Debates of Dec. 13th, 2024

The House resumed from December 12 consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to see you today taking the chair as we begin our proceedings. I think back to the fond memories I have over the past few years. I think, like all of us, I kind of divide my life into the pre-COVID and post-COVID world. The very first time I was able to be away from home as restrictions were gradually being lifted during the immediate aftermath of the COVID lockdowns was when I took a trip to Nova Scotia and spent time in your beautiful constituency. It is really one of the most beautiful places anywhere in the world, and certainly in Canada.

I know that all MPs, if asked, would insist that their riding is the most beautiful in Canada. I would submit that some have a better case than others, but in the same way that every mother truly believes that her baby is the most beautiful ever born, we all have this view of our constituency. However, when we are looking at other constituencies, we can have a more jaundiced eye, and I can say that even the most jaundiced eye would find the beautiful Fundy shore of Nova Scotia to be a place of extraordinary natural cultural beauty and richness.

I am here to join a debate that has now been going on in the House for some time. There have been a series of amendments before the House, subamendments to an amendment to a motion that was made some time ago, and I thought it might be helpful, given how much time has passed, to refresh the memory of the House as to the wording of the amendment. I do this each time I speak to a subamendment, and I thought this morning I would do so in the other official language.

Here is the motion that was moved in the House by the House leader of the official opposition:

That the government's failure of fully providing documents, as ordered by the House on June 10, 2024, be hereby referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs;

Here is the amendment, as amended, of the member for Mégantic—L'Érable:

That the motion be amended by adding the following:

“provided that it be an instruction to the committee:

(a) that the following witnesses be ordered to appear before the committee, separately, for two hours each:

(i) the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry,

(ii) the Clerk of the Privy Council,

(iii) the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who respected the order of the House and deposited unredacted documents,

I could return to that point.

(iv) Paul MacKinnon, the former Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Governance),

(v) the Auditor General of Canada,

(vi) the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,

(vii) the Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada,

(viii) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons,

(ix) the Acting President of Sustainable Development Technology Canada,

(x) a panel consisting of the Board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada; and

(b) that it report back to the House no later than the 30th sitting day following the adoption of this order.”;

Since the motion was moved, and the amendment, there have been several subamendments that have been debated before the House. I was able to speak to one of the other subamendments.

Now we are on a subamendment that has been presented by the member for Calgary Rocky Ridge and seconded by the member for Provencher that suggests that the amendment I just read:

...be amended by adding the following:

“, except that the order for the committee to report back to the House within 30 sitting days shall be discharged if the Speaker has sooner laid upon the table a notice from the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel confirming that all government institutions have fully complied with the order adopted on June 10, 2024, by depositing all of their responsive records in an unredacted form”.

This means, of course, that all of the current proceedings could be suspended if the original House order given in June, to which the main motion refers, were complied with. The government could immediately bring to an end all of it, including the process that would tie up the procedure and House affairs committee for some time, if the government were to instruct its departments to provide the documents in unredacted form. I think it is a very sensible, reasonable subamendment to have made.

I said I would return to:

(iii), the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who respected the order of the House and deposited unredacted documents.

I wanted to return to it to make the point that it is possible to fully comply. Full compliance was achieved by a government agency. It is interesting to note that the agency that did comply is in fact the agency whose responsibility it is to protect privacy rights: the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who, as one can imagine, is punctilious in having an official regard for the importance of keeping matters private.

We have heard, endlessly and volubly, from the few members of the Liberal Party who are allowed to speak on the matter or on any other topic about the ostensibly enormous procedural justice problems that would arise if the documents were submitted, as the House ordered, to the Clerk and the legal counsel. These arguments are, of course, nonsense. I will just restate what is wrong with the arguments: The documents would be submitted not to the view of the general public but to a law clerk who would have the ability to sift through and make sure that nothing is disclosed in a way that would compromise an investigation.

However, we should be clear about this; material is presented all the time to the police that has to be discounted at the time of an investigation if it was improperly acquired. The ways in which evidence is improperly acquired are not likely to conform very closely to the situation we have here. For example, if the police raid someone's house with a warrant in which they are looking for a certain offence, they cannot then go on a fishing expedition and look for other offences while they are in there under the auspices of that warrant. The court issued a warrant that gives them a very limited purview.

