Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon.
Our motion today requests that the House call on the government to adopt what we have proposed in a Canada sovereignty act. A sovereignty act is our proposal to re-establish Canada as a competitive and world-class nation, confident in its ability to build national pipelines, projects and ports and all other manner and means to enable Canadians to again feel confident in their future.
We have often heard criticism that the opposition does not provide enough solutions. Here they are, before the House, and we will continue to provide Canadians with common-sense solutions to the inaction of 10 years of Liberal governments.
We want Canadians to feel confident that the opportunity for them is on the horizon, that a better future awaits them and their children and that a sense of pride in our country could return. The sovereignty act, therefore, is really, fundamentally, a proposal of hope for Canadians that the future will be better than the past and that we can move our country in a positive direction.
I am sorry to say that, in my estimation, Canadians do not feel confident in their future right now. In fact, lots of public polling will support my position. Canadians are more anxious than they have ever been. They are more concerned than they have ever been about what the future holds for them, where their next paycheques will come from, how they will feed their families and whether or not they will have a job in the future. In fact, many feel that their children will no longer be better off than they were at the same time in their lives.
It feels like a nation divided, where the government has allowed division to percolate and simmer: west versus east and Canadians of faith versus Canadians who have a different view. Over and over, those divisions of region versus region and Canadian versus Canadian have percolated and simmered. Of course, there is our more belligerent neighbour to the south.
It seems to me that these are echoes of our history. My hon. colleague who spoke before me chided the Conservatives for looking at history, but our history is a proud one. We should be proud of it and draw inspiration from it and the great men and women who came before us in this House.
It seems to me that there are echoes of our past in our present situation. Indeed, in my estimation, our current circumstances are not dissimilar to some of those that faced our infant nation in the late 1870s and 1880s during the debates in this House around our great national project, the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
During the great parliamentary debates in late 1880 and early 1881, our great founding father, John A. Macdonald, lamented on the failure of the earlier attempt to organize the construction of the railway. In his speech to the House, he noted that in the intervening period between the first and second attempts to build the railway, “We have had tragedy, comedy and farce from the other side.” The parallel of those days is strikingly similar to me. We, too, have had tragedy, comedy and farce from the Liberal government.
The tragedy in our present time is that we have similarly lost a decade. For 10 years, no progress has been made by the government to develop Canada's great endowments. For 10 years, no priority has been given by the government to building anything. It is quite the opposite in fact. The focus of the government has been frivolities rather than the fundamentals of our country. There has been concern about banning plastic straws rather than building our future, and about figuring out how many selections there should be in the gender section of a government application rather than focusing on how Canadians will find their next meal.
The comedy is that in the present time, we are seeing members of the government who thought one way and said different things last year or the year before now speaking and professing to believe things in an entirely different way. For a decade, we were told that the carbon tax and other Liberal environmental measures were the only way to preserve our future for our children and the only way to reverse environmental decline, but now, the Liberals have eliminated their own proposals. For a decade, we were told that Canada is a genocidal and racist country with a history not worth remembering, and that we should tear down statues of our great founding father, John A. Macdonald. Now, the government wraps itself in the flag when it is convenient for it. The hypocrisy on the other side is the sad comedy that we face today.
Then there is the farce. The farce of our present time is that the new schemes of the government will not achieve anything. A new government bureaucracy will not build more homes. A new government bureaucracy will not see grand national projects started. Despite what the secretary of state said, the Major Projects Office has not given final approval for a single project. Liberals can spread their misinformation, but others can also google it for themselves.
Moreover, we live in a time when the average time to get a building project done, a mine, for example, is 19 years. This is the farce of our current time, but Conservatives have provided a solution, a Canada sovereignty act, which would make a meaningful difference in the sovereignty of Canada. It is not complicated. In fact, its elegance is its simplicity, which is to get the government out of the way and remove the obstacles that are holding back our national success.
I think John A. Macdonald knew that was the way, too. Indeed, the speech from the throne in 1880, in determining the manner to construct the Canadian Pacific Railway, argued and proposed that it should be constructed “by means of an Incorporate Company...rather than by the direct action of the Government.” Those are wise words from our history, which I hope the government will take to heart, because when we export more, build more and develop our nation more, incomes go up and life becomes more affordable for Canadians. A sovereignty act would do that.
Now I will say a word on the cost of failure. Failing to adopt the changes that we have proposed in our sovereignty act will have a cost. Failing to repeal the Impact Assessment Act, the oil shipping ban and the emissions cap will mean that a pipeline to the west coast may never happen. Failing to remove the industrial carbon tax will saddle our industries with a burden that their competitors do not share and make them uncompetitive in the world economy. Maintaining the EV mandate will force our auto manufacturers to pay millions of dollars to foreign companies in credits.
We will bleed our auto manufacturers, feed foreign companies and add to foreign wealth. How does that enhance our sovereignty?
In his great speech of January 1881, John A. Macdonald also warned of the cost of failure to complete our great national project wholly and entirely in Canada. He warned that Canada would become “a bundle of sticks, as we were before, without a binding cord, and that we should fall, helpless, powerless, and aimless, into the hands of the neighboring Republic.”
The costs of failure in our present day are no less severe, and that is why Conservatives have proposed their solutions in a Canada sovereignty act. They are not complicated. In fact, I do not think we disagree on some of them, but the comments from the other side lead me to believe that Liberals will not consider them. Therefore, they must accept the cost of that failure, the cost to our next generation.
I reiterate the Conservative belief and offer to do what we can to maintain, enhance and build our sovereignty, to once again be a nation proud in its history and in its great national projects, just as John A. Macdonald was in 1881.