Madam Speaker, it is a real pleasure to rise today to deliver my first speech in the House of Commons. I was reflecting while debate was going on earlier, and it is such an incredible honour to be in this place on behalf of the great people of Brandon and Westman.
Members do not get here alone. I would be remiss if I did not start by thanking, of course, my partner Ashley, who has agreed to come along on this wild political journey. She has been a trooper in making the leap into federal politics with me, so I thank her from the bottom of my heart.
I thank my parents, Darryl and Cherilyn. As an only child, I am sure it is a bit of a strange phenomenon for them to see their only child carted off to Ottawa to represent the rural areas of south-western Manitoba. They have been supportive of me through this political journey, so I thank them for being there through thick and thin. I have not always made it easy. I am sure they would reaffirm that, but they have been there with me through it all, so I thank them for that. I thank my in-laws as well, who have allowed a political junkie into their family with open arms. I thank them for their support.
Members get here with a team, so I would be remiss if I did not also thank the members of my campaign team. They came together very quickly after my predecessor announced a sudden departure from politics. We garnered very good results. There is no doubt about that. We broadened our voter coalition. We increased the number of Conservative votes that were received in our constituency. I thank them for their hard work, which was done in very quick fashion to get organized to get up and running.
I also must thank my predecessor, Larry Maguire. He is a stand-up individual. He has been a great advocate for rural Manitoba, for all of Manitoba and for western Canadian agriculture over his many years in politics. He has been a great friend and mentor to me personally. I thank him for his friendship and mentorship, and I wish him well in his retirement, although I am sure we have not seen the last of him in his involvement in politics across Manitoba and the country.
I want to thank the Conservative Party, my Conservative colleagues and our leader, Pierre Poilievre, for supporting me and putting their faith in me in my stepping into Larry's shoes and fulfilling the responsibilities of this role. I do not take that faith lightly, and I plan to work hard on behalf of this team every day.
Most importantly, I want to thank the people of Brandon—Souris. It is such a humbling experience to be a member of Parliament and to be their voice here in Ottawa. I am so privileged to be that voice, and I am going to work hard every day to ensure that their issues, their challenges and their experiences are raised here in the House of Commons.
When I think about Brandon—Souris or Westman, the first word that comes to mind is “home”. Like any home, sometimes the house needs a bit of work, and that is certainly what we heard at the doors during this campaign. We heard that Westman industries are struggling. Young families are having a hard time paying the bills and buying affordable homes. Crime is up, both in our urban cities and on farmyards. This is not an acceptable state of affairs, and unfortunately, it gets worse. With Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola, and our oil and gas sector being suppressed by failed Liberal government policies, people are being left feeling like there is less hope than there has been in many years.
Why are we here? The Liberal government seems focused, or have been focused, on offshore challenges. It is funding farming initiatives in Africa, but there is no support for Canadian agriculture. It is investing in the Asian Infrastructure Bank, building pipelines in Asia, but there has been zero major infrastructure, nation-building projects conducted here on Canadian soil in the last nine and a half years of the Liberals.
That is a shame, and Westman residents have had enough. They made it clear with a decisive mandate vote for change in Ottawa. Part of this larger vote coalition was young people, people who have never voted Conservative or who have never voted at all, and they voted Conservative for the first time. They voted in favour of a Conservative plan that offers a very proud and important path forward for this country.
Young people in Canada want very simple things. They want to be treated with respect and to be able to get a good job that earns them a good wage that allows them to buy an affordable home and start a family in a safe neighbourhood. These are not complicated requests. However, if anything, the Liberal government of the last nine and a half years has shown us that the Liberal Party's secret party trick is to complicate even the simplest of government tasks. We need to look no further than the Phoenix pay system debacle, where the Liberals could not even figure out how to pay their own civil servants, or the arrive scam issue, which complicated crossing the border with a Canadian passport as a Canadian citizen. These are just some of the smallest examples. I am not even getting into infrastructure, procurement and the other debacles of the last nine and a half years.
Young people in this country voted for a common-sense plan, but even more than that, they voted for a plan full of hope. More young people in Canada under 40 voted Conservative than ever before because our plan inspired them with a path forward to a more hopeful future for this country. That is a credit to Pierre Poilievre and those in our leadership team, who have made this Conservative Party younger with a broader vote coalition. That bodes very well for the future of the Conservative Party of Canada. It is a plan to make life more affordable by reducing taxes; reducing government spending; cutting waste; building safer communities; targeting investments in nation-building projects, such as national energy corridors and pipelines; and having a jail, not bail, plan, which would put criminals behind bars and ensure that they remain behind bars to serve time for the crimes they committed to destroy our communities and destroy our families. This is the Conservative plan that young people across the country supported and will support again.
To those people who bought into this vision, this path and this campaign of hope, I say this: Do not lose that hope now. We did not get across the finish line, but the team surrounding me is fighting for them. Day in and day out, we are working to implement that agenda from the opposition benches, and we will get some results. Look no further than last night, when the Liberals lost their first vote on their own throne speech, when we amended it to include the adamant statement that there be a financial update this spring, before the House rises, to ensure that there is a fiscal plan to support the challenges that are impacting them and their families.
I know things are not good right now, but they can be better. We know they can be. With a lot of hard work, patience, persistence and determination, we can make them better. We can do big things in this country. We can make positive change so that those who come after us have a better country and more opportunity than we had when we were growing up. Without a doubt, this Conservative team, under the leadership of Pierre Poilievre, is the team to get that done. I am ready to get to work, so let us get to it.