Debates of Dec. 11th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Yes, Dingwall said that he was entitled to his entitlements.

Madam Speaker, in terms of the funds that are going out, I do not know if this is actually a strategy the NDP-Liberals have, but maybe it is that, if they have this many scandals, the Canadian population will just become accustomed to it. Maybe if there are so many wrongdoings within the government, the Canadian population will say, “It is just another Liberal-NDP scandal. What else would we expect? It is kind of what they do.”

As the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle has stated eloquently, Liberals are going to liberal. That is what we are seeing here. It is actually embedded into their ideology that taxpayers' dollars are their own. I say this in many speeches, and it bears repeating: The NDP-Liberals should realize government has never earned a dollar. Government only takes money through taxation from individuals or businesses that make that money. That is how government gets its funds.

I think that we need to look at the ideology within the Liberal Party. They will give money to their friends. We had the clam scam. I have a list of all the scandals here, which I would like to run through and talk about. The Canadian population, I think, has become accustomed to Liberal scandals. I think they expect a new scandal every week, and the Liberals are obliging them because we have a new scandal every week. There is another Randy. There are so many.

I will start from the top. We put this list together in my office. Obviously, we have the Prime Minister's first breach of ethics, the Aga Khan vacation scandal, when he took a vacation that cost tens of thousands of dollars to a private island. I do not have many friends who own private islands. I do not know if any other members do, but that is probably not even an option for many in the House of Commons.

We have the prison needle exchange program. Then there was pressuring the justice minister to get Liberal donor SNC-Lavalin off the hook and firing the minister for not helping to cover it up. That was the Jody Wilson-Raybould saga, which ended with the Prime Minister unceremoniously dumping the first indigenous female justice minister, but that is just the first of many competent, strong women that the Prime Minister has thrown under the bus. I will get to more of them.

We have the “people experience things differently” response to groping allegations, and the WE Charity scandal. The member for Kingston and the Islands asked how Conservatives are going to fix the budget. I would like to add to the answer from my colleague. We fix the budget by cutting wasteful spending. There were hundreds of millions of dollars given to WE Charity over the years. There is an easy cut.

In addition, the public service has grown exponentially, yet more than double the amount of money is being paid to outside consultants. The member asked how we grow government and increase the money given to third party consulting contracts. There was hundreds of millions given to McKinsey. There is another easy cut to save taxpayers money, so we are probably at about $200 million right there. The Canada Infrastructure Bank has not finished a project in this country. I think that is a couple of billion we could bring home; we could actually get projects built in our country with those dollars. There is more money that could be saved. When we talk about common-sense approaches to fixing the budget, here are some concrete examples right there.

We had the WE Charity. We had the member for Papineau elbowing the female NDP member in the House of Commons. That was another scandal that rocked this nation, with the Prime Minister being physical with another MP. He prorogued Parliament to escape the WE scandal. Once again, I am building on the WE scandal. The government sent personal protective equipment to China during the pandemic. I remember that there was a stock house filled with protective equipment in Regina, and they actually just threw it out during the pandemic.

The government gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in ventilator contracts to Liberal Party insider Frank Baylis, whose company did not even produce ventilators. That is foreshadowing for what happened with SDTC, giving money to Liberal insiders.

There were fake charges against Mark Norman. In 2021, the member for Calgary Skyview took people's mail out of their mailboxes, so that was another scandal. The illegal invocation of the Emergencies Act is one of my personal favourites. The last time the Emergencies Act was invoked, Tommy Douglas said that invoking the War Measures Act was like cracking a peanut with a sledgehammer. That was a long time ago, when the NDP stood for something; now it stands for nothing but its leader's pension and keeping the current scandal-plagued Prime Minister in power.

PHAC found a committee in contempt of Parliament with the Winnipeg lab documents. I remember that. The Liberals then took their own Speaker to court. There was the trampling of Canadians with horses, as well as the seizure of Canadians' bank accounts. That was something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. There was rampant abuse of staff in the Liberal Prime Minister-appointed Governor General's office. The Governor General wasted $100,000 to throw private jet parties. There were connections with illegal casino magnates and vaccine delays.