If the police entered the house looking for evidence that it is an illegal drug production facility, and while they are there they find some evidence of some greater crime, such as evidence that a murder has taken place, they can use that, but that is different. If they go in looking for the evidence of that drug facility and they find other things, relating to unpaid parking tickets for example, they cannot use that material.

We should be very careful of the procedural arguments being made by the government, and consider them as being inherently suspect. I should note that in general we should be very suspicious of the respect or the lack of respect for procedural justice, for the law, for the rule of law, indeed, for the rule of anything other than the absolute will of the sitting Prime Minister that is displayed by the government.

It is the same government that imposed the Emergencies Act, effectively a kind of martial law, in order to suppress a peaceful demonstration that was happening outside this place. The government demonized the individuals involved in it, who were in fact mostly just hard-working citizens who were put in an impossible position by the government's ruthless and unfair actions towards them. It is a government that attempted, under the Prime Minister, to suspend the entire workings of responsible government for a year and a half.

I can remember coming here in late March 2020, shortly after COVID had been declared a pandemic. We were all in a personal panic, I guess, but we were all told to stay home. Our Prime Minister said, “Go home and stay home.” I can still remember him standing at Rideau Cottage, which is misnamed, by the way. Rideau Cottage, which can be looked up on Wikipedia, where it has its own article, is actually a mansion on the grounds of a 20-acre estate, the grounds of Rideau Hall. The Prime Minister spoke from the front steps of his mansion on his 20-acre estate.

The Prime Minister is a man who, when he got bored of that place, could always take off and go to Harrington Lake, breaking a series of provincial protocols about crossing borders at that time, to stay at Harrington Lake where he has a beautiful farmhouse. I have been there under a previous prime minister; it is gorgeous. It is a private lake up in the mountains. It is spectacular.

The Prime Minister could go from one place to the other. However, he was saying to people who live in a bachelor apartment with no balcony and maybe facing into a light well in the apartment building so they get no natural light, “Go home and stay home”, as if somehow he were their moral superior.

This has been, of course, the theme of the current government: endless virtue signalling about its own moral superiority. At the same time, it is engaging in the most vile practices, such as squandering the country's money and the inheritance of our children; driving up the price of housing to unaffordable levels; and creating a greater disparity of wealth than we have ever seen before, which is getting worse at an increasing pace as the Liberals adopt policy after policy designed to take from the tax base as a whole to transfer to the people who happen to be in positions to take advantage of the various things they are offering.

Almost every service now that has been created under the current government is effectively something that benefits primarily the people who are already well off. A great example is the $10-a-day child care, which is completely unavailable in a rural riding like mine and to anybody who works shift work, who works at night, who lives in a rural area or who lacks the transportation to get their child to the day care.

The child care program basically eliminates the entire working class. It eliminated a lot of people during COVID. I understand their going in to work despite the Prime Minister's injunction for us to stay home, which I regarded as insulting and also as an order that cannot be enforced on members of Parliament, who have a right to come to Parliament.

When I came in, I used to take the O-Train. My wife and I have a place in the west end. The people who were coming in to work during COVID were all the working-class people who did not get a chance to stay home when we were told that coming to work put our life in danger, including the people whom we said were heroes, until later on, during the period of the convoy, the Liberals decided they were zeroes. Those were the people who were on the train; it was very interesting to see.

The mix of people on the train changed in that period. It became a lot less white and a lot more brown because, whether the government wants to say it or not, increasingly with the Liberals' immigration policies there is a clear racial divide. On the one side are people who have the better jobs, the privileged jobs and the jobs that give us access to, among other things, the reliable hours that allow one to take advantage of $10-a-day day care and that also give us higher salaries.

On the other side are the people who do not have that option, who had to keep on working during COVID and who are excluded from programs like $10-a-day day care. Is there some kind of compensation for these people, whereby if they cannot get it, they will get some kind of benefit? No, of course there is not.

