Debates of Oct. 31st, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member wants to focus on anything but his responsibility as a parliamentarian. The member is misleading Canadians when he does not tell them directly what is taking place in the House.

There is a motion to have this matter go to the procedure and House affairs committee. With regard to the production of documents they are talking about, the RCMP, the Auditor General and other legal experts say this is not a good tactic the Conservatives are using. Conservatives should read The Hill Times story if they want even more detail.

What the Conservative Party is doing is a total disgrace. It is an abuse of parliamentary procedure. When are the Conservatives going to smarten up and allow legislation and allow the government to work with other opposition parties so we can get things done for Canadians? They need to stop the game and allow us to get back to business to serve Canadians.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, all the Liberals are happy because their bellies are full, I guess.

The abuse lies on the Liberals' side because it was Parliament, through a majority of parliamentarians representing a majority of Canadians, who wanted these documents, unredacted, to be presented. The Speaker ruled in favour of parliamentarians and that their privilege was being undermined by the government.

The right and supremacy of Parliament is paramount. We have the authority to compel these documents. The Liberals have no authority to prevent these documents from being provided as Parliament has demanded.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Winnipeg North likes to quote The Hill Times. I am going to quote Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. Two weeks ago today, The Globe and Mail said the Conservatives are right and the Liberals are wrong; the redacted documents should be presented in Parliament; and the Liberals have held everything up. This is Canada's national newspaper, not The Hill Times.

I wonder if the member for Barrie—Innisfil would like to comment on Canada's national newspaper supporting the Conservative Party of Canada in asking for the unredacted documents from the Liberal Party.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, the member is quoting a story. Is that a legal opinion or just a letter to the editor?

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

That is debate.

The hon. member for Barrie—Innisfil.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is customary around this place that a lot of information is plucked from different sources to be used for political purposes. I am aware of what the member for Saskatoon—Grasswood is speaking about. I am not aware of what the member for Winnipeg North is speaking about in The Hill Times because, frankly, I do not read The Hill Times.

I look at it this way. The majority of Canadians, represented in this place by a majority of parliamentarians, using their power and supremacy as MPs and as Parliament, have compelled the government to provide these documents in an unredacted form to allow for a proper investigation, not necessarily at committee, where things, as I said at the beginning of my speech, go to die. This borders on criminal activity, and those documents need to be given to the RCMP so a proper and thorough investigation is done to find out just how deep this corruption goes and how criminal this is.

That decision of Parliament, the majority of people, not The Hill Times, not The Globe and Mail and not the National Post but members of this place, determined that we want those documents. The Speaker has reaffirmed that decision and it is up to the government to provide them. We can end this tomorrow if those 11,000-plus documents in the Department of Justice, and probably tens of thousands more in other departments, are provided to Parliament, as was demanded.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to tell my colleague that she was right; I probably called the Prime Minister by his name. As someone who holds the rules of the House in high regard, I withdraw those words from my speech and I hope she will forgive me without delay.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

It was the right thing to do. I thank the hon. member for Lévis—Lotbinière for his intervention.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for South Shore—St. Margarets has the floor.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, those who are tuning in may be curious as to why we are debating the wasteful spending of $400 million, a funnelling of $400 million of taxpayer money to the companies of Liberal insiders, appointed by the Prime Minister.

What could we have done? The member for Barrie—Innisfil spoke very eloquently about what could have been done with $400 million of taxpayer money to solve the food and housing crises. As we know, food bank usage has doubled. We know that the carbon tax is a major contributor to food inflation. We know that the food professor, Professor Charlebois, spoke this morning at the industry committee about the impact of these policies on increasing folks' borrowing.

It is a terrible thing that we have to be here because the Liberal government is filibustering and hiding from the taxpayer documents that three parties of the House, the majority of members, have demanded to be turned over. It is parliamentary privilege. It is the ultimate parliamentary privilege. The Liberals have come up with lame excuses. They have given up on their charter arguments, which were dismissed after we pointed out that, like any other business, it is a business that the government owns. When we find potential criminal activity, we turn it over to the police. In addition, the police could do this.

The Liberals have claimed that they are unable to do this. If they could not do it, then why did nine departments turn over unredacted documents? However, the hypocrisy is that 19 have not. The most egregious one is the department of industry, which was responsible for the Liberal green slush fund. It has redacted almost every single document it has sent, and it has many it has yet to send. What is it hiding? We know it is hiding more and more diversions of taxpayer money.

