Mr. Speaker, I will move on.
The wreckage of Canadian democracy is quite obvious to anybody watching. By the fact that the Conservatives are sabotaging their own opposition day, what they are saying to Canadians is that they do not take their opposition day seriously. Why should they? They are saying, “We are just going to do whatever the heck we want to do with this day”, which is supposed to be a day when they bring forward, potentially, some solutions that go beyond three-word slogans. That is the limitation the member for Carleton has; three-word slogans are the only thing he seems able to do. A three-word slogan does not resolve more complex issues.
Let us get back to the issue of the border, because it is something the Conservatives should take seriously but have not; their record proves that. We will go back to the dismal, dark years of the most corrupt government in Canadian history, the Harper regime, which was the most disrespectful of Canadian democracy and of Canadians. I have mentioned before in the House the fact that Conservatives slashed veterans' benefits, forcing veterans out onto the street. The Conservatives told seniors that they could not retire anymore, saying, “We are going to add years to your working life.”
I remember standing in the House after the incredibly catastrophic 2012 budget that the Harper regime put forward, reading and getting information from emails, from texts and from people's posts on social media about what that meant for people who had given their entire working life to this country. The Harper regime snatched pensions away in a moment, without any reflection at all. The Conservatives were terrible to Canadians, and they were thrown out of office in 2015 because we all remembered how awful the Harper regime and the Harper Conservatives were.
However, the Harper Conservatives were not awful to one group of people: the billionaires. They loved licking their boots. The billionaires got a number of things from the Harper Conservatives. First were massive liquidity supports to Canada's big banks, so the CEOs of Canada's big banks were sitting pretty. Where did they take the money from? The Harper Conservatives took it from CMHC, helping to create the housing crisis we have today. The housing crisis is thanks to the Harper Conservatives; of that there is no doubt.
The Conservatives also put in place the infamous Harper tax haven treaties. Our PBO, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is the impartial, non-partisan arbiter of what makes sense financially and what does not, indicates that the Harper tax haven treaties cost us $30 billion each and every year. The biggest shame of the Liberal government is that it did not end the practice the Conservatives put into place, because there is no doubt that it is very germane to the discussion we are having today.
The Harper regime broke everything: health care, the border and pensions. It even broke veterans' support, showing profound disrespect for the people who laid their life on the line. However, the Harper regime gave a ton of money to the rich. Canada's few dozen billionaires are sitting pretty thanks to the Harper Conservatives, because that is the only thing they did that benefited anybody. The Harper regime benefited only Canada's billionaires.
While the Harper Conservatives were cutting, slicing and dicing all the services Canadians depend on, they came up with the brilliant scheme that, to protect our border, they would slash the Canada Border Services Agency. At CBSA, 1,100 positions were eliminated, and the flow of illegal guns started at that moment thanks to the Harper Conservatives. Thanks to the Conservative Party and Conservative MPs, a flow of illegal guns came across the border. Again, the Liberals should have fixed that immediately when they came to power, but they chose not to, so that shame is something the Liberals carry in part, because they did not fix what the Harper Conservatives broke.
It gets worse, because it is not just what the Conservatives did when in power that imperils the border and the insurance of an undefended border where there is border security in place and where we can ensure that illegal guns and illegal drugs do not come across the border. What the Harper Conservatives did was put all of that in peril. However, then Conservatives decided they would do even better as official opposition. As members know, it is the most inept official opposition we have had in Canada's history. The Conservative party sabotaged its own opposition day. It is a party that increasingly is incompetent and that does not even understand the rule book.
We would think that a member of Parliament, who gets a good salary and a good pension from the people of Canada, would at least take the effort to read the rule book and at least respect the rules and procedures that govern us: the Standing Orders. However, as we have seen over the last few days, the book has not been read by a single Conservative MP, as they disregard it completely. We would think with all of those things in place, Conservative MPs would do that work, and we would think they would come to work with some understanding of what they actually should be doing as members of Parliament.
A great example I can give is that a year ago this week, Conservative MPs came up with the brilliant idea that they would systematically cut services, not as government, but as official opposition. They proposed to cut massively in services. If the votes had passed, all the services in question would have been cut. It is really important and germane, when we talk about the border, to talk about what Conservatives as the official opposition proposed to cut, on December 7, 2023, and December 8, 2023.
We are not talking about the Harper regime. Conservatives stand up and say, “Oh, that was a long time ago. We have changed. We are better now. We are not as bad as we were.” We then look at what they actually moved in the House, what each and every Conservative voted for a year ago, not ten years ago.
Let us start with the border. The Conservatives proposed to cut, to eliminate, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority. The bridge, of course, is the key transfer point between Canada and the United States. This is where much of Canada's trade goes. The Conservatives had already supported the convoy of hate that was blocking the bridge and cost thousands of Canadians their jobs. They supported the convoy of hate here in Ottawa that deprived senior citizens of groceries and people with disabilities of their medication, and that closed 600 businesses in Ottawa.
The convoy of hate, of course, Conservatives all supported. They thought it was just a great thing for people with disabilities to be denied basic fundamental rights, like the right to medication and the right to food, in the same way that they denied services to veterans in slashing all the veterans services. The convoy of hate did real damage.