Let us look at the carbon tax. The same thing is going on. The carbon tax is designed for the purpose of changing incentives. It is overtly designed for the purpose of re-incentivizing, of making it more painful and expensive to use carbon. What do we mean by carbon? We mean gas or diesel, home heating fuel and the burning of fossil fuels. Well, people who live in a rural area and who drive an older vehicle may not be able to afford to replace it with one of the fabulous new Cybertrucks, one of which I just saw on Parliament Hill for the first time ever in real life yesterday. They look as cool in real life, and as futuristic, as they do in the pictures.

Anyway, I guarantee that truck was not driven by a resident of my riding. I guarantee they cannot afford Cybertrucks or other electric vehicles, and even if they could, the reality is I cannot afford these things. I am paid an MP salary. I looked into getting a purely electric vehicle. I have a hybrid Toyota Highlander. I looked into whether it is possible to get an electric SUV, and the answer is that I cannot. They do not have long enough range to be workable in rural areas.

As such, we created an incentive that punishes people for having gas-burning vehicles, and we punish people who cannot switch because of the nature of where they live. I guess they could sell and come to the city and say that they just give up on living out there. My riding and all ridings in rural Ontario, and Nova Scotia, for that matter, are full of abandoned farms from over the decades as it ceased to be economically viable to live in one place or another, but of course, the people who left those farms, who had cleared the land or whose parents had cleared the land, have lost the value of that asset.

That is being increased by what the government is doing. They come to the city where housing prices and rents have doubled, meaning it is unaffordable. People in my constituency are poorer than the average. We are in the bottom quarter of the Ontario population, but there is a long-term pattern I have seen working here. I have been here a quarter of a century now. When I was first elected on November 27, 2000, there were only two ridings in the province of Ontario that were run by my party, the old Canadian Alliance, mine and that Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, directly to our north. Both are rural areas with lower than average incomes.

Within my old riding of Lanark—Carleton, we had an enormously wealthy area, Kanata, which had, among other things, a billionaire living there. I had the wealthiest suburb in Canada. At the far other end of my riding, I had the poorest municipality, the Lanark Highlands, in the entire province, outside of indigenous areas in northern Ontario. Interestingly enough, the results were that I did worst in the wealthiest areas and best in the poorest areas. The actual lowest-income spot in the entire riding was the only spot where I got more than 50% of the vote at that time.

That is a pattern that has not disappeared. That pattern has replicated itself over and over again, not just in my riding, but across the country. The Liberals are the party of the privileged, the well off, by which I do not necessarily mean that billionaire I was referring to, who made his money in high tech. I am referring to those whose wealth and well-being is the result of what is properly understood as privilege.

We hear a lot of nonsense about privilege. I remember one occasion when I was asking a minister a question about corrections. He rose up to say that the member was asking the question from a position of privilege. I literally have no idea what that sociological academic babble even means, but real privilege is a right that is issued as a licence. It is a licenced right. A driver's licence is a privilege. I cannot just hop in a car and drive. It is not an absolute right. One has to fulfill certain things.

More and more activities are effectively privileged in this society, and privileged to the same people over and over again. The rules are adjusted as necessary to ensure that those people, their friends and their relatives stay at the top, whether it is through adjusting the zoning laws, the housing regulations or the building costs so that, effectively, the housing supply is shrunk, making one group of people, and I am fortunate to be in that group of people who are older and own homes, wealthier at the expense of those who do not, who happen to be younger, more recently arrived in Canada and, typically, browner.

If that seems like a picture of social justice to someone, then they have a very different conception of social justice than I do, but that is the government, and the government has been the opposite of transparent. We have been tied up trying to resolve the issue of getting the government to release documents revealing the depth of the scandal, and it has been willing to allow House business to be held up for over a month while we deal with this. That says a great deal about how much the Liberals are committed to having absolute opacity, a black box of government, under which they can carry on activities that I think do not meet the standards of any decent Canadian.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned that the Speaker's riding is the most beautiful riding in Canada, but I have to take exception. Mine is the best riding in Canada. It represents the true Canada. It is a suburban riding. We have two rivers. We have agricultural land. We have high tech and emerging technologies. We have got 120 languages. It is 50% Christian, 30% no religion and 20% balanced faith. We have lots of children, and we have a lot of new schools, so it is the best riding that represents the Canada of today and tomorrow.

