Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be back home here in Canada. I just got back from touring some of the great U.S. states and metropolises where our American partners buy our goods and services and where we trade for the benefit of both our peoples.
Before I left, I gave a speech in Toronto in which I laid out a detailed plan for restoring tariff-free free trade with our largest international market. My goal is one shared by all Conservatives: a Canada that is affordable and strong, where we are the master of our own house.
I have to say it is good to be home after a 12-day journey across the United States, visiting some of the great metropolises and states south of the border, pitching Canada, fighting for tariff-free trade, arguing on behalf of our workers and restoring our long-standing partnership with our greatest trade partner.
That journey took me to Detroit, where I championed auto workers, coming back with a clear proposal for a tariff-free auto pact. Then it was on to Houston, where I championed our energy sector. Then I went on to meet with Governor Abbott in the great capital of Austin, where I found a wonderful friend of Canada who wants to buy even more of our energy if we can get it out of the ground and down. Of course, I was very pleased to speak to Americans to fight for tariff-free trade and to defend Canadian sovereignty on the biggest podcast in the world with the great Joe Rogan. Then, of course, it was on to New York, where I championed our overall economy with some of the greatest leaders in finance.
In all of those places, I am happy to report that I found friends among Americans, people who want to reopen trade across tariff-free borders along the longest undefended border in the history of the world. I found that the American people love Canada and know that trade with us is in their national interest. They understand that buying Canadian goods lowers Americans' cost of living and feeds their supply chains. It adds paycheques to their pockets while enriching us both.
They understand that Canada has leverage, like being the second-biggest customer to the United States, having 10 of the 12 NATO-defined national defence critical minerals and having the biggest land mass, biggest seas and biggest airspace in the entire hemisphere, all essential to American security. Americans understand that it is in our interest as a continent for our two separate countries, while they maintain their sovereignty, to work collaboratively to make us both richer, stronger and safer.
I shall say that I kept the Prime Minister well informed of all these developments while I was abroad. I look forward to meeting with him to report on my findings, to compare notes and to offer recommendations on how Canada can become stronger at home and more affordable at home, so that we have the leverage abroad to achieve tariff-free trade with our American partners. Though I made a point of not criticizing the Prime Minister on foreign soil, I return here where it is precisely my constitutional obligation to do just that, not out of any partisan interest but out of an interest in pursuing the truth.
Now, after a year of the Prime Minister's being in office on the promise that he would negotiate a win with the United States, it is a good time to take an inventory of where we are. A year into the Liberal Prime Minister's term, after he won on his famous promise to negotiate a win, much has been said but not much has been done. There have been many fine speeches and signing ceremonies of so-called MOUs, which are, in effect, unenforceable documents that commit bureaucrats to form committees and hold international meetings to discuss future plans that may or may not one day be materialized. There have been handshakes and press conferences, announcements of grand goals and of things that will happen somewhere, someplace down the road, but nothing tangible.
As Shakespeare said, “All the world's a stage”, and the Prime Minister has been great at the stagecraft, but what about the statecraft? He promised he would give us the fastest-growing economy in the G7. We now have the only shrinking economy in the G7. He promised affordable food. We have the most food inflation in the G7. He promised that we would have a solid economy. We now have the worst housing costs and the highest household debt in the G7, and the second-highest unemployment in that group. He said he would negotiate a win with the President. Here we are today, a year later, with no win and no deal. Tariffs on aluminum and steel have doubled, and on Canadian lumber they have tripled.
He promised that he would build projects with record speed, yet his Major Projects Office, which the House rushed into existence in five days back in June because the Prime Minister said it was an emergency, has still not approved a single project of any kind almost a year later. Not a single pipeline has been approved. When it comes to building homes, he promised he would double homebuilding. His own housing agency projects that will drop by 15%. There has been no serious tax reform other than to rename the carbon tax to the so-called clean fuel standard, which applies to more goods and will rise to the same level. Of course, there remain interprovincial trade barriers, despite the fact the Prime Minister promised that we would have one unified Canadian economy by Canada Day of last year.
Speaking of free trade, he has not concluded a single free trade agreement since taking office, trying only to take credit for a small deal that his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, signed with Indonesia, an agreement that will amount to about three hours of Canada's GDP.