The Liberal Prime Minister dressed up in racist costumes on official trips to India. The Liberal Prime Minister dressed up in racist blackface. There were mass airport delays and cancellations. The government decriminalized hard drugs. The member for Cariboo—Prince George gave a wonderful speech on how, in his province, because of the decriminalization of hard drugs, overdoses have become the number one cause of death for 18- to 27-year-olds. That is a direct result of the NDP government in B.C. and the Liberals agreeing to decriminalize hard drugs.

The sending of diplomats to a party at the Russian embassy during the invasion of Ukraine was another scandal. The Liberal Prime Minister pollutes more in one year with his private jet than the average Canadian does in half a lifetime. That is another thing. We see the Liberals prop themselves up as stewards of the environment, but they pollute more through private jet use than Canadians do in half a lifetime. That is another example, as we talked about earlier, of “do as we say, not as we do”.

This list gets longer every time I give this speech. The minister gave a $17,000 contract to a Liberal-aligned media firm. The Liberal Prime Minister let Thomson Reuters take his chief of staff to the White House press correspondents' dinner. The former DND minister misrepresented his service in the military. The government tried to get unwarranted border searches of electronics. There was the restriction of online free speech. We all remember the anti-free speech bill the Liberals tried to get through before the last election, and we were able to slow that down.

The Liberal Prime Minister spent $11 million to renovate his cottage. Can anyone imagine an $11-million renovation? I think that is something Canadians would see as a waste of taxpayers' dollars. There was the raising of the carbon tax during an energy crisis.

Even with electoral reform, I believe 2015 was going to be the last first-past-the-post election. That was another promise the Prime Minister made, hand over heart, that he was going to change the electoral system.

Another memory is of the Prime Minister doing his Care Bear stare, hand over his heart, when he went on national TV, looked Canadians in the eye during COVID and told them that their government would take on debt so that they would not have to. Obviously, this came from a man who never thinks about monetary policy, or fiscal policy either. Can members imagine a prime minister saying that the government would take on debt so that Canadians do not have to? Who does he think pays the debt back? Does he think he can just print money? Obviously, he does think he can just print money, which he has done over the last year, which caused the inflation crisis for Canadians.

When we look at the prices in the grocery stores, more and more Canadians are going to the grocery store just to see that they cannot buy the essentials to feed their family. That is a direct cause of the Prime Minister's lack of knowledge when it comes to fiscal and monetary policies, because he does not think about it. We see grocery prices continue to go up because of the policies of the Liberals.

Then inflation happens and what do we see? An increase in mortgage rates across this country and people finding it harder to pay their mortgage. When it comes down to it, people cannot afford the groceries they need for their kids or a roof over their head because of the doubling of mortgage rates and the doubling of rents because of the reckless fiscal policy of the Prime Minister. Then they look at this debate and wonder how on earth a government, headed by the NDP-Liberals, could spend $400 million of our money and give it to their friends and party insiders. These are the questions we get in the riding. Do they think they are above the law? They give money to their friends and family and people are left holding the bag. Hopefully, my friend from Kingston and the Islands can get on his feet and explain how, if a government goes into debt, the Canadian taxpayer does not pay that money back through taxation and increased taxes.

I think that is one of the reasons the Liberals have such an infatuation with the carbon tax, because they are trying to get money any way they can from Canadians. If they use this tax policy, which is not an environmental policy, they get more money into the coffers. On top of that, which is not in the book but should be a scandal, the NDP-Liberals charge GST on the carbon tax that they are charging Canadians. It is a tax on a tax. I get many questions at my office about how it is even legal that they can tax a tax.

We are going on to a few more scandals.

There were more than 72 secret orders in council the Liberals have passed over the last nine years.