I have a question for the hon. member. He talked about pandemic management. I am very proud of the way our government successfully managed the pandemic. Under every metric, we did better than any other G7 country in managing the pandemic. Can the member tell us, compared to any other G7 countries, if there is any country, other than Canada, that has done better in any metric in managing the pandemic?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, do civil liberties count as a metric? Does freedom count as a metric? Does someone's ability to be with their loved ones when they are dying count as a metric? If they do, then we were terrible.

Not all of that was the fault of the federal government. It was the fault of—

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Winnipeg North is, of course, interrupting, as he always does. I do not know if a speech ever gets made in the House that does not involve an interruption from him, whose word count is already far greater than that of the rest of us. He really ought to wait his turn. Let us see if he can do that for the rest of this day as a special test, as a Christmas gift to all of us. That would be so awesome.

When I am working here, and I am trying to get work done, I listen to music on my iPhone. I put in earbuds to drown out the endless drone from that member because he is like a black hole for ideas. Any useful thought that comes out of anybody's brain just vanishes into this behind-the-event horizon.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. We have just learned that the Minister of Labour and Seniors is invoking section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to force striking Canada Post workers to return to work.

Does the hon. member believe that this government respects the rights of workers and union members?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. He has demonstrated that it is possible to be brief in one's comments, a lesson that the member for Winnipeg North would do well to remember for the future.

Since this is the first I have heard of this, I think it will be necessary—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has a point of order.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am just sitting here saying nothing in my seat. For some reason, maybe due to the point of order I raised the other day, the member seems to not like my physical presence in the chamber. I do not quite understand why.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

We are descending into debate, with a little bit of push-back. Maybe members could just stick to the debate at hand.

The hon. member for Lanark— Frontenac—Kingston.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, was that actually a point of order? That was not a point of order. I think that just made my point, did it not? I am thankful the member for Winnipeg North just made my point for me.

No, I did not hear about this until now. I have a policy when I am dealing with the media that I never comment on an issue to the first person who tells me about it. I want to go back to find out more. Once these questions are over, I am going to scoot back into the back to find out more about what the minister is up to.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to give thanks to my colleague who corrected actions in the House yesterday and did so in the traditions of the House. He has been here a little bit longer than I have. I wanted to recognize that that type of correction demonstrates a good example.

He does not know about this just yet, but there is an issue that is developing, which is related to back-to-work legislation that would be put on Canada Post workers. I know he was here the last time Canada Post workers were ordered back to work by the Liberals. I believe his party supported that. I would ask him to reflect on that now that this issue has been pushed to the forefront. Does he have any thoughts about that? I know he does not have the full information yet, but we are reflecting on what we did before because we pushed those problems decades along by putting workers back to work without an agreement.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's intervention gives me the opportunity to make another point. I did talk about the election in 2000 when only two members of my party were elected in Ontario. That was an election where 98 out of 102 ridings in Ontario had members who were elected for the Liberal Party. The other riding was the one that the member currently holds, and it was Joe Comartin, who was a great member.

The answer is that I do not know about the details of this, and I am not my party's spokesman on this matter. I will look into this and try to find out more. Although, as I say, I know nothing, I guess that, if it is back-to-work legislation, we would wind up dealing with that legislation here in the next 24 hours, or however long.

Fortunately, my riding is close to Ottawa, so I am just driving back and forth, but for those who would have to cancel travel plans to be with their families, I am sad about that.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I always listen intently to the member's speeches, which I appreciate because he is one of the more erudite members of the House. I also appreciate that he actually has lines of argument in his speeches. Lately, we have been hearing steady streams of nothing but vitriol.

However, related to this question of giving documents to the RCMP, to an outside third party, is the question of whether the legislative branch is getting too close to the law enforcement branch. That, in some ways, is the issue. To look at an analogy, let us say that, at some future date, there were a coalition of parties in the House that said, “We demand to have the tax records of certain individuals”, and that could be for whatever reasons. It could be spite or political retribution. It does not really matter. We know that presidents of the United States, in the past, even going as far back as former president Roosevelt, used the tax system to get to people. How would the member feel about Parliament asking for those kinds of documents so that they could be given to a third party, say the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to thank the hon. member for his kind words. Likewise, one of the highlights of my career was working on the parliamentary Special Committee on Electoral Reform, which this member chaired. He did an extraordinary job with what, I have to say, was a very difficult file. We do not often get the chance to say nice things about each other. I actually do think highly of most colleagues, both those who are presently here and those, like Joe Comartin, who have left. We have had many extraordinary people pass through, and I have been very fortunate to have been able to serve with so many.