I will tell members why. The Auditor General only sampled a small portion of the transactions, 226 of 420 transactions in that five-year period. We asked the Auditor General if she would audit all of the 420. Do members know what the Auditor General wrote back? The Auditor General said she did not need to because her sample, under accounting standards, is statistically valid for all 420. That means that over $700 million of the $836 million under that period would have gone to Liberal insiders. There has been no scandal bigger than this in terms of a diversion of taxpayer money to insiders of the government in the history of this country if we are talking about $700 million.

These Liberals have no shame. The Liberals are insensitive to the pain of Canadians while over two million people a month are lining up at food banks, a number that is growing every month; while people cannot pay their mortgages and rent; and while we have a carbon tax, which is driving the cost of everything up, that the Liberals intend to quadruple. They care nothing about the pain of Canadians. They care about covering up the funnelling of hundreds of millions of dollars to Liberal insiders' companies while they enrich themselves and Canadians line up in food banks in record numbers. They are having their Marie-Antoinette moment of letting them eat cake. We all know what happened to her. There was also King Charles I, who defied Parliament although Parliament's reign was supreme. Do colleagues know how it was supreme? King Charles I lost his head over the issue of trying to say that the King, who, in this case, is represented by the government, was superior and more important than Parliament.

Why is it that the Liberals are doing this when a majority of Canadians, represented by a majority of MPs in the House, have demanded this? Why would the Prime Minister's personal office, the Privy Council Office, have said to redact the documents and blank them out, contrary to the House, and contrary to the Privacy Act? The Privacy Act says that, if the House wants unredacted documents, it can get them. Why do the Liberals not want to do that? It is because they are covering up for their cronies and their insiders. They are covering up their corruption.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

Emergency Preparedness

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to continue what I think is an important question. As a proud member of the environment committee, we have undertaken, at the request of the government, a study of the factors that led to the Jasper wildfire that devastated that community, leaving 2,000 people homeless and roughly $1 billion in damages.

What this investigation has revealed are staggering levels of negligence or incompetence. I am not sure what is the better word to use here. When I asked, in question period, how much incompetence it takes to get fired from a Liberal cabinet, I did not get a very clear answer, so I wanted to come back for a little bit more clarity on what, in fact, it does take to get fired from the Liberal cabinet.

At the time, the parliamentary secretary replied, stating that the “government did everything it could to prevent the wildfire.” This is clearly and demonstrably false, but the Liberals simply refuse to take any responsibility, to show any humility for the possibility that maybe they could have done more and that they did not, in fact, do everything they could have done.

The reality is that, starting in 2017, the minister of environment at that time, former minister McKenna, began to receive letters from experts warning that Jasper was a tinderbox waiting to explode and it was not a matter of if; it was just simply a question of when. Those individuals who know the region and know the industry pleaded with the Liberal government of the day and were dismissed. The individuals were told “Everything is in hand. Do not worry. We have it. Jasper is going to be fine. Everything is fine.” It reminds me of what is currently happening under the Liberal government: the gift that in a burning room around us everything is fine.

It was no different in 2017 than it is now. The emails of that time showed discussions that there may have been political perceptions at play regarding whether there would be prescribed burns, which are an important tool that has been used for generations in this country and around the world. However, the environment minister's department, Parks Canada, only cleared a very small amount. As former prime minister Harper said when talking about the future Liberal government's deficits, it was just the teeny-tiniest amount of a percentage of the acres necessary to ensure that the area around Jasper would be protected. Worse, when the disaster struck, trucks were turned away. Twenty trucks and 50 firefighters were turned away. Worse, they realized after they were turned away that Parks Canada, for some reason, had bought the wrong fitting hookups with the wrong threading on the hydrants in that area that did not align with those in the rest of B.C. and Alberta.

What we have seen through this investigation is simply a failure and a refusal to accept any responsibility or acknowledgement and show any humility that maybe the government of the day did not do enough. My hope is that we might see a bit of a shift in that because the evidence is irrefutable, that the Liberal government did not do everything that it could to prevent this fire. I will ask again: When will the Minister of Environment be failed for his either negligence or incompetence?

