Debates of Dec. 2nd, 2025

Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Justice and Human Rights

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in relation to the motion adopted on Thursday, November 20, regarding Parliament's unwavering commitment to protect children from sexual exploitation.

This was a very important motion, and we proceeded with a very rigorous debate in this committee. We understand that numerous figures in this country, including provincial premiers, have called on the federal government to invoke the notwithstanding clause and reinstitute mandatory minimum sentences for those who traffic in and view child sexual exploitation and abuse material. This committee wanted to send a very strong message that the House has no tolerance for that and is calling on the government to bring this back.

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

The member is supposed to only table the report and not comment on it. I will give him a little tolerance due to the fact that he was elected only recently.

It is so tabled.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-15, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on November 4, 2025, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today on behalf of the great people of Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford.

I come from a very entrepreneurial riding. Right now in Canada, small businesses are under real pressure: rising costs, persistent inflation and complex regulations. Across Canada, 30.5% of small business firms with fewer than 20 employees reported lower revenues last year and over 20% worry about cash flow. Confidence is slipping. Only 58% of small business owners feel optimistic about 2025, down 10 points from last year. In British Columbia, insolvencies surged 65% in 2023 and major failures continued through 2024, hitting sectors like construction, hospitality and manufacturing hard. This reflects a declining entrepreneurial spirit in Canada.

I met with the president of the Business Development Bank of Canada yesterday evening. She reported an alarming statistic: Canada has 100,000 fewer entrepreneurs today than it did in the year 2000, despite our population growing by over 10 million people since that time. This is described as an “alarming decline” by the Business Development Bank of Canada. In 2000, about three out of every 1,000 Canadians started a new business annually. By 2022, that rate had fallen to 1.3% per 1,000 people, a drop of more than 50%. Today, there are approximately 3.5 million entrepreneurs in Canada, but the pace of new business creation slowed significantly during and after the pandemic.

That brings me to budget 2025. This budget purportedly lays out a broad plan to restructure the Canadian economy, boost investment and improve confidence in how we operate as a country, but I do not believe it achieves its objectives. This budget, in my view, is a series of piecemeal wins, not the structural reform Canada needs to see in order to address the very real challenges we face in 2025.

In my 10 minutes today, I will address three areas where I believe we could have seen more improvement and focus from the government.

The first is internal trade, the ability of Canadians to trade between provinces and territories. My belief is that the Prime Minister failed to show real leadership in dismantling the internal trade barriers that continue to stifle Canada's economic potential. These barriers cost billions in lost productivity and limit opportunities for businesses and workers across provinces. The Prime Minister has both the authority and the responsibility to convene the provinces and territories and demand progress on the issue where provincial or territorial jurisdiction needs to be amended. Canadians expect a federal government that does not just talk about economic growth but will also use its leadership to take decisive action and make it happen. Canadians of all political stripes agree that this is something we can be doing as a country.

Just imagine how much stronger our economy would be today if there was alignment on transportation rules, if wine growers in British Columbia could supply all provinces and territories with our great agricultural products, and if doctors could practise their profession in any province or jurisdiction without having to go through another regulatory process to be certified in another province or territory. The Prime Minister, by this time, could have made all those things happen. Indeed, he promised that he would, but he did not deliver in the very document that he said would address those major failings in Canada's economic structure.

The second issue is regulatory reform.

Canadians are tired of watching 10 lost years of economic development with a government set on tying our economy in knots with endless layers of regulation. The government created the Major Projects Office in recent months, an agency meant to fast-track approvals and coordinate development, as if adding another layer of bureaucracy will somehow fix the mess of our country. The irony is staggering. Instead of repairing a broken regulatory system, they keep building new structures to work around it.

The Prime Minister's strategy will not work for the entirety of Canada's economy. Under this approach, the Prime Minister gets to hand-pick which projects receive a concierge-style fast-track approval, projects he deems politically or economically convenient, while others remain buried under red tape. That is not leadership; that is favouritism.

The Arctic economic corridor, or the Grays Bay port and road project, is a perfect example of what is at stake. This project could unlock billions in private sector investment, strengthen northern sovereignty and create critical infrastructure for trade and resource development, yet despite its strategic importance, the government allocated zero funding for it in budget 2025. That omission, in my opinion, shows how disconnected the government is from the real opportunities that could drive growth and security for generations to come.

