Madam Speaker, the member asks a very interesting question. I wish he had listened to what I was saying, because he would understand the relevance.
The relevance was the misinformation and the disinformation provided by the Liberal government, by the Prime Minister, to Canadians about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. There have been vaccine injury support program claims made by Canadians who have had negative experiences, and I hear from many of them in my constituency office and in my Hill office. Those claims are not being approved in a judicious manner, and they are not being paid out as they should be. That is the whole point.
SDTC officials had no problem getting $400 million out the door, but the over $100 million that has been earmarked for vaccine injuries seems to be lagging significantly. That is my point: The money is not getting out the door. It seemed to get out the door somehow for Liberal insiders but not for people who did what the government asked them to do and suffered negative consequences for it. Those people are not getting reimbursed, and they should be.
In fact, what people are being offered instead of cash is MAID, and that is so incredibly sad. I heard stories from vaccine-injured people who, because of being so frustrated with their injuries and the failure to be recognized for the hardships they have gone through, have been offered MAID. Some have actually participated in that program. That is incredibly sad.
The message I bring to the government from my constituents is to just butt out, provide the basic services government is supposed to provide and then back off and let people live their lives. My constituents want the government to axe the tax, stop the reckless deficit spending, stop the alarmist anti-energy crusade and embrace responsible resource development.
Under the Prime Minister, Canada is going through the worst decline in our living standards in 40 years, the worst drop in income per person in the G7 and the worst economic growth in the OECD. However, the Prime Minister and his radical, woke environment minister just keep making things worse by attacking Canadian energy and energy workers. Their latest scheme is what they claim is an emissions cap. It is not really an emissions cap. This is not a cap on emissions; it is a cap on responsible Canadian oil production. It is a cap on jobs, on paycheques and on prosperity for Canada. Let us label it for what it is rather than as a cap on emissions: The Liberal government wants to cap Canadians.
The government's own analysis admits that the cap is going to cost Canada billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. We would think its members learned their lesson from previous failures in attacking the energy sector; they have missed every single climate target with their carbon tax, and all they have done is make people exponentially poorer.
The Prime Minister and his radical environment minister refuse to accept that Canada's energy sector is the country's single-largest private sector investor in clean technology. Canadian oil and gas is the best in the world. The sector has a clear record of reducing emissions and adhering to the highest standards of environmental protection, not to mention that, in 2022, the oil and gas industry provided $45 billion in revenue to Canadian governments, funding schools, hospitals, roads and other crucial public infrastructure.
Instead of celebrating this and working with Canada's energy workers to tackle environmental issues, Liberals want to crush the energy sector, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk at the worst time possible. This ideological crusade against Canadian energy must end.
We could be working to fix the budget. We could be working on common-sense energy policies to get Canada's economy booming again. However, we are stuck here instead, talking about another Liberal scandal.
A big one is immigration, which is a significant concern in my riding. My office does a lot of work on immigration files. We help hundreds, if not thousands, of people a year, both Canadians and those seeking to become Canadians. However, our immigration system is broken. It is out of control. The government finally admitted that a couple of weeks ago; I believe it did so again just recently. Its radical, reckless and uncontrolled immigration policies are partly to blame for joblessness, the housing crisis and the health care crisis Canadians are facing.
The Liberals increased population growth by over 200% in the last several years. They did it without ensuring adequate housing, health care or available jobs for newcomers. The government also failed spectacularly to ensure that those flooding into the country were given proper background checks. To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister called Canadians racists if they questioned his reckless policy.
I can say on behalf of the incredibly diverse group of people, including newcomers, that my office has helped and those who have lived here for years that it is not racist to ask why the government is bringing upwards of one million new people each year when there are not even enough homes for Canadians, including many new Canadians who are already here. It is not racist to question the wisdom of bringing in more people who will cause additional strain on an already untenable health care system and social safety net when Canadians are unable to access those programs and forced to wait unacceptably long periods to receive services that they have paid for with their tax dollars. The government's failures on immigration are almost too many to chronicle.
With that, there have been discussions among the parties and if you seek it, I am confident you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 7:32 p.m.