Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Dufferin—Caledon.
I am pleased to rise on behalf of my constituents in Sturgeon River—Parkland to declare that we have lost confidence in the Liberal government and the Prime Minister.
The member for Kingston and the Islands raised a very interesting point in the Q & A about his government's so-called investments in cleaning up abandoned oil and gas wells. I wrote the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance a year ago to beg her to reallocate unspent funds for first nations in my riding and across Alberta, which are begging for the funds to clean up oil wells on first nations lands. The Liberal government did absolutely nothing. It could not even be bothered to respond.
In fact, just two weeks ago, members of Treaty Six First Nations had to go out and publicly call on the government to provide this funding, and it did not. The government does not have a good record on oil and gas cleanup.
In the past eight years, the cost of living crisis has reached new heights, thanks to the government's economic mismanagement. Unfortunately, it is working-class Canadians who are expected to pay the price for Liberal incompetence. In fact, the only people who seem to be benefiting under the Liberal government are the high-paid lobbyists that those Liberals seem to have so much trouble with in the House. Under the Liberal government, it is becoming what some have called a “self-licking ice cream cone.”
My colleague from the NDP was talking about ice cream cones earlier, and that is exactly what is happening under the Liberal government, a self-licking ice cream cone of government insiders who are petitioning and lobbying for more taxpayer money, just to keep this whole thing going. The Liberal government is all about that.
This April's Fools Day, the Prime Minister will play a cruel joke on Canadians by hiking the carbon tax by a whopping 23%. This means that everyday essentials like heating, groceries and gas will cost even more. The Liberals like to talk about their vaunted heat pump program. There is a recent article out of Nova Scotia saying that 2,500 Nova Scotia families are facing record power bills from Nova Scotia Power. What many of those families have in common—