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Sport and Physical Activity]

Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing that we are back here despite the fact that Jasperites have actually pleaded now with Conservative politicians to tone down the political rhetoric on the disaster that claimed 30% of Jasper and the life of 24-year-old firefighter Morgan Kitchen.

In committee and here in the House of Commons, the Conservatives have persisted in making this a political issue. I hate to join them, but the fact is that between 2010 and 2015, the Conservatives completely ignored Jasper altogether. The Stephen Harper deficit action reduction plan cut more than $30 million a year from Jasper's wildfire prevention budget. This meant that, from 2010 to 2015, there was almost no mechanical thinning and there were very few prescribed burns.

That $30-million annual cut had an impact on 1,600 jobs and left the park worse off. In 2016, when we took power, we provided $42 million to Parks Canada. Since 2019, we have invested over $800 million. This is all incremental money, because the Harper Conservatives did nothing, to improve wildfire management, support provinces and territories and train over 1,000 firefighters. Our support did not stop there.

In budget 2021, our government committed $100 million over five years in Parks Canada wildland fire funding to allow critical firefighters conducting risk reduction, preparedness and response.

Our ability to control the weather or extreme weather in the face of unprecedented climate change and drying from the effects of burning fossil fuels is not absolute. We can work with various other jurisdictions, and we can do the mechanical thinning and prescribed burns. We can work with indigenous communities, such as the Indigenous Leadership Initiative and the Indigenous Guardians, to conduct some of those prescribed burns. This has a really positive impact, but that has not stopped the Conservatives from amping this up and implying that this was some kind of human error.

That is not what the witnesses at committee have said or what Jasperites have asked for. I will read a little of what Jasperites wrote recently in the Jasper Local, a newspaper native to Jasper. This is called “Recipe for disaster: Misinformation and wildfire”.

It reads:

Record dryness, extreme heat, high winds, and a lightning storm. This summer in Jasper National Park, all of the ingredients of a recipe for disaster were in place.

Now, two and a half months after that disaster came to pass, another set of circumstances— misinformation, toxic politics and facts-starved social media blowhards, desperately looking to pin blame—have lined up to wreak havoc.

I am sorry. I digress, but that is referring to the member opposite. It continues:

Jasper has taken some big punches. But if we’re going to get up from the mat, we first need to know we’re in each others’ corner.

We’ll need to trust each other. We’ll need to band together.

And we’ll need to ignore the bad actors trying to make political hay from our crisis.

July 22 had all the ingredients for an unprecedented disaster.

But if we can put politics aside and filter out good information from bad, Jasper—the town and the park [and all the people]—has all the right ingredients to make its rebuild unprecedented, too.

That is what our government is focused on. We are focused on fighting climate change and rebuilding Jasper.

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am frustrated by the continued effort to distract and divert from the realities. The monetary spending by the government that the parliamentary secretary mentioned is important because the government should be nimble. It needs to react to, in this case, the pine beetle infestation and when the actual impact of the standing deadwood and the fuel load that was in front of Jasper was relevant. In 2011, it was not. In 2014, it was, and 2017 is why warnings began then.

The people of Jasper deserve answers. They deserve truth. They do not deserve excuses, diversion and people trying to say that we are being political whereas they are not. That is really frustrating. Any level of negligence in any other institution or job would be reason for firing.

This is on track with the current Liberal government. It blames everybody else for every single part. It did nothing. It did not do enough to prevent this fire. It should have done more, and I would love to hear why it did not.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a little rich coming from somebody who worked in the government with Stephen Harper, which did absolutely nothing to prevent wildfires or to have mechanical thinning or prescribed burns. That left a long hangover of inaction that our government took action on. If the member wants to talk, we have a committee meeting on Monday. We can talk then. The reality is that our government undertook a mountain pine beetle strategy in 2016. That was months after we got elected. We have invested millions of dollars into that program. We have done the prescribed burns. We have done the thinning.

I want the member opposite to stop politicizing a wildfire that was started by lightning. It is absolutely disgusting. Jasperites have asked us very clearly to cut it out. They are trying to rebuild, and people are retraumatizing Jasperites by making this such a political issue. The member should read the article and cut it out.

Carbon Pricing

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to rise this evening on behalf of Saskatchewan's small businesses, communities and people against the NDP-Liberal government's greedy carbon tax.