The government claims it wants to double Canadian exports in the next 10 years. That is a wildly ambitious goal, yet its polices make it nearly impossible to achieve. It cannot double exports when it refuses to build the infrastructure that moves goods to markets. It cannot grow the economy by layering on more bureaucracy, instead of clearing the path for investment and development. It cannot double exports if it leaves in place our flawed environmental review process, which has slowed direct foreign investment and Canadian investment and turned it to other rich jurisdictions like Qatar.

If we truly want to see oil and gas infrastructure, critical minerals infrastructure and major projects built in this country, the answer is not a Major Projects Office or more government. It is the opposite; it is less. We need to dismantle the barriers. We need to cut the red tape and we need to empower the private sector to do what it does best, which is to create jobs and build the prosperity Canada wants to see from its federal government and for its people.

The third issue is the affordability crisis.

Canada's affordability crisis runs deeper than the inflation crisis that we face today. It is a structural failure of our tax and wage systems. The Parliamentary Budget Officer notes that the Liberal tax cut would save the average family about $280 next year, a modest relief that would do nothing, however, to address the systemic complexity of fairness in our taxation system. What Canada needs right now is a royal commission-style review of the entire tax system, similar to Australia's repeated “root and branch” inquiries, including the landmark Henry review, which produced over 130 recommendations to modernize and simplify their tax framework. Without such a comprehensive overhaul in Canada, we will continue to patch holes while wages stagnate and costs soar. To make our economy work, employment must pay, which means reforms that boost productivity, raise incomes and ensure that work provides a real path to affordability, not just token tax breaks.

In closing, Canada's economic future depends on bold structural reforms, not half measures or winners and losers. We must tear down internal trade barriers that fragment our market and cost billions in lost productivity. We need real regulatory reform that clears the path for investment and infrastructure, not more layers of bureaucracy that slow progress and breed favouritism. We must confront the affordability crisis with a comprehensive overhaul of our taxation system.

If we fail to act decisively, the numbers I outlined in respect to declining entrepreneurship will only continue to go in the wrong direction. So much needs to be taking place in Canada and this budget missed the mark on the hard choices Canadians wanted to see from the Prime Minister.

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

Mr. Speaker, I know the individual talked a lot about Abbotsford and relief support for Abbotsford. It was a significant issue that the government gave a great deal of attention to. Having said that, he wanted us to spend more on the issue of disaster relief. He is nodding his head in the affirmative.

Within this budget, we will have generational change with $350 million to strengthen Canada's response to and preparedness for emergencies. I wonder if he realizes that he is actually voting against something he wanted to see put into the budget. Could he provide his qualified support for that?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not even think $350 million would address the pump issues we are facing on Sumas Prairie. The former prime minister, Mr. Trudeau, made a promise to the people of Abbotsford, and to all regions of British Columbia that suffered the most catastrophic floods four years ago, that the government would have their backs. Yes, we did receive $5 billion in the 2021 fall economic statement to address the repairs that needed to be done. Nothing since that point has been committed by the government to upgrade our infrastructure so we can withstand future natural disasters.

I would remind the member for Winnipeg North that CN Rail, CP Rail, the Southern Railway, the Abbotsford International Airport, Highway 1 and all goods going to the port of metro Vancouver flow through my constituency. We are the future of Canada's economy and the government does not recognize it.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I asked my colleague from Sarnia—Lambton—Bkejwanong a question earlier about carbon capture and storage and the outrageous amounts of tax credits that will be handed out to the greedy oil industry in the budget. She told me that she was personally against that.

I wonder if that is the official position of my Conservative colleagues. I respectfully submit the following question to my colleague: Does he also oppose the tax credits for carbon capture and storage in the budget?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to carbon capture and storage, it is one tool among many that can improve Canada's competitiveness in the oil and gas sector. I visited some of the leading technology firms that we have in British Columbia working on this important issue.

That said, the primary point of my speech was that this budget missed the key points needed to address the structural reforms in Canada's economy that would give all of Canada a leg up and all of Canada a platform for success. This budget did not do it; it picked winners and losers.

[William Stevenson, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague was speaking to the CPA in me when he mentioned tax reform. However, I wanted to say that during my 26 years as a CPA in public practice, I also noticed, without actually documenting it, the decline in the number of entrepreneurs starting out.

Can my colleague comment on what he thinks would be helpful from the Conservatives' platform to help out small businesses starting out and moving forward?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there is a correlation between government regulations that limit resource development and extraction in Canada and the number of small businesses. If we ignore the portion of our economy that actually generates wealth and creates income for Canadians, we are going to see a precipitous decline in the number of small businesses.