Conservatives decided to do even more damage by slashing, eliminating, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority. With respect to things like fentanyl, a year ago this week, Conservatives proposed three votes that would slash RCMP funding, three votes to slash on capital expenditures, on operational expenditures and on grants. It is unbelievable. Every single Conservative MP voted to slash the RCMP. Today the Conservatives say they are concerned about fentanyl; however, a year ago, they wanted to cut all the agencies that actually provide that support.
Let us go on. There were 120 votes, including cutting, slashing and eliminating in the Department of National Defence. There is a huge slash there in terms of supplementary benefits. The Conservatives wanted to slash health care. They wanted to slash and eliminate food safety in this country. Who does that? Who, as a member of Parliament, shows up in the House of Commons and says, “I propose to eliminate food safety in Canada”? Yes, we can imagine that. I can see it.
Members around the House were aghast a year ago when that is what the Conservatives proposed. A year later, the memory is still fresh. Not a single Conservative stood up and said, “Hey, look, we were wrong to eliminate food safety. Actually, it makes sense that when we eat something in Canada, it should be safe.” They have not apologized since then. They have had a year to think about it, but no, they have not apologized. They wanted to slash health care and affordable housing.
Yes, my colleague, the member for Winnipeg Centre, remembers. She says it is crazy. It is absolutely crazy.
Conservatives, who have never read the rule book and have never understood what it is like to be an MP, obviously have no understanding of the dramatic cuts they are proposing, not as government. Thank God they are not government, and thank God we are going to do everything on the NDP side to make sure they never form government.
As the official opposition, the Conservatives could not wait to cut, slash and eliminate services. They were just drooling, thinking of all the services that they could eliminate, like food safety and air safety. We can just imagine how Conservatives were chomping at the bit, saying, “Let's give more money to billionaires and let's cut, slash and eliminate everything that benefits everybody else.”
The Conservatives wanted to slash and eliminate the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs. Indigenous communities are still struggling to get clean water and to get adequate housing. Well, the Conservatives had a solution: just completely eliminate all funding for indigenous communities.
Curiously, and the Speaker will remember this, the Conservatives said that they were concerned about crime. What they wanted to do was eliminate all funding to correctional services. What they basically wanted to do was open the doors of Canada's prisons because, of course, if the funding is eliminated, the prisons cannot operate. Every single Conservative MP, just a year ago, on December 7, 2023, and December 8, 2023, proposed to eliminate correctional services, courts administration services, capital expenditures and operating expenditures.
Basically, I guess the prisons would be self-managed, or they would just open the doors. The Conservatives never really explained how they were going to manage, but if the vote had passed, presented by the member for Carleton, the nation's prisons no longer would have had any correctional officers. It is unbelievable to me and, I think, to every member of the House that Conservatives would do that.
The Conservatives also wanted to eliminate the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. They wanted to cut the Communications Security Establishment. They wanted, and members will remember the vote on it, to cut the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. I guess the Conservatives thought that air transport security would just kind of go on its own as sort of a self-managed system where I guess people would declare if they have any weapons or bombs before they get on the plane. I do not know what Conservatives were thinking about that, but they proposed it. They had the seriousness of intent to propose it, and they expected us all to vote to cut.
I think the real kicker, and I could go through the 120 votes, is that the Conservatives basically wanted to slash every single service except support for billionaires. It is not on the list. Conservatives did not want to cut support handouts for billionaires. They did not want to cut the infamous Harper tax haven treaties and the $30 billion we lose every year thanks to Conservatives, who never apologized for this.
Vote number three is relevant to how the Conservatives acted when they were in power. It was the worst government in Canadian history, the most corrupt government in history. There was scandal after scandal. Mr. Speaker, you will recall, because it was a Harper Conservative majority, that they shut down every single committee. We were not allowed to get information. Canadians were not given information about the ETS scandal, the G8 scandal and the Phoenix pay scandal, nor about the missing anti-terrorism funding. There were billions of dollars that the Harper Conservatives basically hid in their scandal-ridden, corrupt government.
The Conservatives did all that when they were in power. They slashed the CBSA. Then a year ago, on December 7, 2023, was vote three: slashing the Canada Border Services Agency, voila. It is not just that they slashed the CBSA and wrecked the border; it is also that they tried to do it again a year ago.
The Conservatives will not stand up and say that they apologize for doing that, that it was dumb and a really stupid thing to not read the rule book, that they promise to at least do their homework before they show up in the House and that they promise not to slash the CBSA again. They did it when they were in power. A year ago, they wanted to do it again; a year later, they say they are concerned about the border. They have zero credibility in this. They will never have an ounce of credibility, because they wanted to slash the CBSA again a year ago.
I want to mention one more thing. The opioid crisis is serious. It is true that thousands of Canadians have died. However, the highest rates in this country, tragically, are in Alberta and Saskatchewan. These are two conservative-governed provinces in which the governments have simply not put into place any sort of adequate protections to save lives. In British Columbia, at least, the death rate has plateaued. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, it is skyrocketing. If Conservatives are sincere, they should apologize for how they have let the people in Alberta and Saskatchewan down, with a death rate that continues to skyrocket.
We remember those victims and those families today.