The Liberals eliminated the mandatory minimums for gun offences while going after law-abiding firearm owners, like Uncle Joe's rifle we talked about in question period earlier this day. The actual numbers do not lie. Over the last nine long years of the government, gun crime has increased by 116%. The government members think that, by going after our sports shooters and law-abiding firearm owners, gun crime is going to go down. I do not understand why they cannot wrap their minds around the fact that it is not the law-abiding firearms owners who are causing gun crime to go up; it is the illegal guns coming across our border. It is the criminals who are actually breaking the law. What we need to do is have a common-sense policy with more border stops and more checks at the borders. We need to put criminals in jail where they belong, not out on bail.

I will talk about that for one more minute, the fact that the Liberals' bail, not jail policy has hurt communities across this country. One is my community in Grand Coulee, where someone was charged with child pornography and was let out with conditions, back into our community, the day he went to court. That is what the Liberals have done to this country.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I know the Conservatives like to reference the Prime Minister's comment on monetary policy from a few years ago.

I am curious. Could the member give us his perspective on the monetary policy of Canada?

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, I was expecting a bit more from the member for Kingston and the Islands than that. Obviously, he is a little bit slower today for some reason. He does not understand that we cannot spend money we do not have. It is a very basic principle. The fact that the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberals have produced more debt and made this country more indebted than all other prime ministers combined shows a lack of fiscal understanding from everyone on those benches.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I just wanted to follow up on that question because it was not only that the Prime Minister did not want to think about monetary policy, but even more recently, just within the past few weeks, he actually said he wanted to leave the economy to the bankers. I wanted to ask my colleague about that.

Is that not a total abdication of responsibility by a prime minister to say he does not want anything to do with the economy?

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, this is not the only responsibility the Prime Minister has abdicated. He has abdicated keeping our streets safe. Crime has gone up all over this country. It was a total abdication of policy when it came to his legalizing of harmful drugs. The fact that he does not think about fiscal policy and he says to leave it to the bankers is quite scary. We see by his printing of billions of dollars and causing of the inflationary crisis that he does not have the skills to deal with the job at hand.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague on one point, which is that the Liberals are trying to cover up all the scandals.

The House did issue an order for the government to table these documents, but the government refused to do so. That is what has been paralyzing the House since September. This reminds me of another scandal that the government tried to dodge, the WE Charity scandal. I remember that shortly after I was first elected, the House was prorogued in an attempt to sweep the issue under the rug.

Still, there are other scandals that no one is talking about. They have to do with workers. One example is the Phoenix pay system, which the Conservatives brought in and this government promised to fix, but never did. Another example is the employment insurance system that the Conservative government of the day gutted, leaving unemployed workers struggling to make ends meet.

Would your party be prepared to restore a reliable Phoenix pay system for workers, as well as an EI system that will reconcile—

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

The hon. member knows that I do not belong to any political party when I occupy this chair.

The hon. member for Regina—Lewvan.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, there are many more scandals. I think I only got to number 40 on my list of 75. I was not here, but I believe the advice from the then Conservative government was for the Liberals not to continue with the Phoenix pay system and to do something different. This is what I have been told. There does needs to be a system in place to make sure the workers are paid properly.

I think we go back to the point I made earlier, which is that the Liberals are trying to make it just a natural day when another scandal breaks out. They want to have so many scandals that Canadians just shrug it off and say, “Liberals are going to liberal.” Liberals and scandals are synonymous with each other. That is not a flaw of the system. This is what they bring when they come to government. They come to government and scandals follow them everywhere they go. It is similar to the NDP members in Saskatchewan. Scandals followed them everywhere they went as well.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I always find it rather fascinating to hear the Conservatives talk about the elite, as though the Conservative Party were not the elite of major financiers, wealthy CEOs and big business across Canada. The proof that the Conservatives are working hand in hand with the financial elite and big business is that they gave tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks to big business when they were in office.

In so doing, they were forced to cut services to the public, which hurt women, veterans, workers, the sick and our health care system. Even with their cuts, the Conservatives did not manage to balance the budget. It was not until the end of their term in 2015, when they had a fire sale and sold General Motors shares, that they managed to balance the budget.