It has now been a year since this Liberal Prime Minister took office. Reality has collided with illusion. The deficit has doubled, and our economy is the only one in the G7 to have contracted. We have the worst food inflation, the highest housing costs, the worst household debt and the second-worst unemployment rate in the G7, plus a 15% decline in housing construction. Not a single pipeline has been approved. No projects have been approved by his new office, which wields exceptional and unprecedented powers. Despite his promise to negotiate a victory and reach an agreement by July 21, 2025, there is still no victory or agreement, and U.S. tariffs have doubled on Canadian products and tripled on softwood lumber.
For all the illusions about the Prime Minister's negotiating skills and statecraft, what really do we have to show a year after? What we are increasingly seeing is that American tariffs have doubled on Canadian steel and aluminum and tripled on Canadian lumber since the Prime Minister promised he would get rid of them. Credentials are not competence. Stagecraft is not statecraft. Illusions are not reality.
Speaking of trade with the United States, Canadians know a lot more about my approach than they do about the Prime Minister's. I want everyone to stop and think about this for a second. I laid out a very detailed plan of both my demands, eliminating all tariffs on Canadian goods, and the leverage I would use to get those demands. I would like to give the House of Commons a pop quiz. What do we really know about the Prime Minister's plan to get tariffs lifted with the U.S.? What do we really know? We know nothing. Is he even determined to get those tariffs lifted? In fact, Liberal ministers have suggested it might now be impossible to do that. Is it still his negotiating bottom line to have those tariffs removed, and if so, what is he planning to offer in exchange for getting them lifted? We do not know.
Does his proposed rupture with the U.S. mean he does not want a renewed CUSMA? We do not know. If he does intend to renew CUSMA, does he intend to try to get it renewed exactly as it is, with small changes, or a complete overhaul? Has anybody heard him answer that question? I am not aware of him telling anyone that. When was the last serious negotiation? We know the Mexicans are negotiating. They are at the table. Has he or anyone in his cabinet actually been at the negotiating table in the last four months?
I do not mean friendly handshakes, introductions and an exchange of jokes and pleasantries with the minister responsible for Canada-U.S. affairs, who is a man with a great, gregarious personality indeed. I mean actual negotiations. Are they even happening? Has anyone in the press actually asked the Prime Minister if we are even negotiating, given that we are literally days away from the renewal date of our single biggest trade agreement? Nobody knows. He said, “Who cares?”
Indeed, I think Canadians care.
Does he accept that U.S. tariffs on aluminum, steel, autos and lumber are permanent? We do not know. We have no idea when the talks will start or when they will end. We have heard him use some very interesting rhetoric, colourful rhetoric, such as that he wants to have a rupture with our single biggest customer, on whom 2.3 million Canadian jobs depend. If he is going to rupture 2.3 million jobs, how is he going to replace them? How will those workers pay their bills? How will we replace those jobs?
These are the types of questions that slogans like “rupture”, “elbows up” and “Canada strong” do not answer. While the Prime Minister gives wonderful speeches that make for very interesting listening, and we can admire him as a wordsmith, those speeches do not pay mortgages or put food on the table for 2.3 million people.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister cannot seem to make up his mind about how things are going. On the one hand, he says the reason we have the only shrinking economy in the G7 is that the tariffs are so bad. On the other, he says there is no need to rush into solving this problem, because the deal is so good. Which is it? He cannot, on the one hand, say that he has gotten us an excellent deal on tariffs and then, on the other, say that the tariffs are so horrendous that it is the very reason why we have the worst economy in the G7. It cannot be both. He has to make up his mind.
Meanwhile, his ministers make patently ridiculous excuses about foreign matters to defend their domestic failures, like the housing minister claiming that the war in Iran had caused housing costs to double over the last decade. I will give members a spoiler alert. We do not import houses or land from Iran. We never have. The housing bubble inflated well before this war even started, which makes all of us wonder if the Liberal Prime Minister and his government are simply using these foreign problems as excuses for his very real domestic failures, given that everything was bad under his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, and has gotten much worse since he became Prime Minister, promising to fix it all.
We all have to ask: How long will the Prime Minister use the trade dispute and other foreign matters as a convenient all-purpose excuse for causing inflation, debt and joblessness here at home?
What about his auto plan? Canada needs a strong auto sector. We need a strong auto sector that, according to the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association, is responsible for 105,000 direct jobs and a total of 600,000 jobs when we include indirect ones at places like the 700 auto parts suppliers, the 400 connected autonomous and smart vehicle firms, and the 500 tool and die and mould companies that feed into the supply chain.
