Debates of Nov. 29th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

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

This is debate and the hon. member knows it.

The hon. member for Portage—Lisgar.

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

Madam Speaker, I think I struck a nerve. They seem a little upset by my talking about when their leader's pension comes to fruition and the legislation that is literally trying to move back the election date to enable a whole bunch of them who were elected in 2019 and are probably not coming back to this place after the carbon tax election. They are trying to get their pensions. Once again, last night, the NDP leader put his pension above Canadians and our country. It is another failure, but it is not surprising.

I will continue on to what we could be debating on Monday, if the government, the Liberals, just handed over the documents. We could go to Bill C-73, the nature accountability act, which our environment committee is attempting to do a prestudy on to circumvent the fact they will not hand over the documents, to try to help pass legislation in the future.

Obviously I, as a proud member of the environment committee, have looked at the legislation and I will summarize it like this. It is a plan to make a plan, which is consistent with the current government. It is all about trying to build bureaucracy, help out friends of the Liberals and not actually accomplish anything. It is lazy environmentalism that is best summarized as all of the Liberal government's environmental policy. I asked the minister who was before us on this bill this week, the radical environment minister, about additional spending and/or potential new hiring of bureaucracy that would be needed to enact this legislation should we pass it. He refused to say. He just would not admit there might be.

I asked if he could look for internal savings, given that there has been a 53% increase in the number of senior executives within that department, or maybe we could look internally and try to find some efficiencies, we will call it, within that department. Do we just need to go back to the piggy bank of Canadians and borrow more, increase our debt and increase inflation, just to pay for their reckless, bureaucratically bloated ideas?

I have been here a little over a year now, and I think I have come to understand the Liberals' guiding principles in this place. I would say principle number one is this: When something does not work, just throw money at it. That must be the solution. It looks like we are doing something if we just throw more money at it.

Principle number two is this: When people do not work, hire more of them. Clearly that has been the track record.

Principle number three is this: When something actually is working well, bring in some Liberal insiders and break it. That is how we have ended up doubling the number of bureaucrats over the last nine years. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer is questioning whether Canadians are seeing an increase in service delivery after all of that new spending.

I have talked to constituents. Anybody who deals with this behemoth of a federal government rightfully has complaints about service standards. Passports are not being returned to people faster. Our PAL, our firearm licensing application, for which many people are currently undertaking the courses to become trained and tested responsible firearms owners, is slowing down. It is not getting any faster. Nobody has said to me, “Oh, I called the CRA the other day and it answered like that. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed that.” It is the exact opposite.

Nothing is working better under the federal government right now, despite more debt-fuelled spending to once again expand that bloated bureaucracy without outcomes. That is what we should measure, not how much money we throw at the problem. Are we improving the outcomes and delivery of what the federal government should be focused on for Canadians?

Of course, we have the recent NDP-Liberal tax trick. It is another example of the failed philosophy. The reality is that we in this country, industry in this country, unfortunately, has faced regulatory strangulation, for lack of a better term. Perhaps it is the right term.

We will use one example of many terrible pieces of legislation that have continuously focused on driving out investment, driving away opportunities and just trying to add problematic elements for those entrepreneurs and investors, whether they be individuals or Canadian public pension plans, who want to invest in Canada, who want to build in Canada. Bill C-69, the no-more-pipelines bill, or, maybe more appropriately named, the never-build-anything-ever-again-in-this-country bill, is a prime example of how we have made it so unattractive to invest in and do business in this country.

This is evident by the fact of the massive outflow of foreign direct investment that has previously been in Canada but is now going to the United States. I would be surprised if any member of the House has not talked to a business owner in their community who has said that if the Conservatives do not win, they are leaving. It is a real problem, and the data shows it is happening already, because of the strangulation through regulation and legislation under the Liberal government. The Liberals treat the economy as if it were some sort of machine where we just pull some levers and press some buttons and everything will work out just fine.

