Mr. Speaker, I thank our pages for all the great work they do to keep us on the straight and narrow.
Before I start, I would like to mention that I am splitting my time with the wonderful, esteemed member for Northumberland—Clarke, who has a new riding name. I am sure his speech will be absolutely excellent.
It is important that we are here today at this moment to discuss areas in which the government may find collaboration and co-operation opportunities with members of His Majesty's loyal opposition. There is a list of what I will call wish-list items that Conservatives have put forward that Liberals would have support from Conservatives in moving ahead, but I would also mention that this is about creating an environment in Canada where we make more things more quickly. When Canadians make more things, we also make and receive bigger paycheques for our people and our standard of living increases.
As members know, our standard of living has been on the decline. In fact, if we measure it by GDP per capita, our standard of living today is worse than it was in 2019, so the Conservatives are willing to work with the government. We are suggesting ways we can do this, but generally speaking, we are proposing to drastically reduce and reform regulatory systems to help spur development.
We recommend cutting taxes on investments when companies and individuals reinvest those proceeds in Canada. I will give an example. If an individual sells a building or somebody sells an investment and those proceeds are reinvested within Canada, within our borders or in a Canadian company, we are proposing that the government can either defer the capital gains tax or eliminate it completely. That would absolutely have the immediate effect of spurring investment in this country.
We should be rewarding provinces that take down trade barriers between other provinces. I remember that the government said, very famously, that by Canada Day we would have free trade in Canada. It is well past Canada Day and we do not have free trade in this country. Provinces will likely only respond to financial incentives to make the right decision, so the government should provide provinces with that monetary incentive and basically say that if they remove their trade barriers, the federal government would provide to them, in greater transfers, a share of the revenue that comes from the increased business activity that happens.
Finally, it is a long-standing recommendation of Conservatives, and in fact even of parliamentary committees in previous Parliaments, that intellectual property created in Canada and funded by Canadian taxpayers has to remain in Canada. We are encouraging the government, through the industry minister, to find ways to make that happen, but here is an easy example: With the scientific research and development credits, when a company that has received that tax preference and has gotten very generous tax deductions for making investments in scientific research and development creates Canadian IP using taxpayer subsidies to do so, and that company or intellectual property is sold to anyone outside of this country, why not ask or require that company to repay the federal government and taxpayers the money that it received or the subsidies that it benefited from when it developed that IP?
If that IP stays in Canada, they would not have to pay it back, but when it leaves, we have to require that the subsidy be repaid. That is just the most appropriate thing to do. In fact, some countries actually make those companies repay a multiple of the subsidy that they received when that intellectual property is transferred out of the country. We would support the industry minister going in that direction.
The Prime Minister has told the world and this country that he has embarked on an ambitious agenda, but he has to start putting some wins on the board. Signing a few agreements and making agreements to agree is not putting shovels in the ground.
In fact, the Prime Minister's Major Projects Office, which the Liberals will tout as a serious accomplishment, is yet another layer of bureaucracy on an already unmanageable bureaucratic regulatory system to get things done. It is a complete admission that the existing regulatory system does not work when the government has to put itself in a position to create a new system in order to fast-track projects. Also, 90% of the projects that have been listed or referred to the Major Projects Office are already nearing completion. These are not net new projects.
We need net new development and investment in our natural resource sector to get our resources to market. We need to support the business community to do that, but not by forcing everyone to come to the government, hat in hand, begging to be put on the major projects list. If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it is that for Liberal ministers, or those they appoint to choose favour, the temptation is too great and they often end up currying favour to their friends. We need to not give ministers this additional power. We need to allow the system to work better by drastically reforming it and removing government, not by putting more government on top.
This leads me to one of the other areas we have recommended to work with the government on, which is the electric vehicle mandate. Do members know why the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, desperately wants us to allow its Chinese vehicles into Canada? It is monetary. There may be some non-monetary issues, but the average profit on a car is about $3,000 to $5,000. Every electric vehicle that is sold by a Chinese company in Canada will immediately be eligible to receive a $20,000 purchase of credits by an automaker in Canada.
What does that mean? It means that $980 million will go from Canadian automakers that have footprints and manufacturing here to a Chinese automaker. That is four times the profit margin on that car already. The CCP wants access to the Canadian market because of the regulatory system the government has set up, which makes absolutely no sense. We would be willing to work with the government on that basis.
The Prime Minister also is developing a bit of a credibility deficit. He was for increasing carbon taxes and then he abandoned them. He was against pipelines and now he might be for them. He said he would spend less and invest more, but his deficits are bigger than former prime minister Justin Trudeau's. He said he would deliver a closer economic and defence security partnership with the U.S., and now he says we need a new world order. The Prime Minister said that when middle nations negotiate with larger powers bilaterally, they are in a worse position. That was just days after signing a bilateral deal with the CCP. He said that China is the largest security threat to Canada and now inks a deal with it.
Perhaps the most devastating is that after the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands voted for the budget and the MOU was signed with the Alberta government, she said that the Prime Minister intentionally misled her in those negotiations. We should take those accusations by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands very seriously. She has developed a very good reputation in the House. When she says that she was misled by the Prime Minister, I believe that he is growing a credibility deficit.
These are the opportunities that we are offering to the government. We will work with the Prime Minister's government in this trying time to help him put some wins on the board. Hopefully the Liberals will take these comments into consideration, and I welcome their questions.