Since the Liberals took office, auto production in Canada has fallen by half. Since the Prime Minister was elected a year ago, promising he would protect the auto sector, it has fallen another 7.3%. The Prime Minister promised before the election that he would protect the sector. It was another illusion. He has since waved the white flag. He even considered signing a sectoral deal in the fall that would have made the tariffs permanent and shut down our sector altogether.
He seems to think that he can carry out a permanent rupture with the United States market in favour of other markets. That is a dangerous illusion. In fact, if we look at the numbers, it verges on a hallucination. The reality is that we sell about 95 times more automobiles to the United States than we sell to the rest of the world combined. That is the reality. We cannot simply imagine up new markets to sell cars that we do not make in places that will not buy them from us.
The reality is that this approach of relying on imaginary plans has led to the following layoffs: 175 at Paccar in Quebec, 49 at Magna in London, 3,000 at Brampton Stellantis, 300 at Paccar in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec, 118 at Autoneum in London, 245 at TFT Global in Oshawa, and 700 at GM in Oshawa. Of course, there are the lockouts at the Brampton Stellantis plant I visited.
A permanent rupture with the United States would be the end of the Canadian auto sector, period. It might not be enjoyable or exciting to say it, and it might be more fun to scream “elbows up”, but the jobs that the people in those plants rely on are more important than the Prime Minister's endless slogans. A permanent rupture to their paycheques is not acceptable; nor is it possible to simply say we will replace the Detroit three automakers with Japanese automakers.
The Japanese ambassador made it clear that having Toyota and Honda invest in Canada depends on unfettered access to the U.S. market, so even the 75% of the automobiles we make in Canada through the Asian automakers would not survive a permanent wall of tariffs from the United States. We absolutely must regain access to the U.S. market. In essence, losing U.S. access would likely decimate the Japanese-led portion of Canada's auto industry, which is three-quarters of our production. This would lead to a sharp long-term contraction of national production and an economic fallout across Ontario. Canada's auto sector must stay part of the North American supply chain.
We need a plan for jobs, not a plan to rupture jobs. We need a Canada that builds up its auto sector so that we can be strong at home and have more leverage abroad. We, as the Conservatives, are the only ones who have that plan. After months of consultation, led by the chair and the two co-chairs of the Conservative economic council, the member for Calgary Centre, the member for Kapuskasing—Timmins—Mushkegowuk and the great Rick Perkins, we have put together a plan that has the backing of the industry and the workers.
The Conservative plan would make it more affordable to buy Canadian vehicles by removing the GST on all Canadian-made automobiles. We would pay for it by getting rid of the $2.3-billion Liberal subsidy for foreign-made electric vehicles. We would cut taxes on vehicles made in Canada. The Liberals want to use tax dollars for vehicles made abroad. People who want a job in this country know what plan is going to work.
We would bring home production through performance by implementing a rule where for every car an automaker produces in Canada, it would have the right to import one tariff-free from a CUSMA partner. We would do that on a dollar-for-dollar basis, exactly as we used to do through the auto pact. This is important, because many people would ask if the President would ever accept it. This plan would increase American and Canadian production. American production would increase by about two million automobiles, or about a 17% increase in production, reversing its decline, and Canadian production would double, going up to two million vehicles every single year. It would ensure we build as many vehicles as we sell. This would be a much better deal for our American friends than they have right now and a significantly better deal for Canada. Because it aligns with the stated objective of the United States to produce more vehicles at home, it is one it would realistically sign.
We have developed an automotive security and technology policy by harmonizing our regulations to keep dangerous technology from Russia and China off our roads. We would stand firm against unfair trade practices by China and align the policies with those of the United States.
We would also get rid of the EV mandate the Prime Minister is trying to keep in place through the back channel of emissions standards that cannot be met by any other vehicle than an EV. We would ensure that the vehicles Canadians buy and that are on our streets are made in our country and ultimately affordable to the Canadian people.
This is a detailed plan to reverse the 10-year-long decline in automotive production that would allow North America to once again become the global powerhouse in producing automobiles. It would knock down the barriers and restore tariff-free trade across the border with our single biggest market by far anywhere in the world. This is a realistic plan, one that takes seriously the livelihoods of the hard-working people who rely on this sector for their jobs.
We are not interested in temporary slogans or political gratification. We are interested in protecting the jobs of our people and the strength of our country. We will be strong and affordable at home and have leverage abroad.