I do not know what kind of magical thinking the Conservatives' are engaging in when it comes to the public purse, but the government cannot just hand out gifts to big business without also having to cut services to the public.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, NDP members are complicit in propping up the most scandal-plagued government in the history of Canada. The NDP members could not even stand behind their own leader's words when he said that the Liberals are full of corporate greed and that he wanted to tear up the coalition agreement.

I will take no lessons from an NDP rump roast of a party that cannot stand up and support its own leader's words and that props up the most corrupt government in the history of Canada.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is clear from my previous question and the member's answer that perhaps my friend does not quite understand the difference between fiscal policy and monetary policy. Both fiscal policies and monetary policies are meant to affect an economy and to curb, increase or decrease economic output.

Monetary policy is what the Bank of Canada does. It is what the central bank in the United States does. Actually, rightly so, no government should really put itself in the business of affecting monetary policy. If the member does not believe me on that, he should ask the member for Abbotsford, who made it very clear a few years ago. Fiscal policy is when the government spends or holds back on spending money in order to affect economic output.

Given this, can the member now provide me with his thoughts on the monetary policy of Canada?

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague very much for the lesson in fiscal policy and monetary policy. I agree that his cabinet needs to have a lot more lessons. Maybe if he got to the cabinet table he could explain to the finance minister that difference, because her fiscal policy and her fiscal guardrails have done nothing but run this country's economy over the edge and create a dumpster fire of debt.

It is amazing that Liberals are so confident, but the number one expense on our budget sheet right now is debt payment. That is horrendous. The fact that the Prime Minister, aided by his NDP colleagues, has driven up debt in this country and has accumulated more debt than all other prime ministers combined over the history of our country should show that the Liberals are not fit to make monetary or fiscal decisions.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Regina—Lewvan said that he did not quite get to all the scandals he had on his list because there were just so many of them, so I just want to give him the opportunity. I am just wondering whether he wants to take the last minute or two remaining to talk a bit more about some of the scandals the government has been engaged in over time.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, what I did not get to was some of the NDP scandals in Saskatchewan and how poorly the NDP governed our province for 16 long years. People used to call it “Roy's revenge.” Roy Romanow was the NDP premier of Saskatchewan who closed 152 hospitals in our province, devastating health care. Roy Romanow closed 175 schools; that was one school for every week he was premier in our province. This devastated rural Saskatchewan. When the New Democrats were in power, they were so terrible that they have not won a seat in rural Saskatchewan since Roy's revenge.

When we talk about scandals, there is also a little thing called Spudco. The NDP in Saskatchewan lost $56 million, and this was in 1990, trying to plant potatoes. Saskatchewan has pretty good agricultural land. The government lost $56 million on Spudco.

The kicker is something Saskatchewan called mega bingo. Only a bunch of socialists would lose money on bingo in Saskatchewan. The program lost $20 million because the province could not get bingo right. That is a failure.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, with the holiday season upon us, I just want to take a moment to wish my constituents in Foothills a very merry Christmas. Certainly, all of us in the House understand that our communities are bustling with Christmas shopping, Christmas carols, holiday lights and the celebration of friends and family.

At this time of year, I understand the hard work that our volunteers and our community organizers are doing with random acts of kindness that are knitting our communities together. I just want to take a moment to thank each and every one of them for all the work they are doing during this holiday season, making the communities what we know they are. They are showing us what Christmas is all about.

As proud as I am of my constituency of Foothills, unfortunately, the members on the other side of the House are going to be on Santa's naughty list, with the number of Liberal scandals, schemes, breaches of ethics and conflicts of interest that they have had over their past nine years in government.