Canadians are rightly fed up with the Prime Minister and his cruel tax. I hear it at each opportunity I have to meet with people as I travel throughout my riding. Their frustrations, despair and desire for a change of government grow day by day.

Let us start with the facts. The Liberal carbon tax increased to $80 per tonne on April 1 of this year. If the government has its way, the goal is to quadruple the tax to $170 per tonne by 2030. Let us also be clear: That means the carbon tax will be quadrupled on everything Canadians buy. From gasoline to clothing to fresh produce, the carbon tax is a punishing tax that affects every pocketbook decision a family makes.

It is not a matter of a mere 3¢ more per litre of gasoline or whether the federal carbon tax charge is clearly defined on a monthly energy bill. Time and again, the Liberals fail to understand a very simple truth about the carbon tax. When they tax the farmer who grows the food we consume, or any product for that matter, they also tax the trucker who ships those goods. The farmers, the businesses and the truckers have no choice but to pass those added costs on to consumers. The government knows that. That is why families are paying an extra $700 for groceries this year. That is why food bank lines and homeless encampments have become all-too-familiar sights in our towns and cities. It does not even look like Canada.

The carbon tax is quite literally a tax on everything that only gets more burdensome year after year, all while Canadians struggle to make ends meet in the cost of living crisis. None of my constituents voted for this, and that is not an unrealistic statement at all. Those who voted to elect the Liberals in 2015 were told by the Prime Minister that his carbon tax would max out at $50 per tonne. They were falsely told they would receive more money back through rebates than they paid in taxes.

Shockingly, they are still being told the same old story by the NDP-Liberals. Those assurances have been completely thrown out the window. The stories of desperation we hear from our constituents do not align with what the government says, and neither do the hard numbers. It came as no surprise to the House when the Parliamentary Budget Officer released an updated carbon tax report that shows most Canadian families are worse off as a result of the carbon tax.

In my province of Saskatchewan, by 2030, the average family will have to pay $894 more in carbon taxes than they get back in rebates. It is in the numbers. That is second only to Ontario families, who will have to pay $903 more. Canadians will not only have $1,000 less in their pockets to provide for their families, but the carbon tax scheme will shrink our economy.

The PBO estimates that by the start of the next decade, the Liberal fuel charge will increase the federal deficit by $4 billion as a result of decreased employment and investment income. This aligns with the NDP-Liberal government's own data, which it shamefully tried to hide from Canadians. The Liberals know the carbon tax will cost the Canadian economy $30.5 billion per year by 2030.

This is only further proof of what Conservatives have been saying since the inception of the carbon tax. It is nothing more than an expensive scam. It is not an environmental plan. It is a tax plan. What an insult to the people of this country, and particularly the people of Saskatchewan. My province is known globally for its environmental stewardship and innovation. We are proud of what we do and we will continue to do it without a carbon tax on our heads.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and to the Minister of Sport and Physical Activity]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know where to start. First of all, my father used to live in Saskatchewan. I like it very much there, but I think it is a bit rich to suggest that it is world-famous for its environmental stewardship, when the vast majority of its electricity is generated with coal. It is not 1905; we can do a lot better than burning coal to create electricity.

Manitoba is right next door to Saskatchewan, and it has an 85% clean grid. Ontario also has a relatively clean grid, almost 80% I think, and Quebec's is close to Manitoba's. Manitoba actually has the cleanest grid in the world. I love Saskatchewan. I have spent a lot of time in Regina. I love it there, but its grid is not clean; it is filthy. Coal is a terrible way to generate electricity, and Premier Moe, who was recently re-elected, boasts about it all the time.

I am not surprised that I am standing here with the member, as she blames absolutely all of Canada's challenges on carbon pricing. Yesterday the Conservative leader, the member for Carleton, who has been in the House for over 20 years, continually referred to the inflation rate of food in Canada as 36% higher than it is in the United States. That is factually incorrect. It is actually closer to the opposite; food inflation in the United States is higher than it is in Canada, and that is in the absence of a national price on pollution, or carbon tax.