The Liberals are not even trying to hide their plans. They regularly say that we need to build the future economy and to transition our economy. What they mean when they say that is that they want a government-controlled, centrally planned and manipulated economy, entrepreneurs be damned. The Liberals claim to know what Canadians need and want, and they are going to try their best to make sure the economy matches their ideology. That is not the way the economy works.

Instead of trying to drive economic growth through private sector investment, the Liberals choose to spend, which is why there has been a doubling of our national debt and drastic increases in the price of life. Whether it be through direct taxation on individuals or on companies, or, of course, through the hated carbon tax, it is not surprising that when a party focuses on changing the economy to something it believes it should be, taxing everybody to death, there is a doubling of the price of all homes in this country, a doubling of rent and record-breaking numbers of people lining up at food banks in what should be a prosperous, leading nation.

The Liberals have doubled down as of late. They are trying to bribe Canadians with their own money with the government's $250-check proposal and a temporary tax cut, a pause. It has been called a “cut” a lot in the chamber over the last number of days, but to me a tax “cut” means actually cutting it, not hitting the pause button to give a break for two months on a couple of items deemed essential. The Liberals decided what is going to be listed for the temporary pause.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

That is right; it is a tax trick. Madam Speaker, even my opposition colleagues know that it is simply a temporary tax trick.

I suppose maybe the Liberals think that their hand is in people's pockets already, so they might as well just grab a little extra cash. What they have failed to realize, and it has been brought up by members of the opposition, is the havoc that it is going to wreak on small business owners. Again, I have received calls, and I assume all members from wherever they may be have as well, asking, “Do you know how a point-of-sale system works? Do you know how hard it is to get an overnight December 13 group of staff to come in and make all these changes? What if we collectively screw something up a little bit? Is CRA going to come and audit me right away?”

Small-business owners like the idea of actual tax reductions, permanent ones; those would help drive prosperity, but the tax trick is simply not appealing and is driving a whole bunch of extra work. We have all heard the same thing: People are going to return things now and then rebuy them at the busiest time of the year. These are legitimate grievances from our small-business community, which is the backbone of our economy.

I do not want say that business owners were ignored, because of course under the Liberal government they were probably just never listened to. Consulting is not something the Liberal government takes a lot of pride in. It announces something and everybody is upset at it, and then it decides to forge ahead. It does not matter if it is a terrible idea.

I think some of these examples illustrate what we have seen with the matter at hand, the Liberal green slush fund scandal. In my previous interventions in this place, I have detailed the history of the scandal, but I will provide a little bit of context for Canadians who are perhaps listening in for the first time and wondering why we are still debating the privilege motion and why the government will not just hand over the documents. Those are reasonable questions for Canadians to ask—

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

Do not make that kind of noise. The tapping on the desk can be bothersome for the interpreters.

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

Madam Speaker, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada organization was a body that started back in 2001 to fund companies creating technologies that promoted sustainable development. It is not a bad idea to invest in technology, not taxes. Where have I heard that before? I think it has been coming from this side of the House because it is a good idea.

However, the Liberals applied one of the principles that I outlined earlier: When something works well, bring in some Liberal insiders and break it. That is exactly what the Liberals did. They hired Annette Verschuren in 2019 to chair the board of directors that oversaw payments from the fund.

She is an individual from an organization that had received SDTC funding in the past, so a couple of red flags went up across the bureaucracy, and I applaud it for that. However, despite being warned, the Liberal government went ahead and appointed her anyway. Under her watch, an environment rotten with conflicts of interest thrived. The Liberal-friendly board awarded funding to organizations that they individually had a financial interest in. The gravy train, unfortunately, could not go on forever for those board members—

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

The hon. member will have six minutes to conclude his remarks when we next return to the subject.

Having reached the expiry of the time provided for today's debate, the House will resume consideration of the privilege motion at 11 a.m. on Monday, December 2.

Pursuant to Standing Order 94, I wish to inform hon. members that Private Members' Business will be suspended on that day.

It being 2:30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until next Monday at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 2:30 p.m.)