It seems as though, while many Canadian parents are struggling to put food on the table or put gifts under the Christmas tree for their kids, the Liberal members, insiders and bagmen are the ones who are making off with the Christmas spirit this holiday season. Hard-working Canadians are seeing their paycheques eroded by out-of-control spending, higher taxes, higher inflation and scandal after scam, with the arrive scam, the WE scandal and SNC-Lavalin. Even among their members, the former minister, the member for Edmonton Centre, is getting caught in his own scandals, one after another. He tried to take advantage of his position as a cabinet minister to enrich his own company.

It seems that, with one hand, the Liberals are taking every scrap and every penny from the Canadian taxpayer, while with the other, they are enriching their friends and doling out taxpayer money to their friends, contractors and insiders.

Today, we are speaking about one specific scandal. I wish I could say it was just the latest scandal, but there have been more since this first came to light at the committee stage. This scandal in particular is egregious, not only because of the price tag, that this is a misuse of perhaps more than 400 million taxpayer dollars, but also because of the scale, in that it has more than 180 documented conflicts of interest. That is one every second day of the year.

Members of the board of directors, who were appointed by the member for Papineau, the Prime Minister, were taking SDTC money that was meant to go to innovation and projects as part of a climate change initiative. The green slush fund was being funnelled to members of the board of directors, who were themselves voting to have money go to their own companies or companies they represented.

I think that the scale of this kind of insider trading, for lack of a better description, is what frustrates so many Canadians and, certainly, members of the official opposition. This is not just government money. The Prime Minister loves to say that the Liberals are investing in Canadians, that they are investing in these projects. He is investing with Canadian taxpayers' hard-earned dollars. Actually, he used to do that. He is now just having to borrow because he has blown through whatever the taxpayer has to provide.

Those hard-earned dollars that the taxpayers are giving to the government have been directly funnelled into the hands of Liberal-appointed board members and the companies they represent. Aside from the fact that this money was going to Liberal insiders and Liberal friends, the majority of projects that were approved did not even qualify for the funding from this program. They were illegitimate, yet the Liberal-appointed board members found ways to bend the rules, circumnavigate procedure and ensure that they were enriching their own companies and lining their own pockets. It is no wonder that the level of trust from Canadians in the political structure and the Liberal-NDP government is at an all-time low. The polls certainly show that the most recent two-month tax trick and $250 cheques are not what Canadians are buying.

The list of promises that the Prime Minister has broken would probably make Santa's naughty list blush. It seems to happen over and over again. I would just like to go over a couple. He promised that there would only be a few teeny-weeny deficits in his first three years as Prime Minister. After three years, he would balance the budget. He promised electoral reform. He promised to reduce taxes on the middle class. He promised to build more affordable housing. He broke every single one of those promises.

In retrospect, one of the promises the Prime Minister made in the 2015 election, and what he continued to say after he was elected Prime Minister, is one I would find almost hilarious if it was not so painful. In the 2015 election, he promised Canadians he would have the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. That statement now, in retrospect, is laughable. He is anything but transparent and open.

In fact, this is the second time the Prime Minister has ignored the will of the House and a ruling by the Speaker of the House to table documents in the House of Commons. The first time, he actually took the Speaker to court. He prorogued Parliament and then called a pandemic election that no Canadian wanted just to hide the level of his scandal. He was trying to hide documents from the Winnipeg lab scandal from being tabled in the House of Commons. If at first one succeeds, I guess try and try again. Those documents were never tabled in the House of Commons because an election was called.

The Prime Minister is trying to do the same thing here with the green slush fund documents that the Speaker of the House has ruled must be tabled in the House of Commons because Canadians have a right to know how their money is being spent. I would say Canadians want their money back. They want that $400 million to go back to the government and spent on things that will benefit Canadians.

Not long ago, the Prime Minister also promised, with the finance minister, in the most recent budget, that the deficit would not go over $40 billion. In question period, almost every day for the last two weeks, members of the official opposition have been asking the Prime Minister and the finance minister if they will stick to that $40-billion guardrail.

