Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, is wondering where those funds went.
Canadians have lost faith in the NDP-Liberal coalition, which seems to be alive and well. Nearly 20% of the Prime Minister's caucus, 24 members, signed a letter asking for a leadership review. What happened yesterday? One of his ministers resigned. Some people think he may be the other Randy. I do not know, but I am trying to be very careful because I know this issue is very close to the Speaker's heart and he is making sure that we do not step over any boundaries. Things are crumbling on that side of the House. Canadians can see it. The business of the country is falling apart.
On June 10, a motion was adopted calling for documents related to the SDTC fund to be produced to the law clerk. What happened over the summer? Nothing. Then the documents were either withheld or redacted at the order of the big boss, the Prime Minister.
The common-sense Conservative House leader raised this question of privilege because of a failure to comply with that House order. On September 26, the Speaker ruled that the House's privilege had been breached, give or a take a day or two. What is a day or two? Look at the time we are chewing up asking that this question of privilege be honoured and that the documents be delivered to the law clerk.
It is time to get on with business. The Liberals should just produce the documents. Let us get on with things. What are we going to find out about that $400 million?
I have communities in Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame that are fraught with crime. People are fearful. As members heard me say today in a question, I asked the Prime Minister why he will not call an election and let the people vote on his crime record. I attended a town hall this past Friday in a town of 800 people, Friday afternoon. Nearly 300 people showed up at that town hall on crime. RCMP members were there too, talking about how their hands are tied.
The criminal justice system is not being supported for rural Canadians. They do not even see the point in laying charges in a lot of cases, because minimum sentences will be thrown out of court, and cases take so long to make their way through the criminal justice system in Newfoundland and Labrador. In fact, not long ago, a murder case that was pretty much cut-and-dried got thrown right out of court because it had waited so long without having one day in court. This is happening all over the country.
When the police have to have everything perfect, and if the RCMP has to wait three or four years to get the ducks in a row to do a major cocaine bust or crack bust, to shut down a crack house, how many more addicts are being created week after week, month after month and year after year? The NDP-Liberals' soft-on-crime criminal justice system favours the criminal. However, it disadvantages those who are impacted by crime and those families whose loved ones are addicts or are becoming addicts where the crime is addiction related.
People who worked hard all their lives, senior citizens, attended a town hall, and not just one, not just two, not just three but a multitude of them stood up and told the RCMP that they were sleeping with a gun next to their bed. That is an infraction of the Criminal Code, but what can the RCMP do? It does not have any resources, and the people feel like they are left to fend for themselves. It is becoming like the Wild West; it is crazy. It is deplorable and it should not be happening in Canada, specifically in rural Canada.
During the pandemic, people moved from metro regions of Canada back to their rural communities, to where they grew up and where they felt safe, but where now, just a short two or three years later, they are so afraid that they are telling us they are sleeping with a gun next to their bed. I heard it with my very own ears. The RCMP heard it. It is not hearsay. It is not something about which the media is going to say, “Oh, [the member for Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame] is a big bluff. He is hyping it all up. He is making this stuff up and being dramatic.” This is very real.
I spoke to a member of the clergy a few days before I went to the town hall meeting. I said to him, “You're a man of faith and you're in the community”, and I asked him, “What are you hearing?” I told him what I am hearing. He said, “MP, what's going to happen is that vigilantism is going to take over and somebody is going to get shot.” This is absolutely deplorable.
The police do not have the resources. The depot was shut down for two years while every university, every community college and every high school in Canada was full on. The education system found a way to operate. Why did the RCMP depot have to be shut down for two years while the members that the RCMP has are moving into retirement age?
The RCMP knew what the shortfall would be with no recruits graduating from the college for two full years. Whose directive was it? I do not think it was a directive from the RCMP to shut down the depot. I think the directive came from the soft NDP-Liberal leadership. It is absolutely terrible, and I am sure my colleague from Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan understands that the RCMP college could have kept graduating members.
Right now rural crime is on the rise and addiction-related crime is going through the roof. The latter is a tricky kind of crime for the police to address because it is addiction-driven. There is absolutely, in most cases, no motive, no logic and no nothing. It is just driven by the need for the next fix, and the poor addicts cannot even think through the process of right and wrong.
