generate the electricity necessary to power our homes. Again, that is without a single tonne of emissions going into the atmosphere.

What stands in the way? Duplicative bureaucracy and the government gamekeepers. The Prime Minister insists on doing a second level of environmental evaluations stacked on top of the first. That is the exact same process done twice, which takes over twice the time, making the projects back up their completion date and increase their costs.

For example, Quebec needs to increase its electricity by 100% over the next several decades. It can only do it if it builds more hydroelectric dams. Only a Conservative government, led by me as prime minister, will get out of the way to let Quebeckers build hydroelectric dams.

Then there is the mighty power of the atom with nuclear power here in Ontario. If we look around this room, one in two light bulbs that illuminate this room, so members can be here to hear this wonderful speech, is powered by nuclear energy. The nuclear power is safe, reliable and emissions-free, yet it takes up to 15 years to get a nuclear plant approved.

We all agree that nuclear power should be supplied safely and that all of the necessary steps to protect surrounding communities should be followed. That said, what are we going to learn about safety or environmental protection in years 14 and 15 that we could not have learned in years 1, 2, 3 and 4? We can have the exact same strict environmental and public safety protections, but do them faster so that we can bring in nuclear energy and small modular nuclear reactors.