In the Fraser Valley, the heartland of agricultural production in Canada, we still have so many businesses tied to mineral exploration and to aerospace manufacturing. They are all tied to the benefits that Canada has been given with respect to critical minerals, oil and gas. If we do not look at reforming our environmental reviews, we will continue to see a decline in the entrepreneurial spirit in Canada, which was so fruitful for so many years and, unfortunately, has seen a precipitous decline under the Liberal government.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, these Liberals like to try to call this a generational budget. I guess if we look at the generations of young Canadians it is going to take to pay off the massive deficit in this year's budget and the accumulated debt after 10 years of the Liberal government, it is in fact generational because it will take generations of Canadians to try to make a dent in paying it off.

All of the debt that was accumulated from 1867 until 2015, these Liberals have managed to double in 10 years. Think about that for a second. All the debt accumulated from every government from 1867 to 2015, the Liberals more than doubled in the last 10 years and that is debt that is going to have to be repaid by generations of young Canadians who are going to suffer through higher taxes, higher inflation, higher interest rates, all the things that come with this excess spending by the Liberal government.

If they also want to talk about a generational budget, this generational budget would deliver generational job losses. We look at job losses in the auto sector and the job losses in the steel sector. We just had the announcement of 1,000 job losses yesterday in the steel sector. This is the result of specific policies and decisions made by the government. We can look at the generational devastation in the softwood lumber industry, which the current government has been unable to resolve in eight years of government. If members recall, under the government of Stephen Harper, the softwood lumber dispute was resolved within six months of that government's taking office. Now we are looking at eight years and we are looking at tens of thousands of jobs lost, mills closed, etc.

If we also look at generational opportunities for corruption, then this budget is also generational. The Liberals have decided that the best way to spur the Canadian economy is to set up a special office and the Prime Minister will pick certain projects that will get special status. These are the people who brought us the WE Charity scandal, the green slush fund and many other scandals over the past years. All of these things have been a boon to Liberal insiders, who get rich on these schemes.

These are three ways in which, I guess, this budget is generational, but generationally bad and would cause generations of damage to the country I love and all Conservatives love.

Let us talk a bit about some of those specifics. We now have 1,000 job layoffs in the steel industry in addition to other layoffs that have happened in the steel industry over the course of the current government. The Liberals are going to say it is caused by the tariffs from President Trump in the United States. Sure, that is one factor, and it would be great if that were to be resolved, but we have a Prime Minister who said, “Who cares?” and that is “boring”. If members wonder why we have not actually solved the trade dispute with the United States, which has now cost 1,000 job layoffs in the steel industry, it is because we have a Prime Minister who so casually says “Who cares?” and that is “boring”.

This is the result of “Who cares?” and that is “boring” when we are talking about our largest trading partner, but it does not stop there. Let us look at what is happening in the auto industry. We have now lost production at the Brampton assembly plant and others could be facing the same fate because, once again, the tariffs that are put on our auto sector by President Trump have not been resolved by the Prime Minister. Some of us might recall that it was the Prime Minister who said that he would have a deal by July 21. The last time I checked my calendar, I saw we are quite past July 21. Again, if I go back to when the Prime Minister says, “Who cares?” and that is “boring” when asked about whether he has met with President Trump to resolve the tariffs, members might understand why they blew past July 21 and we are now into December with no resolution on these things.

If we want to talk about the softwood lumber industry, this has been absolutely devastating for communities across the country. Again, this has not be been resolved in eight years. From Justin Trudeau who did absolutely nothing to resolve the softwood lumber dispute, we now have a Prime Minister who says, “Who cares?” and that is “boring”. Wait a minute. That was just with respect to the tariffs that the President recently put on steel, aluminum and autos. I do not think softwood lumber even reaches the issue plate for him. It is even below, “Who cares?” and that is “boring”. That is what the Prime Minister is saying to all those families and communities who rely on these industries: “Who cares?” and that is “boring”.

One thing I want to comment on is that the Liberal industry minister has stood up many times and said there was a jobs guarantee in these contracts. I had the opportunity to sit in on the OGGO committee and look at these contracts. Now, I cannot speak about the specifics of those contracts because they cannot be released, but what I can say is that if I had drafted a contract like that for a project when I was in my second year of law school, I would have gotten an F. This is the Government of Canada allegedly signing a contract to give a corporation $15 billion. Again, if I had turned in that contract in my second year of law school, my contracts professor would have given me an F, and that is what we get with these guys. We do not get things that are good for the Canadian economy.