However, the obvious thought here is that, in the example provided, with the purpose being that the documents were to be given to an external group, such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, I think that would be very unwise. What would happen here is that they would be given to the Parliamentary Law Clerk, who would then go through them and make independent judgments about them.

The purpose of doing that would not be merely to facilitate prosecution. In fact, I do not think that is the primary purpose at all. It would be to make sure that the potential for prosecution does not serve to hide the fact that there are other things going on, which may or may not be illegal, but that are outside of what Canadians expect to have with regard to the governance of their money.

We all understand that mere compliance with the law is insufficient in a government. It has to go beyond and try to match up with the various other rules and codes, such as the ethics code, which we have to sign on to, and the conflict of interest code, for which office holders have a separate code that is more restrictive. There are also other rules and norms in place, the very conventions that we have here, that are only partly written down. The practices are themselves norms that are not enforceable by law. They are enforceable by public opinion. Depriving the public of the ability to see relevant documentation is the concern that I have here.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering, when the member was doing his comparison to the Prime Minister, and how nasty he was in putting constraints on people during the pandemic, would he not acknowledge that 90% of the things he was saying were actually enacted by Doug Ford and the premiers? It was not the Prime Minister who was saying to individuals that they had to stay home. It was Premier Doug Ford, who it would be fair for the member to be critical of as opposed to the Prime Minister. I think that would probably be a better reflection, even though I personally supported Doug Ford's actions.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of course, Doug Ford enthusiastically supported the Prime Minister's restrictions on civil rights, and that was one of the many points for which I have departed from Doug Ford.

However, I will point out that I do not love Doug Ford. Nobody who knows me thinks I love Doug Ford. If members were to go online to google “Doug Ford, Scott Reid, Stalin”, they would find a reference to me comparing him to Stalin for the way he treated a member of his caucus when tossing him out. Doug Ford is no fan of mine. I have told the provincial party that it will start getting donations from me again when Doug Ford leaves as premier, and I am happy to say that in the House of Commons.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate the opportunity to stand and speak to some of the ways the Liberal government is wasting taxpayers' money. One such instance is the green slush fund. Although we are debating the subamendment to the amendment today, I will quickly give a bit of history. I will talk about how we got here, where the Liberals went and continue to go wrong and how they are misspending taxpayer dollars in abuses that we continue to see and hear about in the media daily.

However, before I do, I would like to remind everyone back home that there are a number of Santa Claus parades this weekend that I will be attending. I like to promote that they are happening. Tonight, in beautiful Little Britain, Ontario, there is a Santa Claus parade. There are three of them tomorrow, one around the noon hour in Millbrook, Ontario, then in Bobcaygeon in the later part of the afternoon and early evening and then in Sunderland, Ontario, with the third one of the weekend. If anyone is watching in the TV world or listening to this, and they are in those areas and want to take in beautiful Santa Claus parades, there are spectacular ones happening at night. They will not leave disappointed, I guarantee that.

As I mentioned, we are talking here about some rather unfortunate news that continues to happen. It is the continued disregard of a House order to produce documents, and the Liberals have had no qualms about paralyzing Parliament for a few months as we continue to wait for the government to accept and adhere to that order. I should remind the government that it was the democratically elected House of Commons that voted for the documents to be produced in the green slush fund scandal. I want to thank members of the industry committee, in particular, the member sitting next to me from South Shore—St. Margarets, who was one of the members leading the charge on exposing the scandal. He stayed up late at night in his office, going through countless documents to piece everything together and make the puzzle come together. That was thanks to his work, but, unfortunately, this whole thing is an absolute disaster for Canadians.