I would argue that a $40-billion deficit is still outrageous, but we are asking, if the government is not going to stick to that guardrail, what the size of the deficit will be. Is the government going to stick to that self-imposed guardrail, or is it driving Canadians off a fiscal cliff? I think Canadians deserve to know that. I think it is pretty clear, by the government members' unwillingness to answer that question, that this is going to be yet another promise broken.

The Liberals have blasted through that $40-billion debt promise. We do not know what will be announced on Monday. The Liberals will try to spin this as a win. They will fudge numbers and come up with great phrases like debt-to-GDP ratio, or that they are sticking within this window, but Canadians feel it. They feel it every single day when they buy groceries, put gas in their cars, or are looking to renew their mortgages or heat their homes. They understand that life is not as good as the Liberals will profess.

In fact, we are seeing these levels of scandal and mismanagement, when it comes to Canadian taxpayer money, continue to pop up almost on a daily basis. We have learned from the Auditor General that the Liberals' CEBA program is yet another billion-dollar boondoggle. In fact, $3.5 billion of taxpayers' money was paid to more than 77,000 recipients who did not meet the eligibility requirements. That means about 10% of the total 900,000 loan recipients were ineligible for the money they received. We are asking the government if it has a plan to get the taxpayers' money back. Thus far, we have not heard a single plan to accomplish that.

On top of that, the Liberals gave a non-competitive contract to Accenture. Accenture was allowed to lead the procurement process, which led to Accenture receiving $313 million, or 92% of the total value of the contracts awarded to Accenture to deliver the CEBA program. Even worse, it was administering this program from Brazil, despite telling the government it was going to be using Canadian experts and Canadian labour. That did not happen.

It is frustrating how the Liberal government is trying so hard to block the tabling of these documents that they are willing to seize their own Parliament. For all intents and purposes, they have a majority government. The NDP has made that very clear every day. They should be able to control the calendar of the House of Commons. While the government says that the Conservatives are holding everything up, the government has a majority. It can make sure that the House of Commons works as it should, but it is refusing to table these documents.

In the meantime, Canadians are lined up at food banks in record numbers. While the NDP-Liberal government is lining the pockets of Liberal friends and insiders, a record-shattering number of Canadians are now being forced to access food banks. We have said this ad nauseam: When they increase taxes for the trucker who moves the food, they increase taxes for processors who manufacture the food, they increase taxes for retailers who sell the food and they increase taxes for farmers who grow the food, do members know what happens? They increase the cost of food every single day at the grocery store, making it that much more difficult for Canadians to afford it.

One aspect of that is the fact that, once again, the Liberal-NDP government has voted to quadruple the carbon tax, which will cost Canadian farmers more than a billion dollars a year. An average 5,000-acre farm will be paying $150,000 every single year just in carbon taxes. How is that going to ensure that family farms are economically viable, let alone environmentally sustainable?

I am going to go off some numbers of the impact that the carbon tax is having on Canadian food production. I think it is very important that we talk about that term. This impacts not only farm families but also Canadian food production and food security. For greenhouse operators alone, this is costing $22 million a year. By 2030, it will cost between $82 and $100 million.

Nearly one in five farms in Quebec are unable to manage their debt because of rising transportation costs and high interest rates caused by the carbon tax and inflationary spending. This is leaving them unable to compete on the domestic and international markets. We have 44% of fresh fruit and vegetable growers already selling at a loss, and 77% of those cannot cover their production costs. We have 77% of produce growers in Canada on the brink of bankruptcy.

Alberta farmers paid $17 million in carbon taxes last year just on natural gas and propane to dry their grain, and to heat and cool their barns. On April 1, when the carbon tax increases by 23%, that number will go to $20 million a year. By 2030, that will be $210 million just for Alberta farmers.

Last year, Saskatchewan farmers paid more than $36 million in carbon taxes just to ship their grain by rail. That is not every other cost. That is not the cost of natural gas and propane to dry their grain, heat and cool their barns or manage their greenhouses. This is just the carbon tax bill that is passed on to them by CN and CPKC rail. Next year, when that carbon tax goes up 23%, that number will be $57 million.

