Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour, and it is a tough act to follow the Leader of the Opposition, Canada's next prime minister. I am sorry for the noise on this side of the House, but we are fired up for a carbon tax election, which the NDP has the opportunity to allow for today. We are going to, on the floor here now, debate to call the NDP out.
The leader of the NDP is so mad that he has had enough. Let us recall again what he has said in just the past few months alone. He said that he had ripped up his coalition agreement with the Liberals. He said that he was fed up. He said that “the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people”. He also said, “The Liberal government will always cave to corporate greed, and always step in to make sure the unions have no power.” That was in response to the Liberal labour minister's referral to the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which ordered the workers of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference, in ILWU 514, to resume their duties, violating their right to strike.
The NDP leader talks a tough game. At press conferences, on Twitter, on X, on Facebook, on social media and in question period, he pretends to be outraged. We are going to test that outrage. If he has truly had enough, it is time to vote non-confidence. We are saying that the House and the Conservatives simply agree with the NDP leader. We are fed up with the Prime Minister. We are fed up with this NDP-Liberal government. Enough is enough. He must back his words up with action and vote to have non-confidence in the government. It is time for a carbon tax election.
The question is, will the NDP finally do that? I have a feeling, from what we have heard in the last couple of days, that the NDP will not do that. Its members claim that, for all the wonderful things they are getting done for Canadians, they just need more time. They need more runway to prop the Liberals up. The coalition agreement was not ripped up. After that little stunt and photo op, the NDP leader taped it back together piece by piece and handed it right back to the Prime Minister. The sellout leader of the NDP has done it time and time again, even this week when we found the NDP's own words put into a motion. There is all that tough talk, but they are going to prop the Prime Minister up again.
Let me make it very clear. It is not because the NDP is getting things done for Canadians. It is because of the record of what NDP members have done, the true record, which Canadians know they are complicit in, over the last miserable few years that millions of Canadians have faced. Let us think about it. There are two million visits to food banks in Canada per month in this country. The Feed Ontario report came out, and one million Ontarians are now using a food bank in this country. The Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto says that 10%, one in every 10 Torontonians, are using a food bank.
The NDP members sit here and say that they support workers and that they have their backs, but their record is a doubling of housing costs, food inflation rising faster than we have seen in decades and a carbon tax that goes up and up, which will be quadrupled. There are all of these stats, and we are seeing workers hurting more than ever before, in my lifetime and beyond.
Of the food bank users, 18% are workers. They are working, but they cannot afford to make ends meet. Workers cannot afford their mortgages or their rent, which have doubled under the watch of the NDP-Liberals. We can also look at crime, with increasing gun violence and an over 100% increase in gun and gang violence in this country. After nine years, auto theft is through the roof under their watch.
Time and time again, when we look at every part of their record, it is not delivering for people. It is hurting people. This is the hypocrisy of what NDP members are doing here. They are putting their own words into action.
If the New Democrats are so outraged at how bad the Prime Minister is and all the things that are happening in this country, if they are upset about the labour rights of unionized workers to be able to strike, if they truly meant what they said outside this chamber and if they truly meant what they said during question period and debates, when the question gets called and we have to stand, they would easily say what millions of Canadians want them to finally say, that they do not have confidence in the Prime Minister, and then they would vote non-confidence and call a carbon tax election, but they will not.
Here is the thing: In a carbon tax election, let us just think about the NDP and where its members are. I think I have lost track of the numbers. I think 28, the last time I heard, is the number of times the NDP voted with the Liberals to prop them up in confidence votes, budgets, estimates and everything else in between. Every single time, those plans supported the carbon tax and supported the plan, along with the Bloc Québécois, to quadruple the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre.
Funnily, around the end of summer a by-election came in an NDP riding in Winnipeg. All of a sudden I think the NDP leader was hearing at the doors with his candidate about just how unpopular the NDP has become by propping this Prime Minister up and by quadrupling the carbon tax. The NDP leader came out and said that the New Democrats no longer supported the carbon tax and they supported something else. He did not say what that was. With the by-elections over, the NDP eked through, its margin shrunk drastically, no sooner did the NDP leader flip-flop on the carbon tax. He flip-flopped on his flip-flop now, and he is voting again with the Prime Minister and the Liberals to prop them up, prop the carbon tax up and prop up the quadrupling of the carbon tax.
The NDP is in political wilderness right now. Its members said they did not support the carbon tax after they supported the carbon tax. Now they are back to supporting it by propping the Liberals up, but they will not say what their plan is. It is like being in the political wilderness, and the only time they come out of the forest is to vote to prop the Liberals up, and then they run back in again. That is exactly what they have been doing for years. They do not want to have an election because they know that they are on the wrong side of Canadians. There are two choices; there are not five or six different options in the next election. The Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc and the Green Party think the carbon tax is doing wonders. They think when we tax a farmer who grows the food, we tax the trucker who ships the food and we tax the stores that sell the food with the carbon tax, nothing contributes to inflation, and it all is just made up in Canadians' heads.
Canadians know better, and that is why members are desperately avoiding a carbon tax election.
It is the NDP leader's record on labour that is absolutely hypocritical, time and time again. I want to read a quote from just about one month ago. He said, “If there is ever any vote in Parliament that in any way impacts your rights”, speaking to union members on November 12 last month, “We're going to vote no. I can tell you right now we'll vote no. Whether that vote is a confidence vote or not, whether that triggers an election or not, I'm telling [the Prime Minister] and the Liberals right now, you're never going to count on us if you're going to take away the rights of workers. Never.”
He said that last month. Our motion calls that out today. It is not a game to vote for non-confidence, to have an election and to say “enough” of this Prime Minister. What is political games is the New Democrats voting against their own words and not matching their actions with the rhetoric they have used for the last while.
I want to wrap up today, and I want to say to Canadians in my part of eastern Ontario and across this country, that things are not good right now. The stats are difficult to hear. We have to spend a lot of time talking about doubling of housing prices, food inflation, food bank use and drug overdose deaths, but I want to provide a message of hope.
It was not this bad before the NDP and Liberals came in, and it will not be that bad after we give them the boot. Today, in this motion, it is not just about the NDP; it is about the 30-something-year-old who is stuck in their parents' basement. We are going to build new homes by axing the GST on new home sales under $1 million. Some 47,000 Canadians have lost their lives to drug overdoses. We offer treatment and recovery, not the legalization of hard drugs. We are going to restore the Canada we know and love. It is time for the NDP members to get with the program, call an election and back up their words. Let us let Canadians finally have their say.