The member for South Shore—St. Margarets and I did a podcast on that, which is on my website and the member's website. In it, we go over the various steps in terms of how much corruption happened and how people appointed to this board to oversee this fund started to apply for contracts with companies in their names. However, they would kind of stand, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, either at the back of the room or outside the room while decisions for funding were being made. They would come back into the room when that was done, and the next person would leave. They would vote on money going to their companies. Holy smokes, it sounds unbelievable just to say this, does it not?

The minister knew about it; he became aware when people in his office said there might be a bit of a problem. Of course, in typical Liberal fashion, he thought, what does that matter? It is only taxpayer dollars, so why bother being accountable for that kind of thing? It is unbelievable; it really is. The fund had good intentions, but we can leave it to the Liberals to make a mess of it.

I think that is the core of discussions happening among Canadians and around kitchen tables, about how fragile the economy is right now and how the anchors of our economy, such as oil and gas, mining and lumber, have taken a massive hit. These are the traditional anchors of our economy; they produce jobs, opportunity, wealth and tax revenue to allow the government to spend on various social programs. I believe all Canadians appreciate how massively those industries have taken a hit. We have seen billions of dollars in investment leave this country to go to other markets. The United States is one country of many to which we have seen this flight happen, and many predictions are that this will accelerate over the coming months because of the policies put into effect by the government.

Most certainly, it goes around certainty within industry. As water does, capital takes the path of least resistance. Right now, there is very little certainty in the anchors of our economy in terms of starting and completing a project. There are many hurdles; in some of the fastest-growing industries, the fastest job creator in our economy is government. When the government bloats the middle and the top, things slow down. I am not talking about the service delivery people, who are doing amazing work. We all know that business likes to move fast, because trends can also take a turn very quickly.

Some people have heard that government needs to move at the speed of business, and that is the furthest thing from the truth of what is happening. It is rather unfortunate, because we now have a government that focuses on the management of the economy through grant programs, subsidies and new programs. Conservatives would say that we should level the playing field, make it a competitive environment and allow the market to take hold and make decisions. It is very tough for the government to really focus in and try to create a program that is good for everyone. There are tweaks and there are people who get left out. We often hear in our ridings about people not qualifying for certain programs or hurdles they have to get over in order to access the program. Some hurdles are too much for them, and they do not qualify; this creates problems in their life. If we can level the playing field, create a competitive environment and allow the market to take hold, those little nuances in the economy start to get filled in by the marketplace.

We can look at how uncompetitive we are in Canada. We have a few big telecom providers, a few airlines and a few grocery store chains. Yes, there are smaller ones underneath them, but they are all owned by the same company. That is a massive problem when we are talking about competition. As we all know, competition means a better price, better service and better products. In a competitive environment, operations are always pushing for those targets. If they are failing to achieve those targets, new operations start up and start to fill in those gaps that have been created by the bigger ones getting sloppy.

However, when there are barriers to competition, those small cracks do not get filled in, so we do not actually get better products and better service at better prices. We see that in the sectors I mentioned earlier. It is much better for the individual to make choices based on their needs than to have a one-size-fits-all program. We have seen time and time again that this does not work for everybody. Everybody's life is different, and people need to be able to make their own decisions. Everybody should be able to make a choice based on their circumstance.

As I said earlier, the market will provide solutions. We can look at areas in which the government has little control in the marketplace. Let us take the beer industry, for example. Pretty much all of our ridings have a brewery in them, or even many. The Speaker's has a couple. This is an area that the government has not been regulating to the point of stifling the competition, as it has done in the telecom or the airline industry. There are different kinds of breweries everywhere. There are different kinds of beers being made for every single taste. Some might not be big sellers, but it is there if people want to try. If they like it, they are able to consume it. The point is this: When we allow the market to flourish, the market will provide. When people have more choices, when they are freer to make decisions, this generally makes for a happier population altogether. When we look at where the government clamps down the most, we will see the most unhappy people. This is something that we, as Conservatives, hold to be fundamentally true.

If the government were in charge of the music industry, and this started with Confederation, I pretty much guarantee that we would still be listening to chamber music. We would have some cellist union or something upset about this or that, and there would be a bureaucracy that would not be able to move. Meanwhile, there are many different genres of music right now for everybody's taste; this keeps developing over the years and months. We always have something new, and trends go up and down; this is because we have artists with the ability to make their music and their product. Some make hits and go on to make lots of money and some still play in their garage just for fun, and there is nothing wrong with any of it.