Let us talk about the second generational thing in this budget, which is the generational debt the Liberals are going to be adding onto every single Canadian. There is $78 billion this year, although the PBO estimates that it will be even higher. As I said earlier, there is the debt of successive governments from 1867 to 2015, which is one chunk of debt, but from 2015 to 2025, the Liberals doubled it. Let us think about that. Let it sink in. What took over 100 years to accumulate, the Liberals doubled in 10 years.

The voters in my riding ask me all the time, “Kyle, what is actually better after all of this spending?” Is health care better? No. We have waiting lists that are completely unacceptable. We now spend more money on interest on the debt, which is like making the minimum payment on a credit card. We pay more money servicing the interest on the debt than we do on health transfers to the provinces. This is the effect of piling generational debt onto Canadians and the next generation of Canadians. These are significant problems.

What else is better? Are our armed forces better equipped? No, they are not. Is the cost of living less? No, it is not. Is it easier to buy a house? No, it is not. Are our roads less congested? No, they are not. When we think about doubling the national debt in 10 years and ask Canadians if anything is better, and their is answer is, “I cannot think of anything that is better,” we have to ask ourselves what the heck these guys did with all of this money.

We get dribs and drabs of this. We had a great intervention by a Conservative member looking at some of the spending envelopes recently. He talked about something for a gender barracks in a Lebanese ski school. There was $4 million for that. If Canadians looked at where the government is spending money, they would be 100% horrified.

I briefly talked about generational corruption, because rather than creating an even playing field and economic zones where the best companies get to put forward their ideas and compete to try to get through a streamlined environmental process, these guys decided the way to do it is to hand-pick projects. Lo and behold, who is getting some of this project money? It is Brookfield. How much more money is Brookfield going to get through backroom, insider deals with the Liberal government? I guess we are going to have wait and see, because that is what the Liberals have decided to do.

What is even scarier is that the CEO of Brookfield testified at committee and said that every time Brookfield does well, the Prime Minister does well financially because of his enormous shareholdings in Brookfield. What did the Liberals do? They set up a projects office where they hand-pick the projects. Can members imagine the backroom dealing that will go on to get those projects bumped up the list? The green slush fund is going to look like small potatoes at the end of what is happening with the special projects office, because the well-known insiders will know who to talk to and what to do to sneak their little projects up the list so that people get rich. Who is going to get rich? It is Liberal insiders.

This is one of the reasons we absolutely have to oppose this budget. It has generational debt, generational job losses and generational corruption. We are voting against this budget.

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

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about investments, whether it is the national school food program, pharmacare, the dental program or the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested in Canadians through apprenticeship programs, there are many things where we have recognized that investing in Canadians is a good thing. The Conservatives, on the other hand, want to stand by and do nothing.

When they talk about deficits, it is important for them to recognize that the highest deficit was actually when the leader of the Conservative Party sat in caucus in 2009. They have no idea about deficits and how we can use deficit financing for the betterment of the country.

Does the member regret the fact that his leader, under Stephen Harper, had the highest deficit, in terms of the value of the Canadian dollar—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

The member for Dufferin—Caledon.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is patently false. That is number one. Nothing approaches the deficit these guys ran in 2021 and 2022. Nothing approaches that.

The Liberals talk about things like dental care and the food program, and that is great. I am glad that the people who cannot afford dental can get some dental care and I am glad that some families that cannot afford to feed their children will get some food in a school food program, but the result of the Liberals' economic mismanagement and their economic vandalism is eight million visits to the food bank last year. Let us think about that. This is outrageous.

What they are doing with all of their spending is driving the vast majority of Canadians into food poverty, whereby they have to go to the food bank. They then create a couple of programs and try to pat themselves on the back. What they have to do is make food affordable for all Canadians, which is something they have failed miserably at.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on his speech. Obviously, I cannot agree with everything that was said. There is a reason we are not in the same political party.

The question I have for him has to do with the vitality of Quebec's media ecosystem, although I presume that similar issues are being felt elsewhere in Canada as well.

In the bill currently before us, the Liberal government is officially abolishing the digital services tax, which was supposed to help fund our struggling media. At the same time, rather than support private media, which is already struggling, the government has chosen once again to give money to the CBC to the tune of $150 million in the latest budget.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the fact that the Liberals seem to believe that the CBC is the only media worth supporting. The other media outlets are being left to die.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

The digital services tax is one of the most embarrassing debacles of the Liberal government, and it has had many. The Liberals were warned repeatedly that this was going to be a major trade irritant with the United States. When I travelled down to the United States as the shadow minister for international trade, I was repeatedly told by every congressman and senator I met with that the digital services tax was going to cause a huge problem in the relationship between Canada and the United States.