The Liberal member for Kings—Hants, the chair of the agriculture committee, was stunned when he asked the representatives of the rail lines at committee last week if they were passing on the entire cost of the carbon tax to grain elevators and farmers. Their answer was that, yes, of course they were. Is that member serious? Did he think the rail lines were going to absorb the cost of the carbon tax, that they were not going to pass that on to the farmers and the grain elevators? Why would they pay that?

Every day, the Liberals cannot believe that the carbon tax is costing farmers money. They do not qualify for the rebates. They do not qualify for the Canadian entrepreneurs' rebate because the vast majority of them are incorporated. This is exactly the consequence of creating bad policy without actually talking to producers. The government could have done so much for Canadian farmers when we pointed out the mistakes in its policy, such as the original legislation on the price on pollution.

We brought forward Bill C-234, which would have eliminated the carbon tax on natural gas and propane, saving farmers that $1 billion a year. However, Liberal-appointed senators and now, unfortunately, the Bloc, who at one time used to stand for rural Canada, rural Quebeckers and Quebec farmers, have now withdrawn their support of Bill C-234, which Liberal-appointed senators gutted in the Senate, eliminating 90% of the benefits of Bill C-234. Every single agriculture stakeholder supports Bill C-234. Whether cattle, grain or supply management sectors, all of them support Bill C-234, except the Liberal government and now, unfortunately, the Bloc, who have turned their back on rural Quebec farmers. All of this was just to save the Prime Minister's carbon tax and perhaps to continue to prop up the Liberal government.

It is frustrating. Certainly, we hear from farmers every single day regarding how difficult it is for them to manage the increase in input costs, especially when the Liberal government puts on a carbon tax, and a tariff on fertilizer which has increased fertilizer prices more than 150%. I know, that is incredible, right? When we add a tariff to fertilizer, it impacts global prices, despite what our Liberal members might want us to believe. The Liberals put in front-of-pack labelling, changed Canada's Food Guide and are pushing for a P2 plastics ban. All of these things have impacts not only on farmers, but also on the Canadian consumer.

The new numbers are quite staggering. The Daily Bread Food Bank recently released its updated report on food bank use. Just in Toronto, there were 3.49 million client visits to Toronto-area food banks, nearly one million more than in the previous year; and a 273% increase since the pandemic. That means that one in 10 people in Toronto are being forced to rely on a food bank just to feed their families. Food bank use in Ontario has risen for eight consecutive years. In the last two years, the number of Ontarians accessing food banks has increased 73%. That is nearly triple the jump of the 2008 recession.

I know that the Prime Minister said earlier today that this is a global recession that has impacted these prices. That is simply not true. This is a Liberal-NDP-made problem that the Liberals refuse to fix. In fact, they are doubling down by voting to increase the carbon tax yet again on April 1 and quadrupling that carbon tax to 61¢ a litre.

The facts are clear. Food inflation in Canada is 36% higher than it is in the United States. That clearly shows that this is not a global recession; this is an NDP-Liberal recession that is caused by increasing taxes and increasing spending and is having a trickle-down effect on every aspect of Canada's economy. Rather than learn from those mistakes, the Liberals are ploughing ahead, as I said, by increasing that carbon tax yet again. The Liberals like to say, “Well, Canadians just do not understand what we are trying to do; they are just not listening.” The finance minister liked to say, “We are in the midst of a vibecession. Canadians have really never had it so good.” The finance minister just is not communicating it well enough.

Well, I guess the truth is that the Liberals are clearly out of touch because the people they are talking to truly have never had it so good. They are the Liberal insiders, Liberal members and their friends in corporate Canada who are benefiting from these slush funds and these scandals. Again, while Canadians are lined up at food banks, the Liberal-NDP government is lining the pockets of its insiders and its friends to the detriment of Canadian taxpayers, who are the ones who are truly paying the bills.