Where else could some of the $400 million have been spent? I think about the oyster industry in Prince Edward Island. I visited there this past summer. An industry that means over $100 million to the economy of Prince Edward Island is completely in peril. The people of Prince Edward Island were promised a million dollars to conduct research to try to solve the MSX parasite problem that is going to completely wipe out the oyster industry in Prince Edward Island.
It would probably be safe to say that members would like to enjoy a nice Malpeque oyster once in a while. They are not going to be enjoying any in two years' or three years' time, because the parasite kills any oyster that is infested with it within two years, and it is going to completely wipe out the entire oyster industry in Prince Edward Island. We are not hearing anything from the members who represent Prince Edward Island.
I am glad as an Islander to stand here and speak on behalf of the oyster industry in Prince Edward Island, and just a little ways away on another island, Îles de la Madeleine, the minister announced not long ago lots of money from the blue slush fund for small-craft harbours. The Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, one member of the House out of 338, delivered 20% of all small-craft harbour projects to her own riding, and P.E.I. gets $500,000 a year. In August, a summit was promised to bring in industry experts to discuss the oyster MSX problem. There has been no talk of it whatsoever.
There are so many things happening in this country that affect rural economies and rural security, and they are being neglected. It is a burden we carry, representing the people who sent us here to speak up on issues that matter to them.
Another very, very big matter in my province of Newfoundland and Labrador is the failure of DFO science in carrying out adequate and accurate stock assessments on our northern cod. Right now, rumours are flying around that the vessel that was conducting the ground trawl survey has been having all kinds of mechanical issues, and that once again, for the fourth year in a row, we are in jeopardy of not having a complete, accurate northern cod survey.
For the people who are involved in the fishing industry back home, it is complete neglect. When there are questions about the cod biomass, the finger always gets pointed at the survey. If the survey is incomplete, that is the best that we have. Follow the precautionary principle, and the maximum harvest potential can never be realized. Those are dollars that do not flow into our coastal communities and our coastal economies. They are new dollars that never get a chance to enter our economy, and that is not good enough.
In the spring of 2022 I brought forward a bill to address the ecological disaster and the imbalance that exist in our ocean ecosystems due to the overpopulation of pinnipeds. Pinnipeds include seals, sea lions and walruses. Just the available quota this year, if it were taken, would reduce the consumption of fish by over a million tonnes. All of the nutrition, the value of clothing and everything that goes with it, is sitting there. It is a waste, and it is destroying our marine ecosystem and reducing the GDP in our blue economy. Maybe some of the $400 million could have gone into redeveloping our markets for seal products, but it is just not happening. All we hear is promises.
There are lots of groups. They do a little study, and it is $500,000 for one, $100,000 for another, and $750,000 for another, but there are no results. We need results. The taxpayers' dollars could be invested in something that is going to give results. We do not know what the money is being invested in. We cannot get the documents.
We need the documents, and we need to get on with the business of the House. We need to start tackling crime. We need to fix the budget, and I guess we will soon find out what that looks like. We will have something to chew into.
Then we look at the issue we are continually bringing up here in the House. The number one thing I hear about, next to crime, is “When are we having a carbon tax election?” It is time to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Everything I have spoken about here so far included three of those four pillars, so I cannot lose the opportunity to talk about the one that is taking the most money out of the wallets of Canadians: the carbon tax. The farmers who grow the food are taxed, the truckers who truck the food are taxed, and the factories that produce the food are taxed.
I am sure the member from Winnipeg has eaten the odd can of Campbell's soup in his day. I wonder what he thinks it was cooked with. Was it a grass fire? I do not think so. A good old bit of diesel fuel is now getting the big factory burners going, cooking up the soup for the member. The trucker trucks it into a Loblaws somewhere. One good thing about a can of Campbell's soup is that it can be stored on the shelf. It does not need to be put it in the big freezers and refrigerator units that the government supplied. It is very efficient sitting on the shelf.
When the Liberal government wants to dish out money to its friends, like Loblaws, that is no problem, but when the oyster fishermen and the oyster aquaculture industry are in peril in P.E.I., they are thrown to the wolves like the rest of Canadians who are depending on better from the government.