They went ahead anyway and imposed the digital services tax, which, of course, worsened the relationship between Canada and the United States. To make it worse, they just abandoned it for absolutely nothing in the negotiations with President Trump. It is really quite pathetic.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was talking to a financial adviser, and he pointed out to me two of the best-performing stocks in the last year, especially since the Prime Minister took office. Number one is Dollarama. I think that speaks to the challenges Canadians are having. It had a 55% return. Number two is Brookfield, with a 54% return in the last year alone.

Could the member expand on the struggles Canadians are facing, which speaks to why a specific dollar store is doing so well? Secondly, why is Brookfield doing so well?

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not a stock expert, but stocks go up for a variety of reasons.

Dollarama is going up because Canadians are finding themselves squeezed. It is amazing how the Liberals never acknowledge it. They get up every day in the House of Commons and talk as though Canada is going through the biggest economic boom since post-World War II. They are so out of touch with reality. The reality is that Canadians cannot make ends meet, and they are going to the dollar store.

The other thing that sometimes drives stocks is speculation. People are speculating that Brookfield is going to get a lot more out of the Liberal government, because it has repeatedly in the last few months. There has been contract, contract, contract. It has been Brookfield, Brookfield, Brookfield.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise again in the House of Commons to represent the people of Peace River—Westlock. I thank them for putting me here again.

Today, we are debating the budget implementation act, Bill C-15. It is a monster of a bill. It has five major parts. Part 5 has 45 divisions. It is broad-ranging. It deals with removing the GST, getting rid of the carbon tax and getting rid of changes to housing infrastructure. It also has the piece I want to talk about first, which is big changes to the expropriation laws here in Canada. This is one of the things the Liberals tucked into the bill.

At the very end of the bill, there is something that the Liberals accuse us all the time of voting against, which is the school food program. That is the very last thing. The school food program is in division 44 of part 5. I am sure we will hear from the Liberals about how we voted against that. I just want to point out to everybody who is watching this back home that, indeed, that part is in the bill, but it is in division 44 of part 5 of this particular bill.

In division 1 of part 5 are the changes to the expropriation law. Members might be wondering why we have to change the laws around expropriation in this country. I do not know if people remember, but in the dying days of the Trudeau government, one of his last kicks at the can, so to speak, was an announcement of a high-speed rail line from Quebec City to Toronto. It is interesting to note that the majority of Canadians live in that corridor and that there is not a lot of public land in that corridor. Folks along that way would have their land expropriated in order to build this train line. We can imagine that folks would be concerned about how that is going to work. The bill lays out a bunch of the changes that would be made in order for the government to expropriate this land.

We do not have to look too far into the past to know about when the Liberals expropriated land for other vanity projects in the country. There was the Mirabel airport, for example. There is what is known today as the Rouge Park. These places were expropriated for grand visions the Liberal Party had, and neither has really come to fruition. We wonder in this case as well, while the government is taking on, perhaps, extraordinary powers in order to do these things, if we will ever see this project come to fruition.

Like many of the other things the government talks about, it is more than likely that it will do some of the harsh things it did in the past, such as with the Mirabel airport or Rouge Park, when it expropriated the land and ran over people's civil liberties, and, in the end, did not fulfill the project as was promised to Canadians. That is probably a very good analogy for many of the things the Liberal government has done. It generally talks a good game and it steals Conservative ideas, yet when it comes to implementation, it is scattershot and unfocused, and it basically stumbles from one crisis to another.

The other piece I want to talk about is another good Conservative idea. We had the idea to sell off public buildings and build housing, starting with the CBC headquarters. That would be after we shut it down. We would sell off the headquarters and put housing in there.

I did not know this, but apparently, we have an entire company, the Canada Lands Company, dedicated to selling off federal lands and managing some federal assets across the country. The company manages the Montréal Science Centre, the CN Tower and two other properties. It funds those operations by selling off other public lands the government wants to dispose off.

This was a program that we proposed in our platform. We were going to sell public lands and buildings. The Liberals have taken that idea.

What is very odd is that, I would suspect, selling lands and buildings would mean a net positive revenue for the government, yet the government is allocating $1.5 billion to this corporation. The government said that, on the one hand, it is going to be selling off lands and buildings in order to increase housing and that, on the other hand, it is going to be funding the corporation $1.5 billion.