Canada has a federal price on pollution and a backstop program, which Saskatchewan utilizes, because as Premier Moe pointed out, he looked at other options but they are all too expensive so he decided to go with the federal backstop program. It is really important to recognize that when we look at the entire country, we do have a federal price on carbon. It is efficient, sends more money back to eight out of 10 families, is lowering our emissions and, since our food inflation is lower than in the United States, is not having an impact on food inflation.

Food is too expensive in Canada; we know that, but we need real solutions. We also know that axing the taxes is not going to do it. I spoke to Sylvain Charlebois about it today. I asked him clearly, “Will axing the tax lower food prices at grocery stores?” The answer is no. There are jurisdictions with higher food inflation that have no price on pollution. It is simply not the case; food is not taxed in Canada, and carbon pricing does not have a material impact on food inflation.

One last thing is that the member said that nobody in her riding in Saskatchewan voted for carbon pricing. That is also incorrect, because she ran in the last federal election under Erin O'Toole, who had an environmental plan. He was a good progressive Conservative, something that the far-right Conservatives have completely abandoned. They will not even acknowledge that human activity and burning fossil fuels have a demonstrable impact on climate change, our warming planet, extreme weather and all of the challenges that we are facing.

The number one cause of food inflation around the world is climate change. If we do not want to fight climate change, then we are basically going to give up. The Conservatives want to give up, throw their hands in the air and say that climate change is not human-caused; it is in the Almighty's hands, and they are not going to bother trying to lower our emissions. Instead they are going to keep burning coal to generate electricity, and they are not going to apologize for it.

The Conservatives are not going to be accountable for their actions, and they are also not to acknowledge that, in the last federal election, the member ran under the leadership of Erin O'Toole, who had a program to price pollution. We all remember it, because it was billed as “The more you burn, the more you earn.” It was sort of like a catalogue of green products that people could purchase with their points, and people got more points if they burned more fossil fuels. It was widely regarded by environmental NGOs and researchers as ineffective and not a good way to implement carbon pricing.

However, the guy who won a Nobel Prize in Economics for carbon pricing, William Nordhaus, says that our plan is getting it right. We are lowering our emissions, fighting climate change and fighting for affordability. The Conservatives cannot get past their three-word slogans.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my province is known globally for its environmental stewardship and innovation, and we made a difference at the last COP convention. Much of our stewardship and innovation was practised and perfected long before the Prime Minister took power or before carbon tax was even on the table. We are consistently ahead of the curve and have made the investments and sacrifices to show for it. We will continue, but the carbon tax is not required.

Middle-class Canadians are losing ground, and people wishing to join the middle class have no confidence that the NDP-Liberal coalition will ever get them there. It is no wonder the Prime Minister's numbers have plummeted, but it is not that simple; every single member of the Liberal party and of every other party in the House but ours is complicit in the despair we see across this country.

It is time for the NDP to accept responsibility for its hand in the carbon tax catastrophe, and it is time to allow Canadians to vote in the carbon tax election so they can select a common-sense Conservative government that will axe the tax once and for all.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, for my rebuttal, I am just going to read from Trevor Herriot. He is a Regina-based writer, naturalist and grassland advocate.

He wrote, “As representatives from around the world were starting to gather in Montreal at COP15 to work toward an agreement to stave off biodiversity collapse, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe decided it was a good time to say a few things about his province’s environmental sustainability and stewardship.”

I suppose that is the record that the member is referring to.

Herriot continued: “No matter that Saskatchewan was ranked dead last in the environmental report cards handed out to the provinces by the Conference Board of Canada. According to Premier Moe and the new website he launched, 'Saskatchewan has some of the highest-quality and sustainably produced food, fuel and fertilizer, that a growing world needs.'”

That could be true, but it has nothing to do with the environment.

Herriot continued: “A quick glance at the website, filled with images of hard-working people out on the land, reveals a set of measurements carefully curated to show that 'in the areas of sustainable resources, environmental stewardship, community support and clean energy Saskatchewan is rising to the challenge.'”

However, when we looked at the numbers and applied some of the international standards, we realized that Saskatchewan is not doing anything on endangered species protection. It is not doing enough on protected and conserved areas. It is still burning coal to generate electricity. It is not doing enough to protect the wetlands and its grasslands, and it is not doing anything on climate action.

As such, I am sorry that the experts disagree. The Saskatchewan government is not an environmental steward.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The motion to adjourn the House is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m. pursuant to standing order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:26 p.m.)