It is all around less regulation and less red tape; this lets people who make those ideas flourish, creates a level playing field and lets the consumer decide. This is why we are talking about the accountability part and allowing that direction to take hold.

One issue I am having in my portfolio, as the critic for Crown-indigenous relations and indigenous services, is the issue around Jordan's principle. This is really starting to heat up now. Members might have seen the news the other day. APTN, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, published a series of reports about how badly the government is doing on Jordan's principle, which is about ensuring that children are funded for care needs. Before Jordan's principle, it was usually an issue of who pays. Through court cases and other methods, the federal government is responsible for youth. The Jordan's principle measure is meant to ensure that indigenous youth get the care they require immediately and that there is no question about the cost.

According to APTN, there is a backlog about 144,000 files deep for applications to Jordan's principle. Those are usually people who are looking for certain health care costs to be covered. According to APTN, there is no deadline or path to clearing this backlog. As I just mentioned, it is a commitment to uphold the rights of indigenous children.

For those just joining, it is a principle named in honour of Jordan River Anderson, who was a young boy from Norway House Cree Nation. Jordan's principle was designed to ensure that first nations children receive the same access to public services as non-indigenous children, without delays or disruptions.

Our party's leader, the member for Carleton, has said that if a Conservative government is elected in the next federal election, we will fully fund Jordan's principle to ensure that no child, regardless of where they live or their heritage, would be denied or delayed essential services because of bureaucratic red tape. Again, the current government has failed to live up to this commitment. Some of these indigenous children face some of the most serious health and social challenges and continue to be denied the services they need to be able to thrive. Those services could be from health care, education, mental health services or basic needs such as mobility aids and medicine. These are the services promised by Jordan's principle; unfortunately, they are still being delayed or denied.

Unfortunately, as we approach the Christmas break, there are now reports surfacing about massive layoffs of educational assistants right across the country because of delays in Jordan's principle. Another one came out just this morning. This, of course, raises a number of concerns about whether the indigenous students affected will be able to return to class in January. We have talked many times in the House about the historical injustices that indigenous peoples, particularly children, have faced. Again, Jordan's principle was meant to correct all of that. Unfortunately, it has become yet another failure on the government's record.

This is the failure of the Minister of Indigenous Services to properly administer Jordan's principle. Unfortunately, we are seeing that inequality continue under the government and the harms it is creating for the most vulnerable, especially children.

It is not just a matter of dollars and cents; it is a question of moral responsibility. Canada has a duty to right the wrongs of the past, to ensure that every child, no matter where they come from or what community they belong to, can live a healthy and fulfilling life. We know that when children have access to the right services at the right time, they grow up happier and more successful. We know early intervention can change the trajectory of a child's life, preventing lifelong illnesses and struggles, and setting them on a path of success.

We, the opposition, are calling on the government to fulfill its responsibility, to fully implement Jordan's principle, to stand up for what Canada has a duty to provide, to ensure no indigenous child is denied access to the services they need. It is not just an indigenous issue; it is a Canadian issue. Every child in this country, I think we all agree, should be able to access the same opportunities, the same services, the same care, regardless of their background or where they live. Jordan's principle, as I said earlier, is a step toward making this a reality, but we need the government to do its part.

It is time for the Minister of Indigenous Services to act clearly to immediately ensure every indigenous child receives the care, support and services they need to succeed, or to step aside and let someone else do it. We on this side of the House are prepared to do that. We need to stand up for those children who have been left behind for far too long. Let us hold the government accountable. Let the House demand that it live up to the promises of Jordan's principle.

These children are the future of our country and we cannot continue to fail them. The failure to properly administer Jordan's principle and the green slush fund scandal, as I mentioned right off the top, are more than isolated incidents. In a previous speech, I went through, one by one, the various scandals the government has managed to jump itself into, and the erosion of public trust in the government and in our institutions because of the actions the government has taken. When Canadians see their hard-earned dollars squandered on waste, fraud and abuse, they start to lose faith in the ability of their government to act in their best interests.