I do not understand why that is the case, and there is no explanation in the bill as to why we need to allocate this much money. It just says that the government is going to allocate it in order to build more homes in this country. It is counterintuitive, and I do not understand. Hopefully the government can explain it to me later, in questions and comments. That piece of the bill seems very odd.

More broadly, and this is not specifically addressing Bill C-15 but more the budget in general, I mentioned earlier that the Liberals seem to just stumble from one crisis to another. There does not seem to be a clear direction. It feels as if each of the ministries is just off doing its own thing and in many cases is uncontrolled by its own minister. We probably see this no more alive than in the Algoma Steel situation or the softwood lumber situation. Both of these situations have been around for a very long time.

The production of steel has happened for a very long time in Canada, yet there has been the layering on of regulations and challenges to our trade agreements around the world. Whether it is putting in new environmental standards, putting a carbon tax on our industries while all our competitor countries do not have a carbon tax, or taking them off coal when all the other countries we compete with use coal to produce steel, all these things cause death by a thousand cuts to these industries.

I had the privilege of touring the tube plant in Sault Ste. Marie a number of years ago. Sault Ste. Marie is incredibly proud of its industry. I do not know if members know this, but some of the steel made in Sault Ste. Marie goes to the tube plant to make oil field production pipe, and 95% of it is shipped to Grande Prairie, Alberta, so the connections between Sault Ste. Marie and northern Alberta are very tight.

This brings me to the other topic of softwood lumber. Softwood lumber is another one of the issues where the fact that the Liberals just keep stumbling along and failing to come to an agreement is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the problems facing our industries. Access to fibre is a major concern. Access to the ability to transport product on the railway is another major problem.

All these things take focus and require the government to ask how it can support the industry, particularly because this is a trade irritant with the United States. We should be working to make sure companies can remain profitable around the tariffs and to get a deal. The Prime Minister said that he would get a deal by July 21. If he did not think he could do that, he should not have made that promise. He should not have made that promise, but he did make it during the election.

I want to finish off my comments by talking about the standard of living in Canada. A decade ago, Canada was number five in the rankings for standard of living in the world. It was one of the happiest places in the world to live. Today we are 27th in the rankings of standard of living in the world. It has taken us a decade to plummet from number five to number 27 in standard of living. That is an indictment of the Liberals.

The Liberals will say over and over again that it has never been better, but even their own policies talk about how this is happening. The very fact that they are touting their school food program is an indictment of them, because Canadians are relying on food banks more than ever in order to feed themselves. This means our standard of living has gone down significantly.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the member's last comment in regard to the national school food program. We have heard Conservatives say it is a “garbage” program. It is really quite unfortunate they have taken that kind of an approach. I have been around for a number of years as a parliamentarian. In the late 1980s, in the province of Manitoba, I can remember talking about children who were going to school on an empty stomach. We now have a national program to ensure that children can be learning after having had breakfast.

Does the member believe, as a number of his colleagues do, that it is a “garbage” program that does not have any value for the taxpayer?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that in the past the school food programs existed to fill an anomaly, a gap. They were not relied upon by the Canadian population in order to feed our children. Canadians had good-paying jobs in resource extraction industries that made the economy of this country function.

After a decade of the Liberals' being in power, programs are now coming forward as a solution to the problems they have made.

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

Mr. Speaker, the government talks about all the things it thinks it is doing in the budget, and it asks where the waste is. In a budget with a more than $78-billion deficit, what could possibly be wasteful?

I was doing some research. The government budgeted between $4 million and $8 million to build a rink at Rideau Hall. I have great news: I built a rink for my kids in my backyard this weekend. I could save the government $8 million. I will grab a couple of buddies from Saskatchewan, we will get a box of fill and we will build a rink at Rideau Hall for under $100.

Does the member think the government could find any other waste in the budget?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the government is wasting some money; there is no doubt about that. The Liberals' measure of success is how much money they spend. Whenever they have a solution, it is always just this: “Here is how much money we have spent.”

I pointed out in my speech that $1.5 billion is going to the Canada Lands Company, a corporation that is dedicated to selling off federal assets. I do not understand why a company that is dedicated to selling off assets needs to have a cash infusion of $1.5 billion.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, would my hon. colleague weigh in on what he is hearing from his constituents with respect to the size of this year's deficit of more than $78 billion?

I believe the debt is now at over $1.3 trillion. We are paying $55 billion a year in interest on the national debt alone, more money than we are giving to the provinces and territories for health care transfers.

I am hearing this from my constituents on a daily basis. Is the member hearing similar comments from his constituents?