Madam Speaker, it is good to be back in this place after some time away, at home in the community, time made longer by the government that took an extended break from doing what Canadians expected, which is what we are here to talk about.
I do wish you a happy new year, Madam Speaker, but I cannot say the same for all Canadians, who over the past number of weeks have watched what is becoming known as a reckless world tour unfold, one without a clear world view, at a moment when our relationship with the U.S. is uncertain and fragile, if I am being polite. At a time when Canadians are looking for reassurance about their jobs, their future and the country's resilience, they are instead given confusion, mixed signals, growing insecurity and, most of all, a growing distance between words and outcomes.
We come here to the House to hold the government accountable, to advocate for better policies and to serve Canadians in a fight for a country that we all love. It comes as no news flash to anybody that this country is under threat. Our sovereignty is being menaced, not just by somebody south of the border but also by a range of hostile actions and nations from all across the world.
We would like to think that our government would stand up to these threats and make our nation safe and secure. In fact, that is the first job of any government. However, what if the record of the Liberals over the last decade stands in direct contradiction to doing just that? Ten years of choices have steadily eroded Canada's strength and independence, leaving our country less self-reliant and more exposed over a full spectrum of national capacities: military, political, economic and diplomatic.
In moments of global uncertainty, leadership is not measured by the words spoken abroad. It is about the resilience we build here at home. I can stand here and exhaust my time, and far more than that, cataloguing the Liberal government's failures, from allowing foreign interference to take root in Canada to leaving our citizens exposed to intimidation by terrorist-led organizations or keeping critical minerals in the ground beneath our feet, minerals the world urgently needs to get to other markets.
However, Canadians do not need another inventory of failure. We have been there. They live with those consequences every single day, and they are seeing them right now more than ever. It is the same Liberal members who created these things, the very people who insisted they were good for Canada, who have doubled down time and again, calling others names for merely raising concerns over the last decade of what Canada did not do.
The Liberals are now insisting that they are the ones to fix it. Here is their big idea on an action plan to fix these problems: another speech, another press conference, another committee study, a report back, long after it got more out of control, another band-aid or perhaps another project office. Whatever it is, it tends to be just words.
Today I see members patting themselves on the back about a speech the Prime Minister gave in Davos last week. As somebody who has written many speeches, I give credit where credit is due, but here is where we diverge on opinion. This was before the public and private climb-downs that we are now hearing about. They view the speech as an announcement or a proclamation, and they view that as the solution. These things are not actually solutions; they are stepping stones. They are meant to communicate an idea, but they are not the actual actions.
One grand speech from the Prime Minister cannot erase a 10-year legacy that has left our country's voice diminished and nearly meaningless in the face of the global threats we are facing today. The platitudes from the pundits and the chattering classes will not put food on people's tables, build pipelines or create jobs. They will not leave us an ounce more independent than we were previously. Saying the right words means nothing when the right things are not done to match them. At least, that was the talk then.
I agree with the Prime Minister when he says that Canada should rely more on itself, reduce its vulnerabilities and work with its partners who share our interests. These are things I think everybody in this House agrees on, and they are things that Conservatives have been saying for over a decade. In fact, they are the things we have been talking about doing for nearly a year now since he became Prime Minister. He wants to “build, baby, build”; to “invest more” and “spend less"; to make our country an “energy superpower”, or whatever the latest tag line is.
We agree with those things in theory. Since those words were first spoken, nothing of substance has followed. They remain carefully crafted slogans designed for a speech rather than a plan. There is no clear path forward. There is no timetable. There are no meaningful details outlining what the Prime Minister intends to do or when he intends to do it.
I know that I will hear more as I split my time with the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.
What is worse is that our deficit has gone up, not down. We have not built a single mile of new pipeline or even cleared the path for it. The biggest achievement right now is an office that has added more bureaucrats. In fact, 96% of what that office has spent has been $1 million on hiring bureaucrats. Not a single new project is even close to an approvals process.
Here is what we are challenging the Prime Minister to do. We want him to put his money where his mouth is. We said we would help him do that. We want him to make this country better. Let us stop talking about it and start doing it. There is a piece of legislation, a plan, right here in front of us in the House of Commons to consider.
It is the Conservatives' Canadian sovereignty act. It is a blueprint for an action plan that the Prime Minister seems to be missing. There are three main points in it.
First, it would restore Canada's standing as a competitive resource-producing nation by dismantling the laws that actively impede development, the same laws that we helped him give himself the power to override when we helped him pass Bill C-5. He has extraordinary powers now, and there are still things in the way. We are offering him that same goodwill in the House to speed this up.
Measures like Bill C-69 have layered excessive paperwork and duplication onto the approvals process. He knows that. He is slowing projects without delivering a public benefit. That is exactly what that bill does. Repealing the industrial carbon tax, the emissions cap, the EV mandate and the plastics ban would remove the unnecessary burdens that our industry has to compete with on the global market but cannot. The Prime Minister knows that as well.
That is why he gave himself excessive powers to clear the path for resource projects. I invite him to give himself excessive powers so that we could repeal all of this. We would help him do it today.
Second, a truly competitive economy has to reward those who commit their labour and their capital in this country, in Canada's success. The Canadian sovereignty act would do exactly that by introducing a reinvestment tax credit, which would eliminate the capital gains on profits invested in the Canadian economy. This would encourage domestic investment, strengthen productivity and keep capital working here at home.
Third, the act would finally remove long-standing internal trade barriers, which he stood at a microphone and said were gone. The barriers cost our country $200 million a year, and they are still very much there. Just because someone says at a microphone that they are not there does not mean they are not there.
Finally, the act would safeguard Canadian innovation and intellectual property from being appropriated by foreign competitors, particularly those with economic and security interests that do not align with ours. We saw plenty of that in the last week.
We can do all of this right now and support sovereignty. Everything in the bill would translate to more jobs, more prosperity and, by virtue of this, a better economy and more money in the pocket of every single Canadian.
What is more is that these are things that the Prime Minister, in the past, said he wanted to do. It is our job to help him do exactly that. If he would adopt this plan, I think we would get to moving a lot quicker. We would have shovels in the ground. We would have more money in the pockets of Canadians. It is not that complicated. When someone says they are going to do something, from a podium or in a speech, they should work to act on that.