The green slush fund raises concerns about the effectiveness of the Liberal approach: focusing more on political manoeuvring and less on actual, tangible solutions. Canadians' frustration with the government continues to grow. Time is running out for the government. Many people are calling for change, for an election. Many people want to see their country start to thrive again, to make products here at home, to create jobs, to create opportunity and wealth, all of which have been slowly fading away because of the policies of the Liberal government.

Hopefully, the government will see that it is time to put its ideas to the test and perhaps even implement some of our ideas. We have talked about how taking the tax off new homes could start to create that ability for first-time homebuyers to get into the home ownership market. We have talked about axing the tax, fixing the budget and stopping the crime. We hope to do that very soon, if given the opportunity by Canadians after the next election.

I appreciate the opportunity and I look forward to the questions ahead.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I recently had a chance to substitute onto the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs for the study of Bill C-61 and I appreciated sitting with the hon. member, whose interventions were quite thoughtful. In his speech, he mentioned the need to improve the competitive environment, to improve competition. That is exactly what the government did through Bill C-59. Those changes were, in many ways, aimed at increasing competition in the grocery sector.

I would like to know what the member thinks of those changes in Bill C-59. If he liked them, why did he and his party vote against it?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the words from the member opposite. We did have a good working relationship on Bill C-61. I thought there was a lot of good discussion as we moved through that piece of legislation. It was good to see the member come from a different committee and add a bit of a different perspective. That is always appreciated.

In terms of his question, I think, overall, competitiveness is lacking in this country. If we look at where investment is and where it is not, that becomes very clear. We continue to have more lumber mills in British Columbia start to close, and small towns being deeply affected by the mills closing. We have indigenous communities that have interests in lumber mills that are not able to move their product because of the competitiveness, the lack of a softwood lumber agreement. It goes on to oil and gas, to mining and so on. This country is just not as competitive. It is unfortunate, because we have the resources to do that.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was Jolynn Winter and Chantel Fox, age 12, who died in Wapekeka First Nation, that changed how Jordan's principle was supposed to be administered because the community was begging for support to stop a suicide crisis. That report sat on the bureaucrat's desk and nothing was done.

The Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Canada could no longer refuse to turn around Jordan's principle, because children were dying. Unfortunately, we see a situation that was started under Stephen Harper, the millions he spent against Jordan's principle. The spying he did against Cindy Blackstock, who was the champion of Jordan's principle, was carried on by the Liberals. What the Liberals have learned is that they cannot defy the courts. They can just let the system continue to do what it has always done, which is to deny rights by ignoring them. Children are continuing to die. The system is not broken, my friend; this is how it was built. It was built by the likes of Stephen Harper and it has been continued by the government, and first nations children continue to suffer.

The idea that this guy who lives in Stornoway, who ridiculed residential school survivors, will actually do something for indigenous children is a whopper that I do not think anyone is going to believe.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member for Carleton, our leader, said in July, the Conservative government, if given a chance to serve, would fully fund and implement Jordan's principle because indigenous children should have equal access to care and supports when they need it, where they need it, no matter where they live. That is something I agree with and I fully support our leader.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned the need to reduce taxes and also mentioned investment. Due to the actions of the government, inflation has now come down to 2%. The Bank of Canada has reduced the interest rate for the fifth time, to 3.25%. There is still some pain among Canadians with the cost of living, hence the government has taken measures. I have two questions for the member.

First, when he talks about the need to reduce taxes, why is he not supporting the government measure to eliminate GST on certain items for the next two months?

Second, he talked about investments. Why does he not recognize that Canada has attracted the best foreign direct investment per capita among all the OECD countries? Does it not show the confidence that the international corporate world has in Canada?

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member opposite fairly well and I know he is a very smart individual. I remind him that the inflation that has taken hold in Canada is baked into the prices we are seeing now. It is not as if prices are actually going down. The prices of groceries are still absolutely insane, and we see that at the food banks, in record numbers. I do not think that is a measure of success that the government has really thought through, because when we are pushing people into food banks, that is not a good thing.

In terms of the interest rate cut, again, I do not think that is the flex the government thinks it is. I think there are deep concerns about the economy, and I outlined that earlier in my speech.