It shows just how out of touch the government is when the finance minister said that she knows people cannot afford to put food on the table, but the solution to that is just to cancel their Disney+, park their car and ride their bike. I would love for the finance minister to come to my rural Alberta riding, where we had two feet of snow a week ago, to say, “I just need you guys to park your truck and ride your bike.” It seems like a joke, but this is not a joke.

I will finish with this. This is about the level of this scandal. This is $400 million of taxpayer money and the Liberals need to explain to Canadians why they blew it.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I was going to start by thanking my friend for his remarks, but I think his leader has some people up in the gallery with notepads, so I do not want to get him in trouble.

The second thing I want to acknowledge is that I feel bad because I did not know the member was such a proponent of electoral reform, and he seems torn up by the—

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to remind you that members are not to reference anyone in the gallery.

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

Agreed. The hon. member is correct.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[James Maloney, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Apparently, I was right, Madam Speaker. The member just brought my point home for me.

The member is my friend and I know he cares deeply about rural Canada and agriculture. I have worked with him on some of these issues and I am proud to do so.

The member mentioned the Daily Bread Food Bank and talked about a number of affordability measures. He campaigned in the last election on the exact GST break that we voted on last week, and I would like him to explain to me and to the House how he can reconcile supporting it then and not supporting it now, when it is going to help the very people in his constituency he was talking about today.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, the vote last week was about confidence in the government more than anything. I voted against what is a two-month tax trick. I have heard from small business owners in my riding that it will be extremely cumbersome for them to make all of the changes for what is going to be a two-month break for about four dollars for Canadians, but will increase our debt by $7 billion. I do not think the cost-benefit analysis is worthwhile, but that vote, for me, was a vote of non-confidence in the NDP-Liberal government, and I can back that any day of the week.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to correct the record. In his speech, my colleague said that the Bloc Québécois is against farmers because we oppose Bill C‑234.

Let us review the facts. The bill was studied in the Senate, which proposed an amendment. To speed up the process, we are prepared to accept the amendment and vote on the bill as is. That was what our agriculture critic said last January. However, every time Bill C‑234 has come before the House, the Conservatives have filibustered it, with speakers prattling on endlessly to prevent it from ever going to a vote. They are the ones holding up the bill.

Why are they doing this to farmers?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Let me state the facts. The Bloc supports an amended Bill C-234, which has been neutered. The Bloc supported the bill as it was when it went to the Senate. The Senate neutered it, taking away literally 90% of the benefit of that bill. The Bloc does not support an unamended Bill C-234, which is what our Canadian farmers want. There is no sense passing Bill C-234 as it is amended because it does not benefit Canadian farmers.

What the member is saying is that the Bloc supports basically a nothing bill. That is not what Conservatives are fighting for. We are fighting for our farmers and ranchers right across this country, who want a break in the carbon tax on natural gas and propane.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, throughout his speech, the member talked about affordability, absolutely, and wanting to ensure that people who have been dealing with the increase in grocery prices and household costs get some relief. New Democrats tried to put forward a couple of motions. One was to remove the GST on home heating and the other was to put a price cap on groceries and essential food items, both of which the Conservative Party voted against.

Considering he is so concerned with affordability issues, I would love for the member to explain why.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, it was a Conservative motion, I believe, brought forward by the leader of the Conservative Party, to remove the carbon tax on home heating and the GST on new homes. We have taken those measures. The NDP has kind of followed along, but it comes down to a question I have for the NDP. The NDP leader says every day how awful the Liberal government is, that it is weak and beholden to corporate Canada, like as the member says, to the grocery store CEOs, yet every time New Democrats have a chance to send a message to Canadians and fight for affordability, they support the Liberal government, which is the most corrupt government in Canadian history.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Madam Speaker, this is something that the Conservatives have not told Canadians about the carbon tax, and I hope the Conservatives are paying attention.

If Canada had no carbon tax, Canadian farmers exporting to the European Union, for example, could face significant challenges under the carbon border adjustment mechanism. How would farmers who are exporting deal with tariffs if Canada did not have the carbon tax or carbon pricing?